Disclaimer : The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are those of Jamie Santamore and do not reflect the opinions of anyone else at Wicked Carnival Productions .
By : Jamie Santamore
Sequels are one of the things that interest me about film making and they interest me for many reasons. While they are important for continuing a story I think if you have too many sequels to a film the films, it's characters and it's story become overdone and simply don't work anymore .
This is what happened with 80's slasher movie franchises like Halloween, Friday The 13th and Especially A Nightmare On Elm Street . This week I spoke about the genius of Halloween II and Friday the 13th part 2 which both came out in 1981 on my Podcast The Maine Morgue .
I think they are a shining example of what a Slasher sequel should be because they follow the story of the original film very closely which is very important because after all a sequel is a continuation of the original story, right ?
Now All of the franchises that I've mentioned in this blog have seen their fair share of bad installments Halloween has Part III : Season of the witch and goes off the rails again with Resurrection, Friday The 13th has Part V : A New Beginning and Jason Goes To Hell A Nightmare On Elm Street has Freddy's Revenge, The Dream Child and Freddy's Dead The Final Nightmare .
I'm not saying they are all bad films but saying that these films in my opinion weren't what they could've been . Looking back on it now I really think that Friday The 13th is the best put together franchise in the slasher genre .
I think in many ways Friday The 13th is my favorite franchise over all because the story doesn't have alot of major changes to it unlike A Nightmare on Elm Street which went off the rails after the first film with Freddy become more funny then scary and that's not what I watch horror movies for, do I laugh at the movies ? of course I do but I'd rather be scared then laughing through an entire slasher movie .
Now don't flood my e-mail with hate mail because I said Friday The 13th is my favorite franchise overall because Halloween is still my favorite movie of all time in any genre . I think alot of mistakes were made in the Halloween franchise that ultimately led to it's downfall, I'm not saying Friday The 13th is a perfect because it's not in fact it's far from it but they made mistakes and learned from them and continued on, there has to be a reason it's the franchise that has the most installments in it, right ?
Halloween didn't make as many mistakes as A Nightmare On Elm Street did because if you watch the Halloween franchise in the correct order then the story makes alot more sense, I've talked about this before but I'll talk about it again, watch The Halloween franchise in this order .
Halloween, Halloween II, H20 (This is a perfect trilogy) Resurrection can be added if you want to see the end of the Michael / Laurie storyline, I don't usually watch that movie .
Halloween 4, 5, & 6 (this is what I call the Jaime Lloyd trilogy)
You can skip Resurrection and Season of the witch because they aren't really a part of these two trilogies . I'm telling you if you watch the movies in this order and you will look at the franchise very differently .
A Nightmare On Elm Street really only took the first film seriously and then went too far down the comedy road and really didn't recover until A New Nightmare . Part 2 Freddy's Revenge was good but there was way too much humor in spots and they just left Nancy hanging from the original film, I mean sure they mentioned that she went crazy to explain why she wasn't in the movie only to have her comeback and be killed off in Part 3 which was a great movie (My wife's favorite other then the original) Parts 4 - 6 were just a series of jokes that really killed the franchise for me atleast .
Friday The 13th really only has one snag that being Jason Goes To Hell : The Final Friday . I can handle the no Jason in part V : A New Beginning alot easier then the body swapping horseshit they fed us in JGTH .
When I was writing the script for Sins of Man very early in the process I thought that I would make it a stand alone or one off film with no plans to do a sequel but then I thought about the ways I could write a sequel to make it a two part story and then during the writing of the sequel I thought I could make it a trilogy so I wrote the three scripts (The first drafts anyway) and decided then and their I would not even write notes for a possible Sins of Man IV because I don't think I will ever make Sins of Man IV not because I couldn't but because I think the trilogy is enough . I have said that I would write a part IV if it were the first part of another trilogy . I don't want to keep going back to Sins of Man when I have so many other ideas that I want to put out there .
