The 25 worst movie sequels of all time
The law of diminishing returns is enforced on our ranking of dubious follow-up films including Exorcist II: The Heretic, Grease 2, and Batman & Robin
Film Features Rick Rosenthal
In 1997’s Scream 2, self-proclaimed film geek Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) rants about sequels in his college film class. “Sequels suck! By definition alone they’re inferior films,” he says. His classmates then struggle to think of a sequel that surpassed the original before finally settling on The Godfather Part II.
Although Scream 2 is a pretty solid follow-up to Wes Craven’s Scream, Randy isn’t wrong about the suck factor of most sequels. For every Scream 2, The Godfather Part II, or The Dark Knight, we have Exorcist II: The Heretic, Grease 2, Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning, Jaws: The Revenge, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Basic Instinct 2, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Batman & Robin, and hundreds more shoddy sequels.
As My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 (statistically speaking, shouldn’t there be a big fat Greek divorce in there somewhere?) hits theaters, we’re ranking the sequels that not only don’t live up to the original, but are such a step down in quality that their failure is legendary. Sure, you can argue that some of the cringy sequels on this list are golden turkeys or camp classics that have a so-bad-they’re-good entertainment value, and that’s legit—you do you. But they still suck and are inferior films, just like Randy said. What is the one god-awful sequel to rule them all? Let the countdown begin!
241 Comments
Very good list, hard to argue with, As much as I liked looking at a then young Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2 when I was a teenage boy. Wow that movie sucked.
I made the mistake of seeing Grease 2 before seeing Grease. As a result, I hate them both.
It’s actually pretty possible to hate Grease without seeing Grease 2 first.“Hate” might be a pretty strong word since I thought some of it was entertaining, but even at 12 years of age I thought it was bad bad bad.Danny giving change a shot to try to impress Sandy didn’t feel like whoring himself out like it does with Sandy changes at the end.
Yeah, don’t like the film itself, but the soundtrack slaps.
I will give Grease this: “Beauty School Dropout” is a great number.
“Danny giving change a shot to try to impress Sandy didn’t feel like whoring himself out like it does with Sandy changes at the end.”And I’ll tell you why. He legit improved himself, not just changed himself. He learned to dedicate himself to something and become good at it. He still remained 100% who he was, though. So much so that no one even knew he was running track and stuff.Meanwhile, Sandy just put on some sexy clothes. And for what? Danny liked her the way she was. He had even apologized for dumping her at the dance.(That said I still love the movie, obviously. But, you know, problematic.)
I still remember Mad Magazine’s “Grease” parody.“Sandy, you’ve turned from a dull, boring virgin into a dull, boring slut!”
Wwell-reasoned. Thanks!
Stutter was not intentional; Kinja wouldn’t let me log in fast enough to edit.
AND. When Sandy did appear after her ghastly makeover, she legit looked at least 10 years older. I mean, somehow, deep lines seemed to appear at either side of her mouth after her transformation. And she was literally the only one who didn’t need a stretch of the imagination to buy as a real teenager!! Ironic that Olivia Newton-John always said that she thought she only looked good in the movie as old, student fun-fair Sandy.
She definitely managed to look even older than Stockard Channing, who legit looked even older than her real 33 years. That styling department…yeesh.It’s just frustrating because EVERYONE liked her the way she was. And there was no indication that she wasn’t happy with how she was. She was a perfectly fine, normal kid who was well-liked even by the most popular kids. There was literally no reason for her to change. It didn’t serve the story at all.
I saw “Crocodile Dundee 2″ in the theaters! And still have never seen the original.
I was forced to watch Grease during school multiple times as a child, once on a long bus trip with no hope of escape. It’s ok to hate it. Hearing any Grease song (especially the godforsaken medley) gives me violent, horrific flashbacks.
This is mostly a good list, but Highlander 2 is a pretty glaring omission. I can’t think of a worse sequel than that.
Especially since it’s referenced under another blurb AND gave us the ever-popular Movie II: The [BLANK]ening meme.
Its omission invalidates the list. Highlander 2 is THE bad sequel. It’s like having a list of Coca-Cola’s most popular products and leaving off Coca-Cola.
Came here to either say this or make sure somebody else had.
Yup.
Yeah, it’s a shame that the producers didn’t follow their own rules.
Highlander II does at least have the distinction of being so fucking absurd that it has some camp value. Plus you do have Michael Ironside tearing it up, probably the only guy who could follow Clancy Brown.
BUT….it was truly horrible. It took the original, a cult classic, and wiped its ass with it and still somehow got Sean Connery to show up. I paid money to see it in the theater and have never seen it since and never really want to.
Oh I mean it’s a fucking mess, but there’s something fascinating about how much of an insane mess it is.
It’s batshit crazy and reminds me of the Key and Peele sketch about writing Gremlins 2.
“HI.”
You go to your room and think about what you just said.
Highlander 2 has that rare quality of not just being bad, but making its predecessor less rewatchable.
In the “wait there are aliens now?” category, you’ve just reminded me of the dogshit that was labelled “Meatballs 2″.
