The Sequels That Are Better Than The Original Xperiment

Oh, oh, oh. The few sequels that can be said to top the original films. The title that is always brought up when this is discussed seems to be The Godfather Part 2. You won't find that here - that one has tons of beautifully made individual moments, but seems seriously to lack focus. It almost feels like a work-print than a finished movie. And how can it possibly be better than the first one without Brando? Come on. But here are some other choices, many often mentioned when this topic is covered, and some not so much.

Quatermass 2
Beautifully tense and atmospheric sequel to the Hammer science fictioner, one of the early films that put the company towards a path of producing cinema of imagination (later Hammer scifi was mostly absent). The industrial facility which the aliens' base is an absolute knockout as a creepy milieu. Oddly, also the third installment, the fascinating Quatermass and the Pit beats the first part, the beautifully titled but merely watchable Quatermass Xperiment. The first sequel too was a pioneer in the titling department -- not many of 'em were numbered like that before the practice was popularized by... you guessed it, that darn Godfather Part 2. Behind-the-scenes stories of drunken lead Donlevy's (who plays Quatermass as the most tough guy gangster-like of scientists in all of cinema history) wig flying in the wind are legendary.

Brides of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, Taste the Blood of Dracula

And more Hammer...! The big three classic monster films the legendary company made in the late 1950's, Horror of Dracula, Curse of Frankenstein, and The Mummy, feel like prototypes - full of fabulous stuff, but still merely meat-missing skeletons. Perhaps because their function is laying the basic stuff out, these films seem to lack a true kind of individuality. Much more than Hammer's Frankenstein films, their Draculas are more than just autonomous flicks as part of a larger movie series, and thus can be counted (pun intended) as bona fide sequels - they at least have story continuity around the fate of the Dracula character, and even provide footage from the previous entries as prologues several times over (only a couple of Hammer's first Frankenstein movies bother with any kind of narrative continuity). First there's Brides of Dracula, the first sequel that actually lacks Christopher Lee's goo' ol' big D altogether, but features Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, plus beautifully atmospheric color images. Risen is a very solid entry, perhaps the single Hammer Dracula film that most holds together. The gory, brilliantly iconoclastic steak-to-the-heart -scene is very memorable. Taste brings a hysterical mood and an excitingly novel occult tones to the series, and makes Dracula some kind of twisted anti-hero. Dracula's grandly cinematic resurrection sequence is the single greatest moment in any Hammer film. And that baffling WhatTheHellJustHappened metaphysical climax! The follow-up Scars of Dracula has some memorable individual scenes, like the absolutely howlingly ridiculous opening showing Dracula coming back to (un)life, and the vicious stabbing scene that probably has no equivalent in any other Dracula film as to the count's unusually psychopathic behavior. Satanic Rites Of Dracula is an absolute let-down despite intriguing story elements -- it has that lame, apathy-like aura of lousy late Hammer films in it. The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires is slightly better, but fails truly using the exciting combination of martial arts and horror, and of extending the dimension of vampire myths from Europe to the Orient (there is totally unnecessary, badly tacked-on story content of Dracula as a prologue and epilogue, who's not even played by Lee).

The Mummy Returns
Continuing on the subject... sort of. This sequel which is a part of Stepher Sommers' project of converting classic Universal movie monsters into popcorn action adventures is far more watchable than oddly boring and un-energetic first one. There is also a couple of individual scenes that are actually memorable, while the first one had none. Don't agree? Well... I actually kinda liked Sommers' Van Helsing. Agree with THAT?

Empire Strikes Back
I don't think the original first Star Wars is that good, the story seems to drag, and the excitement just is not there sufficiently - or maybe I just don't like films that take place in the desert. On Empire, there is more of a sense of adventure, we care more about the characters, the nuggets of wisdom are more convincingly delivered, this time by Yoda. I myself was one of those fortunate who did not know the twist at the end prior to my first viewing.

Baby Cart at the River Styx
Another instance of a movie that maybe is an autonomous entry in a film series rather than an actual sequel per se. What, you don't see me mentioning Goldfinger here, do you? Oh... I just did. But I'll let this one slide anyway. The best in the entire fabulous Lone Wolf and Cub movie series and one of the greatest samurai/ronin pieces of cinema ever. Footage from this was mostly used to create the as-great-in-its-own-weird-way Roger Corman concoction Shogun Assassin.

The Bride of Frankenstein
The secret of Bride is that how it brings variety to the previously simple monster mayhem. Not only do you get some interesting narrative dimension by having a prologue with Mary Shelley narrating (played by Elsa Lanchester who nicely is revealed also to be playing the monsteress in the end), and having a new deliciously wicked character in the form of Dr Pretorius (the camp Ernest Thesinger). It's also quite astonishing how make-up expert Jack Pierce could design the landmark visage of the monster for the first film, and then create an equally memorable appearance for the monster's mate in the sequel -- both designs go utterly unmatched by any Frankenstein film since... though the monster design in the Branagh film was quite good, even if the film as a whole wasn't).

Batman Returns
The first Tim Burton Batman is a mess. The story is aloof, and lacking dramatically, Jack Nicholson has potential but is all over the place, and Kim Basinger is appalling. The production design and make-up are wonderful. The sequel is marginally better, though the narrative seems to have no central character - it at least isn't Batman, who's remarkably absent during the first thirty minutes. Taking the Penguin-runs-for-mayor plot from the 1960's television series, this one is darker and more tough than the first one, and continues the filmic tradition from Batman: The Movie of having multiple villains in the story. The casting is spot-on: even if Danny DeVito (playing the Penguin as a seedy sexual pervert), Christopher Walken and Michelle Pfeiffer are not even doing their utmost in their parts, who else can you images for those roles in this particular product? The Batman character is wonderfully lit.

The Testament of Dr Mabuse
Ah, our old friend is better than the first one, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, on just about every department, even though the original was not half bad itself. This very well might be Fritz Lang's greatest work - it is one of the greatest sequels ever without a doubt. Contains numerous stunning images! Great use of b/w and sound. Maybe a little self-consciously made, but so full of delights you can easily forgive and forget. Tough-as-nails picture, which is a beautiful genre hybrid: crime, horror, scifi, drama...



And now, what you've all waited for, folks. Possibly the greatest sequel ever. No, it ain't gonna be da Godfather. Instead the winner is:

Seul contre tous (I Stand Alone)
Yes, Gaspar Noe's shatteringly nasty CinemaScope experience is a sequel to his 40-minute Carne, which was excellent, but not close to the power of the feature-length sequel, which began as a project to expand Carne, but evolved into becoming its very own film. Noe's next film Irreversible can't be considered a third installment, even though the butcher character from the director's previous work makes a nice little cameo.



Honorable mentions:

Dawn of the Dead
Back to the Future 2
Desperado
Wayne's World 2
Naked Gun 2 1/2 & 33 1/3


Plus: Missing in Action 2: The Beginning
Well, I would have gladly included this flick, one of the best Chuck Norris films, and overall one of the diamonds in the Cannon Group b-action film library. Far better than the first Missing in Action, this one actually is not a sequel, but as the title implies, a prequel, showing colonel Braddock's back story of escaping from a POW camp in Vietnam, only verbally mentioned in the first film. The explosive third installment, a real true sequel this time though it rewrites the history of the previous ones a tiny bit, is also superior to the first.