6 horror sequels that weirdly defined the franchises

Horror movie sequels are a well-known cinematic tradition. The first film is haunting, refreshing, and groundbreaking, and now that it’s made a ton of money, it’s time to try and repeat its success until the wheels fall off. Sometimes elements are stacked together in very long series. They were either pre-installed from the start or just stumbled upon them along the way.

Which parts of the original recipe are still there? And which were added later in order to make things more interesting? It’s time to dive into that question regarding iconic bits of six lengthy horror series — bits that might seem to have been foundational text but actually didn’t get inserted until a little later.

Frankenstein’s monster’s iconic walk

Universal Picturees

Frankenstein movies were the mainstay of Universal horror in the golden age. James Whale made two great films about them.Frankenstein Bride of FrankensteinBasil Rathbone stars in a solid role (Frankenstein, the SonThen, it was a short descent to cheaper and clunkier options. Boris Karloff, who played the titular monster in the first three films, delivers a thoughtful, tragic performance, so it’s a little weird that the iconography that’s remained is that of a man with his arms raised, clumsily shuffling through castle sets.

This character-defining image wasn’t actually set until the final moments of the fourth film,The Ghost of Frankenstein (Quick synopsis: The monster, played here by Lon Chaney Jr., has his brain replaced with his conniving sidekick Ygor’s, played with raucous malice by Bela Lugosi. This allows him to speak and plot, but thanks to a medical mishap, he’s pretty immediately rendered blind.) In the second film, the monster continues to grope around for the final few minutes. Frankenstein and the Wolf ManHe appears with his arms stretched out.

In the subsequent movies, no one ever mentions he’s now blind, whether it’s in his Wolf Man battleOr House of Frankenstein or Frankenstein Meets Abbott and Costello. So the Frankenstein walk that would come to define the time period not only didn’t occur until the end of the fourth movie, but is part of a plot point that no subsequent movie could be bothered to remember.

Jason’s hockey mask

Image by Paramount Pictures

If there’s any item on this list that has gone down in the annals of horror trivia, it’s this one. The first Friday, 13 November, it’s Jason’s sweater-wearing mother Pamela doing the killing. In the second film, Jason finally shows up, but he’s donning overalls and a burlap sack over his head. It’s only in the third movie that he robs a comic-relief character of his hockey mask and decides that’s This is the look that you should keep. Jason was forever ensconced in the mask since then. It has become synonymous with the whole slasher genre.

However, it’s still important to bring up because this omnipresence diminishes just how rad Jason looks in Part 2. Lanky and unkempt, Jason feels a bit more like a guy that would actually be hanging out in the woods outside of a summer camp rather than the brand name he’d evolve into. The relative absence of machetes is another fun thing. Part 2 — Jason’s general toolkit is pretty diverse here, and the weapon he uses in the climax is a My Bloody Valentine-esque pickax.

Godzilla is a godly guy

Image: Toho

When Godzilla shows up in the original 1954 film, it’s atomic nightmare incarnate. It is the death and mass devastation of nuclear holocaust brought to life in the form of an unstoppable creature, one that can’t be understood or reasoned with as it menaces Japan with blistering hellfire. And then, in 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again, it’s mostly around to wrestle with another monster and knock stuff over. This first sequel would set the template for a majority of Godzilla films going forward — Godzilla is heavyweight champion of the kaiju division, and one that’s ready to rumble with all challengers.

Even though Godzilla fought other monsters, that doesn’t mean there was a role reversal the minute something else wanted to throw down. In the first four films, Godzilla is an unambiguous asshole, less a defender of Japan and more like the country’s awful landlord who comes to evict any new monster tenants. In the third movie, King Kong is given the unspoken moral high ground, and in the fourth one, Mothra and her young symbolize the beauty of nature, while Godzilla symbolizes the beauty of what things look like when they’re on fire.

It’s not until the fifth film, Ghidorah The Three-Headed MonsterGodzilla now finds himself in a team-up to face an extraterrestrial dragon and shifts to hero mode. And the change doesn’t come without prodding — one of Mothra’s larvae from the last film has to entreat Godzilla into being friendly for a change. Going forward, the big lizard just has to hope Japan has forgotten about the whole “I am become death” phase.

Freddy Krueger’s one-liners

Image: New Line Cinema

Freddy Krueger is the evil dream-invader from Nightmare on Elm Street. series, has always been a li’l scamp. Since the beginning, he’s loved tormenting people, and by Freddy’s Revenge, it’s clear that he also has a keen sense of irony. Do you see a character with an interest in cycling? Freddy will crush them with a wheel while shouting “BETTER PUMP THE BRAKES!” A character with a drinking problem? Freddy skewers them with a toothpick and gulps them down in a giant martini while winking at the audience: “DRINK RESPONSIBLY!”

This is the basic idea.

It wasn’t always to this magnitude, though. Freddy’s embrace of puns only really became a defining part of his personality with Dream WarriorsThe third movie is titled. It’s here that nearly every Freddy kill comes with some kind of wordplay or one-liner, turning him into equal parts slasher icon and late-night host. It’s a natural fit, with actor Robert Englund being one of the few horror stars to be adept at every stage of his character’s evolution.

Pinhead’s name

Image: Entertainment Film Distributors

Pinhead is one of those hole-in-one horror designs — no notes needed. It’s instantly iconic, which makes it all the more interesting that there was no actual name attached to him when he joined the pantheon of Freddy, Jason, and Michael. He’s nameless in the original novel by Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart, and the first film credits him as “Lead Cenobite,” a moniker that probably wouldn’t look good on posters. Barker later refers to him as the “Hell Priest,” having really disliked the name Pinhead.

So where did “Pinhead” come from? You can see it in the credits for the seriously underrated Hellbound: Hellraiser IIHowever, the movie’s third film is the first to call him Pinhead. The name is a bit of a joke. The name stuck. Thankfully, in 2022’s reboot, the character was able to recover some dignity. (They’re now known as simply “the Priest.”)

Leatherface’s name

Bryanston Distributing Company

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2 is a delirious dark comedy and a comically brutal slasher film, taking anything that might’ve seemed subtle in the original and turning the volume up to deafening levels. In short, it’s beautiful, and it recognizes that you can’t really outdo the grisly macabre of the original. Returning director Tobe Hooper doesn’t try, allowing his favorite clan of cannibals to spiral into freewheeling self-parody. The Sawyers are their names, he says. Get it?

If you’ve only seen the original, released 12 years before Part 2, and that name sounds unfamiliar, it’s for good reason — no one really has a name in the first movie. The “Bubba Sawyer” of the sequel is only referred to as “Leatherface” there, and oddly enough, the “Cook” (or “Old Man,” as he’s referred to in the script) asks Leatherface, “Why didn’t you wait for Bubba?” seemingly referring to his hitchhiking brother. If you’ve never heard it, I don’t blame you — it’s barely audible over all of the screaming.

But that brother is never referred to as “Bubba” again in the 1974 original, the name having been passed on to Leatherface himself by the sequel, with the now-deceased brother called “Nubbins” Sawyer. Now, it could just be that the Cook was calling him “bubba” as in “your brother,” which is a common Southern colloquialism, but it is funny in the context of the wider series. While the last name Sawyer makes it into the third movie, it is now called the explicit Slaughters by the fourth film. Look, it’s America’s most treasured chronicle of flesh-eating Texans. It’s important to have this kind of information.