I was lucky enough to see an earlier version of Highlander 2 which had all the parts in the originally intended order courtesy of a bootleg video rented to me in Sri Lanka from a store that turned out to be owned by my dad’s cousin.
At least Highlander II is bizarre and ridiculous and has Virginia Madsen.
I watched the original Highlander at far too young an age (seriously, I was five years old) and absolutely loved it. Remember making my Dad rent the sequel and it just confusing the absolute hell out of me. It’s genuinely the first movie I ever felt hate for.Mind-blowingly awful.
That is because that movie was NEVER MADE.Does not exist. You say you saw it? In a theater? No, you didn’t. They never made a sequel.(sticks fingers in ears and makes nyah-nyah noises)
Yeah Highlander II is THE worst sequel of all time. I saw it in the theater and watched with utter disbelief. It might be the worst movie I ever saw in a theater.
Highlander II was one of the first movies to come into my head. Even a young Virginia Madsen couldn’t save it.
They could have had any of the Highlander sequels on here.
Scary Movie 5 is the point where you think the movies got bad?
“Randy Quaid, the latter of whom is a red flag in most any movie”By “a red flag” did you mean “the best part”?
Exactly. I couldn’t believe that when I read it.
I guess it could be said that he’s the best part of a lot of crap. But I don’t think it’s his fault that the crap is crap.
Danny Trejo and Peter Stormare are actors I like watching, but their presence is usually a sign that the movie itself is dogshit.
But man are they not wrong about Caddyshack II. I remember my mouth just hanging open in disbelief the whole time. It took Caddyshack’s gleeful sendup of upperclass snobbery and extrapolated it to “no one should be allowed to enjoy nicer things than I do, ever!” I have to think Chevy Chase looked around after a couple of days of filming and wondered what the hell he’d signed up for.
I can’t say I remember a single thing about that movie, other than it being terrible.
I’m with you on that.
To be clear, I take no issue with Caddyshack II being on the list. Just the callout against Randy.
In fairness, that sense of wonder is also experienced by anyone who signs up for a project featuring Chevy Chase after a while.
Caddyshack 2, though, has one funny line, though it’s delivered by Robert Stack in a way that isn’t actually even a little bit funny.But when Stack is hiring a weird lunatic played by Dan Aykroyd to get rid of Jackie Mason’s character, Aykroyd says, “with extreme prejudice?” and Stack says, “No, we tried extreme prejudice, that didn’t work.”
I mean, it’s funny on paper.
It has two funny lines—I’ve always enjoyed this exchange, between Mason and Stack:“My mother was half English, half German, half Scottish.”
“That’s three halves.”
“She was a big woman.”
Ha! It’s a hidden gem!
They even screwed up the gopher, somehow. It had been an antagonist helping drive a subplot forward; it became a zany mascot for marketing purposes.
A red flag. He should’ve been a deterrent for seeing The Last Picture Show, The Last Detail, Brokeback Mountain….
That is 100% a response to Randy Quaid now being a batshit crazy QAnon moron. Fact is, over the years he was great in a lot of movies, some good, some not.
Unironically, he’s great in The Wraith. Shame he’s insane
Off the top of my head – Midnight Express, The Last Detail, Brokeback Mountain…
He’s a rl lunatic now but he improved every movie he was in. He was so good.
Blair Witch 2 is most notable for the commentary track where the director explains how the studio reedited his film against his wishes. It is a great bitter experience.
GoodBadFlicks does a great breakdown of what went wrong with that movie, and how we could have gotten something much better.
This is a movie I demand be on all ‘worst of’ lists.
I give movies a wide berth when I see them in the theater. While I’m in there, I try to put myself in a headspace to enjoy the film no matter what and I’m usually successful even if I realize soon after that it was terrible.Blair Witch 2 is one of those rare films (The Rise of Skywalker is another) where I sat there the whole time and got progressively more irritated by how straight-up goddamn terrible it was.
“I give movies a wide berth when I see them in the theater.”
This is not a sentence that means anything in English.
You can’t give a movie a wide berth AND see it.
Glad to see AVPR on this list. What a terrible movie. It was bad AND poorly made. Couldn’t see shit, and turned the Aliens and Predators into nothing more than B-movie slasher villains. Had none of the spirit of either franchise. People hate on AVP but it at least somewhat stayed true to the vision of the movies that preceded it.
It’s the only movie I have ever walked out of. I remember two characters making some completely unfathomable decision early on in the film to… climb down into a sewer for some fucking reason I think? And it just got stupider and stupider until I stood up, walked out, went straight to the bar and necked four pints, waiting for my friends to come out of the screening.
“Couldn’t see shit, and turned the Aliens and Predators into nothing more than B-movie slasher villains.”
If you don’t like Predators as slasher movie villains you should probably stop watching Predator movies.
Of the ones on this list that I’ve seen, I found them all functionally watchable (Caddyshack 2, Blair Witch 2, Friday the 13th Part 5, Staying Alive and Alien vs Predator 2: Requiem)Also, AvP 2: Requiem gave us the Wolf, about the only Predator film which showed a predator that was competent at their job.
How was Wolf competent? He ends up using the same trick every other Predator ends up using – blow everything up.
