The problem with movies is usually that once they’re over, they’re over. People will want more action/drama/romance with the same characters, or at least the same universe. But there's just the one film. So, whether the creator gets on board or not, the studio will make a sequel either way.
However, some follow-up films did more than just retrace their steps for easy box office money. They changed the formula so much that they were in another world from their first film. For some films, it became part of their appeal. While others were completely incomprehensible. Here are just a few of these surreal sequels.
9 Exorcist 2: The Heretic
How could there be a sequel to The Exorcist? The film had a rather definitive ending. But Exorcist 2: The Heretic finds a way, as Richard Burton’s Father Lamont investigates what happened to the first film’s Father Merrin and the seemingly recovered Regan. The film does add to the lore of Pazuzu, the main demon of the series.
It also gave viewers James Earl Jones in traditional African garb roaring like a lion against a swarm of locusts. There are also plot points about Regan and Kokumo (Jones’ character) being psychics, Pazuzu trying to seduce Lamont with a Regan doppelganger, and Father Merrin coming back in a vision to Lamont. The film was panned heavily on release, and it hasn’t gotten better with age.
8 Highlander 2: The Quickening
Urban legend says that Highlander’s original creator was given a copy of Highlander 2: The Quickening’s script, and he refused to even touch it. Once their partner finally mentioned it involved Connor MacLeod in space, he threw it out through his window. It turns out Connor and his mentor Ramirez were aliens from the planet Zeist sentenced to immortal life on Earth without their memories.
MacLeod used the ‘Gift’ he got in the first film to cover the Earth in a shield that caused an eternal night. So, he and a revived Ramirez have to shut it off to let the sun back in, while avoiding the evil Zeistian General Katana. People have tried to re-cut the film to make it comprehendible, like replacing mentions of Zeist with ‘the past’, but unfortunately, there’s no fixing this film. There should only have been one.
7 Halloween 3: Season of the Witch
The Halloween franchise was intended to be an anthology of different horror stories, of which Michael Myers was just one tale. So, Halloween 3 has nothing to do with him or anyone else from the prior 2 films. Instead, it’s about an alcoholic doctor, Daniel Challis investigating some suspicious deaths and their connection to the Silver Shamrock Novelties company.
He learns the company’s chairman, Conal Cochran, is planning on sacrificing children during Samhain by playing a broadcast on TV. Any child wearing his company’s Halloween masks during the broadcast will be killed by a hidden microchip, reducing their head to a mass of bugs and snakes. The film was so hated at the time that the next one brought Myers back for good. However, Halloween 3 has had a reappraisal over the years and has become a cult favorite in its own right.
6 Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
Scream sparked a boom in slasher films for its meta take on the genre, as it called out the hallmarks of the genre (don’t go out alone, and don’t say “I’ll be right back”), and quips about horror trivia (Jason wasn’t the killer in the first Friday the 13th film). But it wasn't director Wes Craven's first experiment with postmodern horror. That would be 1994’s Wes Craven's New Nightmare.
It's the seventh installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, except all the previous films were just that: films. Actors Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, and Robert Englund play themselves as they’re terrorized by the ‘real’ Freddy Krueger. The world of the films is now merging with reality, and Freddy wants to cement that by going after Langenkamp's son Dylan. Maybe it was a little too meta, as it didn’t catch on so well.
5 Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Speaking of meta, the original Gremlins caught on by combining horror with comedy. The titular Gremlins were gross and deadly enough to send chills, but their antics were also pretty funny. It made for a nice, dark antidote to the saccharine taste of the Christmas season. Gremlins 2: The New Batch switched things up by leaning more on the comedy than the horror.
There is a plot about Gizmo the Mogwai being rescued from a testing facility in a high-rise building, and accidentally producing a new batch of gremlins. But the film is more about meta-humor. Like jokes about not feeding Gizmo after midnight (“What if one of them eats something at 11 o’clock, but then he gets something stuck in his teeth?”), and plenty of gag cameos from Leonard Maltin, Hulk Hogan, and the Looney Tunes among others.
4 Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
Star Trek 4 is one of the more beloved films in the series. It was funny to see the crew of the Enterprise get around (then) modern-day San Francisco, be it dealing with the comparatively low-tech of the day (Dr. McCoy having a conniption over the state of medicine) or old school customs like “exact change” on buses.
However, it was still about a space probe inadvertently destroying the Earth because it was looking for some humpback whales to talk to. The crew has to go back in time, take a few of the surviving ones from captivity in the 20th Century, and bring them back to the future to chat to the probe and make it leave. Maybe Star Trek: Picard or Star Trek: The Lower Decks could do the same for other endangered species.
3 Escape From The Planet Of The Apes
The big twist behind the original Planet of the Apes was that it was Earth all along. Its original sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, then blew the whole thing up. The third film, Escape, one-upped that by inverting the premise. Instead of following one person among apes, it follows three apes among people.
Apes Cornelius, Zira, and Dr. Milo flee their planet, go through a time warp, and end up on Earth in 1973. At first, they’re treated as science experiments, but then become celebrities as the scientists try to learn how the Apes would take over the planet in the future. Things get worse when Zira becomes pregnant, and the apes try to protect themselves before the government gets them.
2 Godzilla Vs Hedorah
Of all of Godzilla’s foes over the past few decades, Hedorah (aka the Smog Monster) is still one of the weirdest. It’s a giant glob of pollution that can kill people from the sky with a silent but deadly gas attack or melt them to the bones with its gloopy secretions. But Hedorah isn’t the weirdest part of the film.
There’s the weird intro song that, whether in English or Japanese, laments pollution by name-checking deadly elements like strontium. There are random hippy parties with funky color filters, weird trumpet music, and Godzilla flying through the air by curling up and breathing fire really hard. The ending teases a Hedorah comeback, but the film's reception led Toho Studios to skip that idea entirely.
1 Shock Treatment
Shock Treatment isn’t strictly a sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Its leads are supposed to be the same Brad and Janet, albeit now played by different actors. While Richard O’Brien and Patricia Quinn return from Rocky Horror as different characters.
It’s about Brad and Janet, now married, moving to a town controlled entirely by Farley Flowers and his TV studio. He puts the pair through a variety of odd TV shows, like a mental hospital-themed soap opera called ‘Dentonvale’ or being turned into a singer. Some critics said it was ahead of its time in satirizing what would become reality TV. But while people debate if it’s a sequel or not, most of them are sure it’s not an equal to its rocking musical forebear.