SEQUELIZED IN THE 90s!

You have to love all those disastrous sequels of the 90s…or do you? Let’s take a look at six of them.

PET SEMATARY II (1992)

This sequel to an adaptation of a Stephen King classic is the epitome of the shit show that was 90s horror completely desecrating the legacy of a film from the 80s. Even worse that Mary Lambert, director of the first film, returned to spit on her previous grave…I mean…work.

When a movie begins with a gothic situation that turns out to be a film being filmed within the movie, it’s usually a bad sign. This time Edward Furlong’s mother is an actress who gets gruesomely killed on set…while he’s there watching. The second bad sign? Pubescent Edward Furlong’s cracking falsetto scream.

Anyway, he moves to a new house with his dad—Anthony Edwards as a veterinarian. At school Furlong is tormented by a gang of bullies, but befriends one kid whose father is the sheriff.

The incident with the family from the first film is mentioned several times, but that doesn’t stop the two friends from burying a dead dog, which pops up to cause trouble every once in a while.

But the real re-animated problem is the sheriff, who dies on Halloween, is buried in the cemetery, and then terrorizes them for the rest of the movie.

Initial scenes with him are pretty damn creepy, but then the movie careens off a cliff and crashes down in the 90s. Characters are thrown into pointless scenes. Edwards has crazy horror sex dreams. The sheriff exhumes the mom’s body and buries her in the cemetery. Furlong has a shrine room dedicated to her. Everyone ends up there for an ooey gooey gory battle filled with pus and puke.

On the bright side, the alternative soundtrack includes the likes of Dramarama (“I’ve Got Spies”), The Jesus & Mary Chain (“Reverence”), and Ramones (“Poison Heart”).

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS (1997)

The director of Mute Witness takes a huge risk making a sequel to an iconic horror film of the 80s that would have forever changed the werewolf genre with its transformation special effect…if this film hadn’t then changed it again with awful CGI.

That’s not to say I think An American Werewolf in Paris is an atrocious film like most seem to.

I find it to be a fun and campy flick that is also a great nostalgic piece for its totally 90s vibe.

It also has a lovable cast including Tom Everett Scott (and his ass), and his adorable and sexy buddy who strips down to his undies.

And fricking Julie Bowen of Modern Family appears as one of the ghost corpses that ends up haunting the main guy (yes, there are more than one in the sequel).

Scott and his two buddies are in Paris on the Eiffel Tower when they see a pretty young woman about to jump. Scott saves her and before long, he’s drawn in to her crazy world of werewolves…a whole underground club full of them.

There’s plenty of 90s-style alt rock during the many chase scenes, loads of werewolf pack chaos, and a juicy werewolf on a subway scene…

And then…there’s that damn CGI. It looks so awful it unfortunately drags the film’s worth down painfully. What a bummer.

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY (1999)

You know what you’re in for when two sequels to a huge film are made for the direct to video market in the same year. Even so, both From Dusk Till Dawn sequels have their moments.

The first comes from the eventual director of Hostel 3, and the opener incomprehensibly left my mind until I saw it again—it stars Bruce Campbell and Tiffani Thiessen in an awesome scene in which they’re attacked in an elevator by bats.

Seriously, this movie is oddly similar to the film Bats as far as the bat attack scenes are concerned.

It focuses on horror and sci-if icon Robert Patrick and a band of thieves planning to rob a bank.

Unfortunately, one of the guys stops at the titty bar after accidentally hitting a bat with his car. This leads Danny Trejo, a bartender, to ignite a new vamp outbreak.

After the initial vamp attacks, aside from a sex scene with a hottie’s ass on display, most of this film turns into a shoot ‘em up cops and robbers standoff. Yawn.

The final act at last delivers some vamp fighting fun, but this is mostly more an action film.

 FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3: THE HANGMAN’S DAUGHTER (1999)

The eventual Director of Lost Boys: The Tribe (I’m seeing a pattern here) brings us my favorite of these two sequels, which is shocking since a) the first forty minutes are a boring as hell western film, and b) it’s a period piece.

A convict escapes execution and goes on the run with the hangman’s daughter, meets up with a Bible thumping couple, and eventually crashes at what turns out to be a vampire brothel.

The main guy is beautiful and an absolute prototype for the guy who played the lead in the series.

Rebecca Gayheart, hot on the heels of Urban Legend, plays one of the religious fanatics.

And Danny Trejo gets the honor of being in all three From Dusk Till Dawn films.

After we finally see vamps 45 minutes in, all hell breaks loose in the bar of the brothel, and this vamp battle takes us straight through the rest of the film, in ways outdoing the insanity of the original film.

Highlights include Rebecca Gayheart in a sepia tone dance montage, a snake head vampire, vampire tentacles, a hot Latin wannabe Indiana Jones, and even some goofy humor.

Plus, the lead vampire woman is like the reincarnation of the lead vampire woman from the original Fright Night 2.

POISON IVY II (1996)

Okay, for starters, Alyssa Milano’s character is named Lily, so shouldn’t this film be called Poison Lily?

This sequel is completely unrelated to the first film, and it’s mostly an erotic drama until the last 20 minutes or so, when it finally turns into a fatal attraction situation. But it’s not what you think. Poison Lily isn’t the psycho.

She comes to a new college as a frumpy chick, finds a notebook of a former female student in her dorm room, and decides she wants to be a slut, too. So she gives herself a makeover.

Then she hooks up with fellow classmate Johnathon Schaech…as well as her art teacher. This back and forth goes on for most of the agonizing near two-hour running time. How did someone look at this film in editing and not realize it needed to lose at least 20 minutes?

On the bright side, we see Schaech’s gorgeous bod and ass, there’s a Halloween party, and the soundtrack is an amazing array of rip-offs of more popular music of the day, including an Enigma thief during all the sex scenes.

Near the end there’s an absurdly melodramatic segment in which the art teacher’s wife invites Alyssa and Schaech over for a holiday dinner and the shit hits the fan.

And all of a sudden the teacher becomes a psycho stalker in like the last 15 minutes. Ridiculous, yet so awesomely 90s direct-to-video.

POISON IVY: THE NEW SEDUCTION (1997)

Amazingly, part 3 is essentially a direct sequel to the original film that sneakily includes a mini prequel to Ivy’s story.

That is part of what also makes it a better movie than part 2. Also making it better is that it’s only 94 minutes long.

It stars a young, sizzling hot Jaime Pressly as the main psycho girl. She goes to live with a childhood friend for a while, whose father is Michael Des Barres, and whose maid is Susan Tyrrell. Yep, this one rox the cult film cast.

Soon Pressly is messing with the minds of the family, seducing the father, seducing the childhood friend’s boyfriend…and going more and more insane as the movie progresses. She even gets into dominatrix mode before all is said and done.

Sure there’s sexy stuff, but the film eventually brings us classic 90s thriller clichés, like no gore, body reveals, a chase, and a final cat fight between the two girls. Not to mention, the final scene is totally a throwback to the end of the original film.