Well duh…
Friday the 13th Part V does have some problems beyond the twist at the end (which, yeah, isn’t done well) but it’s not horrible either, easily not the worst of the series. Jason Goes to Hell exists after all.
“but it’s not horrible either, easily not the worst of the series.”
In fact, I think it’s top 3 or 4 in the series.
I’m not going to argue that Grease II is an overlooked gem or that it isn’t a large downgrade from the original, but it isn’t a bad film either. Certainly better than most of the others on the list. The whole secret identity “Cool Rider” subplot is a bit silly, but at least they tried something a little bit different than just a straight-up repeat or gender swap of the bad boy/good girl dynamic from the first Grease.
Story time: as a kid growing up in semi-rural Texas my neighborhood finally got wired for cable around 1982 or 83. My parents were so excited they splurged and added HBO to the package.Two of the first shows I remember watching with my Mom were Grease 2 and The Who’s Final Concert from Toronto. They didn’t have the programming they do now, of course, so movies got played a lot, and we’d “hate-watch” (we both secretly enjoyed it) G2 every time it was on. I seem to recall we weren’t especially impressed by Michelle Pfeiffer (whatever happened to her) but had a good feeling Adrian Zmed was going places.
And thank goodness I was able to see The Who’s last show since they never, ever, ever, ever toured again. /s
“but it isn’t a bad film either”It’s an embarrassingly bad film.
If it was retooled as a standalone movie rather than having to live up to the Grease name, it could have worked. As a sequel to one of the most successful movie musicals since “Singin’ in the Rain,” it’s crap.
The double entendres in the music are ridiculous, but I do love them “Let’s Do It for Our Country” and “Reproduction” are so ridiculous yet enjoyable.Cool Rider is a bop, though.
Even as a kid, I knew those songs were about sex.
I’ll never forget the massive letdown that is AV Club: The Kinja Years.
Who could have imagined that we’d ever have nostalgic memories of how good AV Club: Disqus Displeasure was?
What, you don’t appreciate a low effort listicle?A listicle that thinks Friday the 13th Part VII comes after Friday the 13th Part V? A listicle that randomly throws in low budget straight to video and even TV movies? Something that would require replacing most of the films on the list if the list was aware of films like “The Jerk Too” or “Zapped Again”? (Possibly all 7 Howling sequels, even the one released in theaters, but certainly Howling: New Moon Rising)?A listicle that talks about how Dumb and Dumberer might have worked with Carey and Daniels without acknowledging the existence of Dumb and Dumber T?
A listicle which looks at all the sequels ever made and thinks that The Exorcist II, a terribly misguided and nonsensical film which still has some talent involved, is worse than idiotic theatrically released trash fires like AvP:R?
A listicle which largely reposts stuff they searched up on the internet without sitting through all the films? “If you thought the laughable 3D effects in Jaws 3-D were as low as the shark-movie franchise started by Steven Spielberg could sink” is something you say watching clips of Jaws 3D. If you actually watch the movie, you see how boring it is and you might just put it well above Jaws: The Revenge, a dumb movie that at least feels like it’s going somewhere.
I don’t see the problem. It’s great content. It has letters and words and pictures and fills 25 slides. What more should we expect? Something new or interesting?
I’m sorry, the convenience of seeing everything you listed in one place is too much for me. Could you change your post to slides?
You sound like you’re just upset that the listicle isn’t called “Kyle Olson’s Personal Choices For Worst Sequels Of All Time Featuring An Inexplicable Attempt At Defending Jaws The Revenge.”
I’m sorry, but no, Jaws 3-D does not suffer from the absolute dead stop that occurs in Jaws the Revenge as soon as the characters arrive in the Bahamas. There’s this whole stretch of scenes where nothing happens, it’s supposed to be character development, but it’s all just filler.
I haven’t seen a lot of these because… well, I knew better, but a few seem odd here considering other things exist. Like say, Highlander 2: The Quickening. I mean reallly….how is that not on this list, on this site of all places? Or Star Trek V: The Final Frontier?I saw Staying Alive for the first time just recently after hearing it trashed for 40 years since it came out. It was fine. I won’t watch it again. But it made sense as a sequel, and I’ve seen far, far worse shit in my life.
Star Trek V is unjustly maligned.
Ooh I just watched Star Trek V the other day. Incredibly terrible movie! I want to pick it apart here, but have other things to do with my life.
Gah, there was so much dumb shit in that movie. I guess Shatner looked at the success of the previous film and figured he should insert humor and wacky hijinks, but pretty much all of them fall flat.Scotty bonking his head on the bulkhead, Sulu and Chekov getting lost and that whole bit, the rocket boot thing with impossibly high deck numbers, hell, he even turned the Sybok reveal into a bit. The list goes on and on. Shatner likes to blame a lot of the film’s problems on the small budget making it impossible to realize his vision, but while that is a problem it’s far from the biggest one. Why were Scotty and Uhura banging all of a sudden?! Why was Uhura doing a naked fan dance as a distraction?!I think the core story had a lot of potential, but the execution is so very, very bad.
