It's an odd phenomenon that highly acclaimed horror films get fewer sequels than trashy ones. It might not seem that way at first. After all, Psycho, one of the most iconic films ever made by one of the most iconic directors, had four sequels and a remake. Jaws won three Oscars, was nominated for Best Picture, is credited with inventing the modern blockbuster film, and spawned three sequels. Silence of the Lambs swept the top Oscars and bore three further films. The Exorcist won two Oscars, was nominated for eight more, and is currently sitting at a six film franchise. At first glance, it seems that critically acclaimed horror films are doing pretty well on the sequel front.
Then one considers realises that the twenty films I just listed equal the number of Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the Thirteens Movies. There's more Halloween films than any two of the respectable franchises combined. You're likely aware of the character Pinhead, at least through cultural osmosis, but most readers won't remember that his franchise is called Hellraiser and I feel a mixture of empathy and pity if you know that there's ten of those films. Granted, that still puts the Cenobites behind Children of the Corn, a forgotten eighties film whose eleven series franchise is still going strong.
And then there's Amityville. Wikipedia lists eleven films in the franchise, including Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (the one with the evil lamp), Amityville: It's About Time (the one with the evil clock), Amityville: A New Generation (the one with the evil mirror), and Amityville Dollhouse (do I even have to explain this one?). However, this list doesn't include such other features as The Amityville Asylum, Amityville Playhouse, Amityville Exorcism, Amityville Island, Amityville: Mt. Misery Rd., or Amityville Vampire. That's not even close to an exhaustive list - it was just the ones that I could name off the top of my head. I've seen at least another six whose titles escape me at the moment (e.g. the found footage one) and I'm not sure that I've even seen half the films.
So why do we keep making films from terrible franchises and stop making them for good ones? The obvious answer seems to be artistic integrity. That the acclaimed franchises want to preserve the dignity of the original while the schlock series are shameless cash grabs willing to churn out dreck like a Halloween movie with iconic villain Michael Meyers replaced by clockwork androids, or a Children of the Corn movie lacking children and corn, or a Critters movie set entirely in space, or a Friday the 13th movies set in space, or a Hellraiser movie set in space, or a Leprechaun movie set entirely in space.
This argument falls apart immediately on closer inspection. What sense of artistic reverence prevents someone from filming Psycho V, but finds value in Psycho II? That we can't have an Exorcist movie in space, but we can have one where James Earl Jones dresses up as a giant locust. That we can't have a time-travelling Jaws film, but we can have a plot about Sheriff Brody's widow falling in love with a drug-dealing Michael Caine while being hunted across the globe a shark under a voodoo curse. If you've ever heard someone use the line "This time it's personal" to mock a terrible sequel, remember that that was the tagline for Jaws: The Revenge. Any random Critters film is more of a labour of love than any Jaws sequel ever was and the evidence is in the casting. Critters was Billy Zane's second film. Critters 3 gave us Leonardo DiCaprio. Critters 4 includes Angela Bassett two years after she was still playing a character named "Stewardess" in Kindergarten Cop and one year before she won her Oscar. These movies could have just pulled in any actor our of central casting, but they spend the time to find the best casts they can on their limited budgets. Never forget that the lead actor and actress of The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre have more Oscars than the leading pair of Titanic (please note that this statement is not an endorsement of the film).
It's at this point in the essay that I should put forth my thesis on the true cause for the phenomenon, but I'm honestly unsure. I merely have a hypothesis: it's easier to make a sequel when there's nothing to live up to. If you tell someone that you thought that Psycho II was an improvement on Hitchcock's original and your name isn't Quentin Tarantino, you'll be forced to defend that statement. When I say that Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is better than the original, only a hard-core horror fanatic will take offense. Most people think that the original film had myriad issues and someone fixing some of them is entirely within the realm of possibility. A film critic whose identity I've sadly forgotten once opined that we need to stop making remakes of great films and start making remakes of bad ones. The greats ones are already finished, while we could polish up the bad ones until they work. The initial films in the Silence of the Lambs and Hellraiser franchises both involved the female protagonist working with the main franchise villain to defeat a lesser villain that wears the skin of his victims. Silence of the Lambs also had Jodie Foster playing Agent Clarice Starling in an Oscar winning performance. Hellraiser gave us Kristy, who didn't even merit a last name. Thus, every subsequent Hellraiser movie was an attempt to take the parts of the franchise that worked (i.e. Pinhead) and build a better movie around it. On the other hand, every subsequent Silence of the Lambs film was a mercenary effort to separate audiences and their wallets. It's the worst franchises that have the artistic integrity to say "The dolls in Puppet Master were interesting, but the rest of the film dragged. We should put the dolls in a better movie." Which, after thirteens films, they finally produced.
So, I guess that would be the experimental test of my hypothesis. If I'm right, then the most recent Puppet Master ,which I haven't seen yet, is just a cash grab, since the premise has finally been executed successfully. If it's a good movie, then I'm wrong.
Having sat through twelve very poorly made Puppet Master movies, I'm not looking forward to finding out.