First and foremost I need you, the reader, to trust me on this journey of bad movies.
The first franchise I would like to venture to is the Police Academy movies. How can we explain the awesomeness other than: Lets stay in Metro City for hella years and work our way to giving a blow job to the 'dean' of the academy, stop a motorbykle gang, recruit the leader of the gang to be a cop, travel to Miami and stop the mob's jewel thieves, then make it back home in less then seven movies? Well, after all that... lets go to Russia! Number seven take place in Moscow.
Enough said. They didn't even give it a number... Shame, Shame...
So since Moscow is a short jump... especially in the early 90's, I will take you on a few short journeys closer to home. First is to the jungle (very close to everywhere in California...). I love the hell out of some Predator. Arnold, alien, weird Chinese languages... all there. Then, as sequels go... Danny Glover shows up. Sure, sounds good, right? I would love to kick some ass with Danny Glover... Only problem is that, with all action movies in the 90's they need to start a war on DRUGS. If you have had the pleasure of this movie... then you remember the addition of the Colombian druggies. Fucking really? Below picture has nothing to do with Predator 2... only as a joke against Arnold the the movie...
For the drugs!!!!
Enough of making fun of Arnold. How about Sly? If you were to sit down and really, really watch the first Rambo movie, you'd probably enjoy it. A nice romp of man vs. asshole sheriff. In all actuality this is a pretty good movie of Vietnam vet vs. assholes. Assholes being Brian Dennehey and that cop that can't keep his glasses on in CSI Miami.
My glasses just fall off...
But no... that first one was, of course, awesome. But the sequels got fucking shitty. Almost like a time warp, back in time, as the story goes to Sly fighting Asian captors, and all sorts of bad guys. By the way... a bow that shoots grenade tipped arrows? Badass. Like something out of a child's mind.
Just like GI Joe fights.
Army of... YOUR MIND.
You forgot "It Runs in the Family", which may not actually be a sequel, but I claim it is. And I don't like Charles Grodin so much.
ReplyDeleteAnd aren't we all just waiting for "Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD 2" with baited breath? We almost got it in 2006, under the title "Sgt. Kabukiman and the Lesbians of Bonejack High". They started filming, but never finished.
Nice collection, though, brother. For some reason I think Predator 2 is underrated. Maybe because Danny Glover manages to cut the forearm of the alien off to stop the self-destruct mechanism, and he's just a jerk cop going about his business. I haven't seen it formaybe 20 years, though.
Holy shit. How many franchises are there where the sequels ever measure up to the originals? I think you can actually count them on a couple of fingers. "T2" is badass and you obviously have the cream of the crop in "The Godfather" epics. Why doesn't it ever seem like anybody's heart is ever in the sequel? Shitty sequels? How about "Ghostbusters"? How about "Tremors"? How's that for a couple of shitty ones?
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are franchises that keep getting made. James Bond, Superman, "Star Trek," the X-Men. Batman? The thing they all have in common is a certain unevenness in the sequels. Keep doing it often enough and you might come up with some decent products.
My movie experience is pretty limited. But it didn't stop me from watching once again the first horror movie I ever saw. Honestly, it kept this little boy up all night (or what felt like all night). It was Howard Hawks's "The Thing" (1951), which is actually not too bad of a movie, and also not very scary, now that I'm (gulp) ... a little older. Dunno if you've seen it, but now on TCM it goes by the name "The Thing ... From Another World." Cool, snappy dialog, a bit of charged history between Kenneth Tobey and Margaret Sheridan, and very cool shots of an Air Force DC-3 flying, taking off, and landing in Arctic conditions.
Ol' Pops says Check it Out.