It’s tempting to blame it all on Shatner but really the film had bigger problems. It was affected by the WGA strike, ILM weren’t available this time because they were busy with Indiana Jones, and really the premise has issues- if your hook is “the crew of the Enterprise meets God”, well obviously it’s not really going to be God so there has to be some cop out somewhere.
if your hook is “the crew of the Enterprise meets God”, well obviously it’s not really going to be God so there has to be some cop out somewhere. Does there, though? The core idea of people worshipping something they think is a god but is something much more mundane (a powerful alien, an out-of-control computer, an old man hiding behind a curtain) has been done and done well forever, including on Star Trek.It all comes down to how that concept is executed; in this film, the characters seem to largely take the idea at face value; given Kirk’s personal experience with false gods, it seems like it would be much more logical for him to try to figure out what they’re really facing as well as getting his friends out from under the control of the cult leader that has them in his thrall.Really, the fact that the ending is kind of a cop-out was a self-inflicted blow because of the way that core premise was approached.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier holds a special place in my heart as I was only 8 when it came out. I have not re-watched it is years.
Poltergeist III was awesome. Also, the other dumb & dumber sequel (dumb and dumber to) belongs on this list. That’s the one starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. Awful sequel.
Right? Why did they go with the PREquel when there’s a perfectly awful sequel right there?
Blair Witch 2 and Exorcist 2 are both getting a lot of critical re-appraisal lately. The former got a fan re-edit that tries to remove a lot of the studio meddling.
You guys just rehashing Nathan Rabin’s old work now?
You gotta have something to feed to the AI. Might as well be Rabin.
This list is missing The Net 2.0, which is bad and pretty much entirely disconnected from the original aside from the director being the son of the director of The Net.Also, New Line Cinema’s most successful movie of 1992 (!) has a sequel. That’s right, Lawnmower Man 2 is a thing which swapped in Matt Frewer for Jeff Fahey, Patrick Bergen for Pierce Brosnan, and brought back a slightly older Austin O’Brien to be the hacker kid required of 90s computer movies. The first one was bad. This one was TRULY TERRIBLE, but I rented it anyway because Max Headroom himself was going back into cyberspace! He could not save this movie though.
After seeing the original I wasn’t going to get fooled again. I’d read the short story Lawnmower Man was named after (because you sure can’t say the movie was based on it) out of sheer curiosity how they’d turn an eight-page story into a feature film.
Look at the mileage they’ve gotten out of Children Of The Corn!
Including a 2023 reboot!
My first Hollywood credit is on “Children of the Corn V”, I’m proud to say.
No Children Of The Corn 3, that one. But it might be the second best Children Of The Corn movie.
Aw, that’s actually very nice to hear.6 was a complete mess, but a lot of fun to work on, and some fans enjoyed it. (I loved getting John Franklin back, discovered Kari Skogland who’s had a great directing career, and Nancy Allen is an angel.)
Most of the movies that are “based on a work by Phillip K. Dick” are similarly based on a (often very short) short story. Total Recall? Short Story. Screamers? Short Story. Minority Report? Short Story. Paycheck? Short Story. Radio Free Albemuth? Short Story. The Adjustment Bureau? Short Story.Basically they take the central gimmick (paying for memories of a vacation rather than the vacation itself, technology allowing police to predict crimes before they happen, etc.) and create a plot with little else similar to the source material.
I knew that about Minority Report but had no idea Total Recall was a short story. Kudos to the screenwriters on that one. Speaking of which, do you think Quaid was indeed an operative or did they mind fuck him for purposes of the video with Cohagen?
The story was “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” first published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966. In the story it is directly said that he really was a secret agent, so if the text has authority, he is. You can find the story in a lot of collections such as the Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Volume 5 (a series that collects all several hundred stories he wrote over multiple volumes) or The Philip K. Dick Reader (which collects his most famous ones in one book).
Really, anything that got a theatrical release is probably out-worsted by a generation of unasked-for, barely-related DTV sequels.
Coke-addled studio exec: “Let’s bring back Austin O’Brien for LM2: The Hackening! He gave a hell of a performance in Last Action Hero, and was in no way a contributing factor for its box-office failure. He’s the new Eddie Furlong.”
I guess I’m one of the few that actually like AVP 2.
There was a Basic Instincts and Showgirls sequel that came out? I had no idea!
Any movie that was on HBO ad nauseum in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s holds a special place in my heart, and I’ve seen Caddyshack II more times than I care to admit.
I’m surprised that the awful Big Lebowski sequel didn’t make the list.Just try reading the plot summary of it on Wikipedia.
Marie explains that she makes loves with everyone and has had sex with thousands.Yeah, that’s rough.
That’s a spin-off. Doesn’t count.
It’s a weird movie, starting with the conception of the thing. I guess it was a passion project for Turturro, but the idea that his Jesus character could carry a spin-off which would be a more-or-less direct remake of a controversial/cult French film from the ‘70’s must’ve required an almost superhuman level of delusional faith in your convictions.
Shit. I never saw that or had any desire to see it.
Jon Voight and Charles In Charge star Scott Baio, four toddlers who can communicate with each other via baby talkThe most accurate line that has been published on this site for years.
