.jpg) By Jeremy Azevedo | You know how every couple of months, you see an ad in the paper (or anywhere else that’s cheap to advertise) for a new National Lampoon movie? And you think to yourself: “Who watches these?” |
A parade of crap. Starring Bon Jovi and Paris Hilton. (Sigh...)
And yet, National Lampoon continues to make more and more shitty movies, slipping into near Troma-like depths of cheap cash-ins and half-baked plots. In case you need reminding, this is a company that at one time produced bonafide classics like “Animal House” and “Vacation”! But as painful as it is to see a franchise killed, buried, dug up, raped, reburied and pissed on like this, National Lampoon is not the only victim of Dead Horse Kickings Disease (DHKD) out there. Many once popular films have birthed series that continue farting into the wind to this very day, sometimes unbeknownst to anyone!
Let’s review:
Underworld
Vampires with guns. Okay, sure, why not?
Vampires in skin-tight Lycra body suits pretend to karate-fight CGI werewolves in slow motion. Do we really need three movies to convey this? Someone seems to thinks so… The third film in the series, “Rise of the Lycans” comes out next year. Just in time for you to apathetically get it confused with Blade 4, which you will also not go see in 2009!
Cruel Intentions
CI2: It may not have a coherent plot, but it does have sorta fugly naked twins!
The first Cruel Intentions, while based on a popular 18h century French play, was a banal sex movie without any actual sex in it. However, a cast that included Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Geller and Ryan Phillippe insured that it would be a hit. What most people don’t know about Cruel Intentions, however, is that it actually has two sequels! The first sequel was actually the pilot for a planned TV series, written and directed by the same guy as the first film, which was subsequently dropped from the Fox programming schedule and re-purposed as a movie. A third movie soon followed for absolutely no discernable reason, and of course no one saw it.
Wild Things
Yes, please.
Where Cruel Intentions held back on the sex, Wild Things boldly marched forward with boner inducing lesbian make-out scenes, loads of tits, and even a threesome that included an at the time smoking hot, now played Denise Richards. Even Bill f**kin’ Murray is in this movie, making it incredibly useful for playing “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. Wild Things spawned two sequels, each with exactly the same plot, played out by a progressively lamer cast. Shockingly, this hasn’t stopped a great deal of the original cast from signing up for a fourth sequel, known as “Backstabbers”, which is planned for a 2009 release. Or at least, it would be shocking if any of the once-popular original actors had worked since 2001!
The Highlander
Highlander movies: Double as cover art for Yngwie Malmsteen records.
There can be only one! …Or maybe five or six, possibly more if you factor in the series and/or potential upcoming remake. Yes, remake. Someone is actually considering remaking the original Highlander, first in a series of many films that not one person on the face of the earth has ever seen. Written by dudes who worked on the script for Iron Man. This is why we can’t have nice things.
American Pie
The Pie that spawned a dozen horrible sequels.
You may not already know this, but there are actually six movies about f**king pies that exist in the world today. Six! All of which star Eugene Levy and some form of the Stifler character from the first movie. It’s pretty much the direct competition to National Lampoon at this point, devolving into a series of completely unrelated direct to video bullshit sex comedies. But at least Mclovin can rest easy in knowing that his career will be as long-lasting and lucrative as the Shermanator’s was, amirite?
Bring It On
If I've learned anything from Bring It On, it's that dancing solves everything.
You’d think that a movie about cute young cheerleaders dancing around for ninety minutes would be fun to watch, especially if you were a predatory male that has a thing for high school girls. But you would be wrong. You’d also think that producers would’ve figured out by now that the majority of teenagers haven’t been particularly interested in cheerleading since the 1950s, but you’d be wrong again... Four “Bring It Ons” (and counting) worth of wrong, in fact.
Saw/Final Destination
Enough already.
If you think about it, these two horror franchises are pretty much the same thing. At least a half-dozen people are going to get killed in the goriest way imaginable by some life-size “Mousetrap” type contraption, once a year, ad nauseum, for as long as it takes people to realize that there are plenty of video games out there that can provide the same experience without having to even bother leaving the house.
Poison Ivy
Poison Ivy: A clever scheme to get famous actresses naked.
I actually don’t have any problem at all with this series, to be perfectly honest with you. As far as I’m concerned, they can keep making this movie over and over again every year, as long as they keep hiring the same casting agent. Poison Ivy brought us a naked Drew Barrymore, Poison Ivy 2 starred a nude Alyssa Milano, and Poison Ivy 3 featured an unclothed Jaime Pressly. Is it too late for Poison Ivy 4 with Megan Fox?
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Oh no, look behind you, a scary fisherman... eh. Whatever.
Despite the obvious difficulties presented by having to come up with a worse name than “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” and “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer”, rumor has it that both Jennifer Love Hugetits and Freddie Prinze Jr. have signed on for a fourth film about horny teenagers getting slashed up by a pissed-off fisherman. Or is that Jeepers Creepers? I forget... Does it matter?
Friday
Ice Cube relaxing with friends in-between children's television appearances.
Even though Chris Tucker was the only funny actor in the original Friday, producers somehow managed to squeeze two more movies and a shitty animated series out of the “franchise” without him. The third film was even a holiday movie, if you can believe that. I suppose they’re sort of obligated to make a fourth film for the sake of completeness, since there are four Fridays in every month. That is, of course, if Ice Cube isn’t too busy lobbying for the role of B.A. Baracus in the upcoming A-Team remake.
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