Sequels for me from a company stand point will be something we think about before we green light a bunch of them and water down the franchises with films that don't make sense to the original concept .
STAY HUMBLE, STAY HUNGRY MY FRIENDS :)
This is what happened with 80's slasher movie franchises like Halloween, Friday The 13th and Especially A Nightmare On Elm Street . This week I spoke about the genius of Halloween II and Friday the 13th part 2 which both came out in 1981 on my Podcast The Maine Morgue .
I think they are a shining example of what a Slasher sequel should be because they follow the story of the original film very closely which is very important because after all a sequel is a continuation of the original story, right ?
Now All of the franchises that I've mentioned in this blog have seen their fair share of bad installments Halloween has Part III : Season of the witch and goes off the rails again with Resurrection, Friday The 13th has Part V : A New Beginning and Jason Goes To Hell A Nightmare On Elm Street has Freddy's Revenge, The Dream Child and Freddy's Dead The Final Nightmare .
I'm not saying they are all bad films but saying that these films in my opinion weren't what they could've been . Looking back on it now I really think that Friday The 13th is the best put together franchise in the slasher genre .
I think in many ways Friday The 13th is my favorite franchise over all because the story doesn't have alot of major changes to it unlike A Nightmare on Elm Street which went off the rails after the first film with Freddy become more funny then scary and that's not what I watch horror movies for, do I laugh at the movies ? of course I do but I'd rather be scared then laughing through an entire slasher movie .
Now don't flood my e-mail with hate mail because I said Friday The 13th is my favorite franchise overall because Halloween is still my favorite movie of all time in any genre . I think alot of mistakes were made in the Halloween franchise that ultimately led to it's downfall, I'm not saying Friday The 13th is a perfect because it's not in fact it's far from it but they made mistakes and learned from them and continued on, there has to be a reason it's the franchise that has the most installments in it, right ?
Halloween didn't make as many mistakes as A Nightmare On Elm Street did because if you watch the Halloween franchise in the correct order then the story makes alot more sense, I've talked about this before but I'll talk about it again, watch The Halloween franchise in this order .
Halloween, Halloween II, H20 (This is a perfect trilogy) Resurrection can be added if you want to see the end of the Michael / Laurie storyline, I don't usually watch that movie .
Halloween 4, 5, & 6 (this is what I call the Jaime Lloyd trilogy)
You can skip Resurrection and Season of the witch because they aren't really a part of these two trilogies . I'm telling you if you watch the movies in this order and you will look at the franchise very differently .
A Nightmare On Elm Street really only took the first film seriously and then went too far down the comedy road and really didn't recover until A New Nightmare . Part 2 Freddy's Revenge was good but there was way too much humor in spots and they just left Nancy hanging from the original film, I mean sure they mentioned that she went crazy to explain why she wasn't in the movie only to have her comeback and be killed off in Part 3 which was a great movie (My wife's favorite other then the original) Parts 4 - 6 were just a series of jokes that really killed the franchise for me atleast .
Friday The 13th really only has one snag that being Jason Goes To Hell : The Final Friday . I can handle the no Jason in part V : A New Beginning alot easier then the body swapping horseshit they fed us in JGTH .
When I was writing the script for Sins of Man very early in the process I thought that I would make it a stand alone or one off film with no plans to do a sequel but then I thought about the ways I could write a sequel to make it a two part story and then during the writing of the sequel I thought I could make it a trilogy so I wrote the three scripts (The first drafts anyway) and decided then and their I would not even write notes for a possible Sins of Man IV because I don't think I will ever make Sins of Man IV not because I couldn't but because I think the trilogy is enough . I have said that I would write a part IV if it were the first part of another trilogy . I don't want to keep going back to Sins of Man when I have so many other ideas that I want to put out there .
Sequels for me from a company stand point will be something we think about before we green light a bunch of them and water down the franchises with films that don't make sense to the original concept .
STAY HUMBLE, STAY HUNGRY MY FRIENDS :)