“ Grease 2 is a divisive movie that—more than any other sequel on this list—has its devoted fans that will blow up the comments section right after this article posts”
It’s a good reminder of what sequels used to mean: a quick attempt by studios to cash in on a movie’s fame, usually by churning out a quick, repetitive sequel. Films where the sequel is actually good and tries to continue the story in a good way were relatively rare until the 2000s.
Speaking of quick, notice how many of these were years down the line after audiences had moved on (even if the originals had been well-received).
Pure brand cash-in. Sometimes they get the original actors back if the money is good enough, or the actors in question have expensive bills to pay.
Or in Caine’s case, a house to buy!
I just googled “Michael Caine house”, and I get it. That’s a great looking place in Oxfordshire.
But, in his case, he wasn’t an original actor lured back, just a guy looking to buy a house.
True. I remember (somewhat recently-ish) where there was so much ballyhoo in the Hollywood press about how sequels were under performing compared to the originals.Uh, yeah, that was always the point of sequels. They were basically guaranteed to do less business than the original.
Both Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi made considerably less money than Star Wars.
Very true, and that’s a big reason why The Godfather: Part II stood out so much. An earnestly made sequel was rare enough back then, a good one even rarer. A great one was almost unheard of.
“Titus has dreadlocks and is aggressively preoccupied with getting guests a boatload of weed.”Because there aren’t tons of weed dealers with dreadlocks? I have yet to meet a Greek person that even cares about the “appropriation” of dreads. People from all cultures have most likely had them in the past and now manage to live in the modern era without outrage about people having them now.
So something was bothering me about this list and I finally realised what it is. How is Wonder Woman 1984 not on this list?
Because it’s not nearly close to being one of the worst sequels ever?
Probably just needs time to age (curdle), thought it’s a pretty strong entry for such a recent film. 🙂
So a horror movie spoof that used movies like Insidious and Sinister as source material didn’t hit with audiences? Shocking.Oh, and Space Jam: Lebron gave MJ yet another thing to gloat over.
I remember thinking at the time of the original, could they have found a basketball player who would have given a worse performance than Jordan?Turns, out, why yes, just wait a few decades.
But he’s so well read!
Look Who’s Talking Too is pretty bad. I have the movie book in my store.
Grease 2? Yall knew what you were doing there. Grease 2 is fantastic and I suspect yall knew that already.
Not even reading this hack list because I see you’ve included Grease 2HOW DARE YOU
HOWDAREYOU
Ok I looked at the writeup and cracked up at the first sentence
It’s bad.
YOU’RE BAD
Also true.
I actually liked just how ridiculous Blair Witch 2 was, maybe because I hated the first one
I unironically love it. Watch it every year. I’m okay with people hating it, it’s completely different in tone from the first. Still love it though.
The Exorcist III, on the other hand, is a solid sequel. Skip II and go straight to III.
The Exorcist III straight up slaps.
The Exorcist III, on the other hand, is a solid sequel. Skip II and go straight to III Yep. Has the advantage of being also based on a William Peter Blatty book (Legion) which is an impressive novel (not as good as The Exorcist but very much worth reading). The detective character Kinderman features prominently in both and his observations about religion, good and evil are insightful and fun. (Kinderman was played by Lee J Cobb in The Exorcist, by George C Scott in Exorcist III.)
And it wasn’t the only time that Scott took over a role from Cobb. Cobb had played Juror #3 in the 1957 version of 12 Angry Men and Scott took over when they did a TV remake in 1997.
I no particular order…Short Circuit 2Blade 3Spiderman 3Indiana Jones TotCSYoung Guns 2Avatar 2 (avatar also sucked eggs. I said what I said)Cannonball Run 2Aliens 4Sandlot 2Shazam 2 (see avatar 2)
No hate love for Halloween Resurrection? Busta Rhymes doing Fistful of Yen-level karate noises? C’mon.
“trick or treat mother f#@KER”
My dad and I would just see any movie that was out at the time, so I’m one of the brave few that’s seen Speed 2 in theaters.
The thing that gets me about Speed 2 is that the stakes keep on changing, but not necessarily heightening. Instead of things getting progressively worse like in the first Speed, you go from “This is bad” to “This is also bad.”
Also, Willem Dafoe is trying to steal diamonds from the cruise line…so what does Jason Patric care? Why does he have to stop him? In the first movie, Dennis Hopper put the people on the bus in danger and forced Keanu Reeves to get involved. In Speed 2, the majority of passengers make it onto the lifeboats when shit goes down. Patric has no stake in this. He could’ve left with Sandra Bullock, and insurance would’ve covered the cruise line.
Some selected films that feature Randy Quaid:
Brokeback Mountain, The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz, The Last Detail, The Paper, Quick Change, Midnight Express…I could go on. In the 90s, I visited the AV Club every single day. Now I look in once a month or so, and always leave promising myself I’ll never come back.
You could go on, but you’d have to start listing all the shitty and/or forgettable movies he’s been in.
All this rage on behalf of a MAGA nutcase
Short Circuit 2 was pretty bad too.
Obviousness: The List
It’s shameful that an entertainment reporter would say randy quaid is a red flag for almost any movie he’s in.
I mean, I just took a look at his filmography on Wikipedia, and there’s not a lot of good stuff there.
also several stone classics
He has done some classics. No denying that.
can you identify 5 good movies from randy quaid’s filmography?
Probably, but likely they’d be movies like Brokeback Mountain, where he’s not a highlight.
last picture show, last detail, vacation and christmas vacation, kingpin and paper moon. to my mind all stone classics,
As one of likely only a few people on the face of the Earth to have seen even part of Showgirls 2 (and I include the cast, crew, and likely the director in that), I assure all of you that as bad as this blurb makes it sound, it’s actually far, far, far worse. The “filmed on a camcorder for a few hundred bucks” thing is not kidding.
I just watched the trailer, and if that movie made into theaters, something seriously was wrong in the industry.
God damn who green lit that.
I’m only finding out today that a Showgirls 2 exists, lol. And that subtitle!*chef’s kiss
Just step away from Grease 2. It’s better than the original!
Speed 2 doesn’t deserve to be included in this smug list
Is Superman IV the one where at the end Superman is in the Oval Office and apologizes to the President, saying he’ll “never let you down again?” That line always struck me as nationalistic propaganda beneath what Superman would think. What if the President was Donald J. Trump?
No, that was Superman II, where he gave up his powers for Lois and was completely oblivious to the three Kryptionian criminals conquering the U.S.
Thanks. It’s been at least a decade since I saw a Reeves’ Superman film.
I believe that line was specifically in Richard Lester’s Superman II, not in Richard Donner’s Superman II.And therein lies the tale…
Okay, first off ranking Exorcist II and Grease 2 below Jaws: The Revenge- a film in which for a stretch of 30 minutes absolutely nothing happens- is absurd. And you don’t even try to defend your rankings, there’s no actual critique of any of the films here. C’mon man if your feelings on these are so passionate at least put them down! Don’t rely on Mark Kermode!Anyway, Grease 2 is a fun little flick with some good songs, not as iconic as the original but there’s a certain sweetness to its story. Also Michelle Pfeiffer helps a lot. Exorcist II is, while nowhere near as technically accomplished as the original, way more conceptually fascinating- it’s downright poetic, full of symbols and surreal interweaving imagery. Flight, flying creatures, the madness of swarms/crowds, the “brushing of the wings” representing the influence of evil, “the good locust”, there’s a lot to unpack. Morricone’s score is also a boon and I found Blair’s performance really good. Like, you covered all the high profile badly received sequels but I’d rank either of those films well above Star Trek Nemesis or Men In Black II.
Star Trek Insurrection is so much worse than Nemesis.
“a film in which for a stretch of 30 minutes absolutely nothing happens”Nobody tell this guy about Satantango.
I’d like to point out that the original Friday the 13th had hardly any Jason Voorhees in it.
Hey, hey, hey! Spoilers! I got my ass chewed in 1984 for making the same remark to a group of my friends.
“I got my ass chewed in 1984″
I didn’t have my first sexual experience until 1987.
I stand by the opinion that B&R>BF. B&R went FULL ON bat-shit (pun intended) bananas cornball, and was all the more fun for it. Batman Forever however (ever ever ever) was kind of a weird mix of super serious with the Batman stuff but cornball with the goddawful villains. The tone is all over the place. At least Batman and Robin KNOWS what it is.
Only a few years ago when I watched a bit of Forever did I finally realize that Schumacher really, really wanted to do his spin on 60’s Batman – the lighting, the performances, the set dressing with lots of signage explaining what you’re looking at – but he was being constrained by studio expectations to keep the Burton tone and aesthetic going. He clearly got closer to his vision with B&R, and it’s equally as obvious that Warner didn’t know how or wasn’t prepared to sell this new, high-camp parody version of the series.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Batman & Robin in its entirety. Bits and pieces over the years that pretty much have added up to me seeing the whole thing though. It’s a bad movie that at least knows it’s bad.I saw Batman Forever when it came out and I was probably 14. At 14 you want to think it’s as cool as the Burton films, but some of the cracks were showing through even then (ie, the opening sequence that was lifted directly into a McDonalds commercial). Anyway, a friend and I watched it at a bar a couple weeks ago and kept shouting fuck this movie at the screen. It’s trash.
It’s not a new observation, but B&R is really unfairly maligned. It’s not a good movie by any stretch, but most people refused to take it on its own terms. It’s supposed to be stupid and ridiculous, the same way the 60s show is. Now, that might have been ill-advised and not at all what the public wanted or expected, but I don’t think the reaction entirely fair. If you enjoy the Adam West show, there’s no real reason you can’t enjoy B&R.
Exorcist 2 is quite an interesting film at least.
Yeah, decent list of awful sequels, but – where the hell is The Two Jakes? It sort of stands out, being so heavy with A-listers: It had Nicholson, Keitel, a script by Robert Towne… and quite a few years of anticipation after the arguably perfect Chinatown.And it was completely awful.
I think the weirdest part of the “Exorcist II” is that it’s followed by “Exorcist III,” which I think is actually one of the best sequels of all time (at least for one scene that I argue is the best jump scare of all time).
“(at least for one scene that I argue is the best jump scare of all time).”
It’s an amazing jump scare in the middle of a terrible movie.
If The Rise of Skywalker were an actual movie, it would be justly number one. I think it may be just a TikTok that got out of hand.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom MenaceStar Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the SithStar Wars Episode VII: The Force AwakensStar Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
EDIT: yes I guess the prequels are not technically sequels, but still ugh.
Nope: technically, and overwhelmingly in film contractual terms, prequels are a type and subset of sequel (it’s a derivative work being *made* afterwards, regardless of “when it is set”.)So you’re good to go, girl!
Well, episodes II and III are definitely sequels. (Which, like #I, I’ve only ever seen once, in the cinema, ‘cos of how shit they were).
You Star Wars fans sure are a contentious bunch.
I’m as casual a Star Wars viewer as it gets, and have enjoyed all of those to varying degrees… except Rise of Skywalker. I think a legitimate case could be made for it. I don’t even care about this IP and I felt bad that’s what fans were given as a finale. Episode 9 is a disappointment that transcends demographics.
There was a Showgirls 2?
How is the answer not Highlander 2 and how is this not on the list? The sequel is the most awful pile of garbage I have every seen even in comparison to the first which is not awesome.
I’m not even sure if there was a sequel to The Howling but if there was it sucked!
The one thing I’ll say about the Howling sequels is “Your sister is a werewolf” is an excellent subtitle.
I only saw Grease 2 for the first time a few years ago and I was truly and literally stunned at how bad it was. I wanted to die of secondhand embarrassment. It was just…awful. I thought there would be some campy fun because I knew that it had become a cult classic, but I have to conclude that the only people for whom this is a “classic” are the mentally deranged. The songs are bad. The acting is bad.* The plot is bad. It’s just bad.And poor Rex Manning. This ruined his whole damn career before it even got started!*Really need to drill down here because my goodness, how bad was the acting! The T-Birds in Grease were 40 years old, sure, but they looked and behaved reasonably tough and like a little high school gang. The Grease 2 T-Birds looked like music theater kids! Why? Because they were music theater kids! They cast boys who were good at dancing and singing (“good,” in airquotes, I should say), but not at all cool-looking or anything the characters called for. They all looked like they should have been stuffed in lockers.
Maxwell Caulfield was fairly successful in the 80s post-Grease 2. He was on Dynasty and The Colbys, which were pretty high profile in their day. The death of the primetime soap killed his career more than Grease 2.
Well that’s something. I’ve never heard of The Colbys, but my mom watched Dynasty. So there’s that! I’m glad he got some work. He was actually not a bad actor and did the best he could with that Grease 2 script.
Most of the actors made it out of Grease 2 relatively unscathed. I mean Michelle Pfeiffer obviously, but also Christopher McDonald (Shooter McGavin himself) has worked a lot and I can’t look at Pamela Adlon or watch King of the Hill without first thinking of Grease 2 . The others were less successful long-term, but had decent success in the 80s (or were already Judy Garland’s daughter).
At least he had Empire Records.
My theory (based on personal experience) is that the main contingent of Grease 2’s devoted fandom were kids who saw it repeatedly on cable in the 80s. And I mean young kids, not tweens or adolescents who were beginning to develop taste. To that young audience, Grease 2 is seemingly full of stuff that is “cool”. At that point, preference for Grease or Grease 2 comes down to which characters you like better. Even then, 6 year old me was absolutely enchanted by how beautiful Michelle Pfieffer was. Maxwell Caufield was like a motorcycle superhero with his secret identity schtick. It felt so much cooler than the first film, and cool in its own right. It was like a live action cartoon in retrospect. I admit my biases, and nostalgia is the greatest of them. Sometimes I rewatch this movie and I start to see how bad it is, but I wave off the realization and crank Cool Rider to the max. (Which I guess does make me deranged. Carry on)
Maxwell Caulfield was hot for sure, no arguing that. You might be onto something because I was like 41 when I first saw it so obviously none of it was cool to me. I just saw a bunch of also 4o-year-old dorks (the alleged T-Birds in Grease 2).
Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to (try) to watch Batman & Robin a year or so ago. I avoided it like the plague during its initial release due to horrible reviews and word of mouth.I got maybe ten minutes in. I say this without a whiff of hyperbole, but those ten minutes are easily among the most purely incompetent film making I’ve ever seen. Just staggering, stunningly awful on every single level: writing, directing, acting, production design, etc.I was expecting bad, but I didn’t realize how bad bad could be.
Oh, it gets worse. You gotta at least get to Bane!
I’ll take your word for it!
Yes, take his word. You will never get that time back. Better off having explosive diarrhea.
I mean, Troll 2 is not a sequel to Troll it’s just a terrible movie given that title for marketing purposes. AvP: Requiem is probably better than the first AvP, and Baby Geniuses 2 is just a sequel to a terrible movie that experiences normal diminishing returns.
Exorcist II isn’t that bad and it gave us another great score by the great Ennio Morricone. Tarantino would later recycle it for The Hateful Eight.
I will not have you disparage Friday the 13th part V! First it has a ton of copious nudity and killings, including the odd new wave girl. I like the stupid mystery of who the killer is as well. It’s like Halloween 3: it doesn’t have the main guy but it’s still pretty entertaining.
Damn you’re still gross
Grease 2 for me held up when it was released in 82. I enjoyed it almost as much as the original. I’d sing Cool Rider with my sister. Now many decades later it does not hold up. It’s laughably bad.
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer annoyed me because the entire twist relies on the characters and audience being dumb. At first it bugged me that the characters won a trip by giving the wrong answer to a geography question (saying that Rio was the capitol of Brazil instead of Brasilia). Then it bugged me that the people making the movie assumed I also wouldn’t know the correct answer, because otherwise it would be obvious that the trip was a trap. There are worse Friday the 13th sequels, Jason Takes Manhattan exists.
Um… it’s a slasher movie. Presumably you know that going into it. I don’t think you’re supposed to be surprised when it’s a trap. (I’ll totally give you that it’s annoying when the characters are made to be dumb, though).
Superman IV is better than Superman III, and I don’t think it’s particularly close. IV is a bad movie that has a good movie somewhere inside it, and at the very least it’s about Superman! III is just bafflingly embarrassing in almost every possible way, even moreso because it had twice the budget of IV.
Yes!
Poltergeist III is awful, but there’s a bit in it that always stuck with me where Carol Anne’s psychiatrist argues that she is somehow hypnotizing the people around her to experience her delusions (and even to perform physical actions meant to back them up). Which even by the standards of “horror movie guy who doesn’t know how wrong he is,” is utterly ridiculous to hear spoken aloud.But at the same time, I think it’d be a hell of a twist for a horror movie that wasn’t multiple films deep into a franchise.
several of these I have seen. most I have not seen. And I’m fine with that.shout out to Mario Van Peebles who only barely tries a Caribbean accent.
Ocean’s Twelve should be here. Anchorman 2 should be here. Otherwise pretty solid.
I think you got it right with Exorcist II being number one. I had the best time at the movies ever when I saw it opening day. There was a fair number of people there, maybe it was half full. It was obvious, even after just a few minutes of it, that it was a collossal turd. People began making comments like it was a live episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Every time “Pazuzu!” was said, everyone yelled it back, and laughed. Richard Burton looked like he had already died in it, and I was shocked to learn it was a few years after that when he actually died. The friend who went with me and I were sore for days from laughing at it, it was a great time at a very bad movie. I saw it again, but that audience just grumbled and a bunch of people walked out. The so called restored version put out a few years ago is missing some parts of it that were shown at least on the first days after released. The friend who went with me said he knew something was different about it, but neither one of us can remember what is missing.
The best part of this article is how many times they quoted Nathan Rabin. They hired new writers only to remind us the best ones have gone?
You lucky children. SPECIES II exists but has yet to touch your lives
Others have mentioned Star Trek V and Highlander II, but what about Godfather III?
Godfather III on its own isn’t nearly as bad on its own as something like Highlander II. I’m not going to say it’s good or anything, especially with Sofia Coppola dragging down every scene she’s in, but its biggest problem is how badly it pales in comparison to the first two films.The latest version (Coda) cleans up the narrative significantly and makes it a much more watchable film. The theatrical version’s plot was an absolute shambles.
It would be interesting to see the alternate universe Godfather III where Wynona Ryder played Mary to see if that could truly make a difference or if there was no saving it.
What?….NONE of the craptastic sequels to ‘Highlander’ made the list?There should have been only one!
Robert DeSalvo article? Ctrl-F “box office”1 of 10
Speed 2 very disappointed, without the real Jack!
I am recommending a criminal referral to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the sequel to Man of Steel. Snyder’s first movie was rocky, but salvageable. As a foundation for a new universe, they could still make it work. But whatever hope they had was squandered in BvS, which gets more wrong about its characters than just about any superhero movie ever, effectively killing the DCEU before the Justice League could even arrive, and costing Warner Bros an entire universe of potential.
Superman 4 has a special place in my heart because it was the one I saw first when I was like 7. Same with Grease 2, since young me saw it as essentially a superhero film. What can I say, young me liked superheroes.
Randy Quaid is crazy now, but he was hardly a red flag in The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, Paper Moon, The Last Detail, Bound for Glory, and Midnight Express. They’re some of the best movies of the 70’s, a decade that was crawling with great commercial films. He got nominated for an Oscar for The Last Detail! And he was great in Brokeback Mountain years later.
He was great in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
Maybe The Sting II was a con, and it didn’t really happen?
Staying Alive is just a dumb, shitty movie. It’s not packed with disco music!
Rise of Skywalker isn’t on this list, and that alone invalidates it.
Jaws 4 produced one of my favorite lines from a Roger Ebert review ever: I believe that the shark wants revenge against Mrs. Brody…what shark wouldn’t want revenge against the survivors of the men who killed it?
Highlander 2 should be #1 on any list like this.
Highlander 2, they became aliens
Is Exorcist II: The Heretic the one that features Patrick Ewing and Fabio as angels? It’s been quite some time since I last watched those films and I don’t intend to again.
No mention of the sequel to Rape Stove-The Stove That Rapes…
Rape Stove II-Rapin’ Hot
Blues Brothers 2000
Richard Jani did a whole stand up bit on Jaws: The Revenge.