Forgotten Horror Sequels You Didn’t Know Existed

Some horror sequels become as famous as the movies that came before them. Aliens. Evil Dead II. Dawn of the Dead. Bride of Frankenstein. Others disappear.

They sit between the original and the inevitable remake, reboot, or legacy sequel. Nobody puts them on Halloween watchlists. Nobody argues about them. Half the time, nobody remembers they exist. And then you stumble across one.

That's exactly what happened to me with Fright Night Part 2. I remembered seeing it years ago, but watching it again made me realize how completely it has vanished from the larger horror conversation. Everyone knows Fright Night. Everyone knows Charley Brewster, Peter Vincent and Evil Ed. But Fright Night Part 2? You'd think someone buried the negative in a coffin.

That got me wondering how many other sequels to well-known horror movies have suffered the same fate. Quite a few, apparently.

1. Fright Night Part 2

1988

The forgotten sequel that started this whole thing. The original Fright Night is one of the great horror movies of the 1980s. It has vampires, practical effects, comedy, a fantastic villain and Roddy McDowall playing washed-up horror host Peter Vincent. Three years later, Charley Brewster and Peter Vincent returned for a direct sequel, and somehow almost nobody talks about it.

This time Charley has convinced himself that Jerry Dandrige wasn't really a vampire. Then the mysterious Regine Dandrige arrives, claiming to be Jerry's sister and looking for revenge. There are some good ideas buried in there. Regine is visually memorable, the effects can be fun, and Roddy McDowall is still Roddy McDowall. But the movie feels like someone reconstructed Fright Night from a description of Fright Night.

The original had a remarkably simple premise: a teenager discovers that the charming man next door is a vampire, nobody believes him, and he recruits a fake vampire killer to help him. Part 2 piles on characters, supernatural weirdness and camp without finding the same balance.

The strangest part is how completely it disappeared afterward. Fright Night became a cult classic, got a remake and remains part of the horror conversation. Its direct sequel became a footnote.

2. The Fly II

1989

David Cronenberg's The Fly ends with one of the bleakest conclusions in 1980s horror. Naturally, someone decided we needed The Fly II. Eric Stoltz plays Martin Brundle, the son of Seth Brundle and Veronica Quaife. Because of the genetic nightmare inherited from his father, Martin grows at an accelerated rate and eventually begins transforming himself.

The Fly II isn't some tiny direct-to-video knockoff, either. It was a major studio sequel released only three years after Cronenberg's movie. And yet when people talk about The Fly today, the conversation usually stops with Jeff Goldblum vomiting digestive enzymes onto his food. The sequel has largely evaporated.

That's unfortunate, because its creature effects are often excellent. It also contains one of the most upsetting dog scenes in horror, which anyone who has seen the movie probably remembers more clearly than the actual plot. The Fly II isn't Cronenberg, but as a late-'80s practical-effects monster movie, there are much worse ways to spend two hours.

3. The Rage: Carrie 2

1999

Yes, Carrie has a sequel. Twenty-three years after Brian De Palma burned down the Bates High School prom, someone decided to return to the same universe, and the connection isn't merely marketing: Amy Irving actually returns as Sue Snell, the survivor of the original film.

The new protagonist is Rachel Lang, another teenage girl with telekinetic abilities. Eventually, the movie establishes a connection between Rachel and Carrie White. The problem is that Carrie didn't exactly leave a lot of unfinished business. It is a complete tragedy with a definitive ending, so The Rage spends much of its runtime essentially rebuilding Carrie for the late 1990s.

Cruel teenagers. Social humiliation. Telekinetic girl. Horrible breaking point. Revenge. It's Carrie for the American Pie generation. Then everyone seemingly agreed never to mention it again.

4. Pet Sematary Two

1992

Pet Sematary Two deserves more attention for one reason alone: Clancy Brown. Edward Furlong plays Jeff Matthews, a teenager who moves with his father to Ludlow, Maine after his mother dies. You can probably guess what happens next. Dead things. Burial ground. Bad decisions.

But Pet Sematary Two doesn't really try to recreate the oppressive grief of the first movie. It's meaner, trashier and much more interested in becoming a full-blown supernatural horror movie. Clancy Brown understands exactly what kind of movie he's in, and his increasingly deranged performance as Gus Gilbert gives the sequel an identity that separates it from the original.

It isn't better than Pet Sematary. It barely feels like the same kind of movie. But unlike some of the sequels on this list, that might actually be why it's worth rediscovering.

5. Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings

1994

Pumpkinhead should have been a much bigger horror franchise. Just look at the thing: Stan Winston's original creature remains one of the great monster designs of the 1980s. So naturally Pumpkinhead II should have been an easy win. Instead, the sequel went straight to video.

Blood Wings changes much of the mythology and introduces a group of teenagers who accidentally resurrect a murdered boy who has become a Pumpkinhead-like creature. The original movie feels like a dark rural fairy tale. The sequel feels like a video-store horror movie. That's a substantial downgrade.

Pumpkinhead would continue through two additional television sequels years later, but Blood Wings represents the moment when a monster that could have joined the horror A-list started sliding toward obscurity.

6. Psycho IV: The Beginning

1990

Here's a strange piece of horror trivia: Anthony Perkins played Norman Bates four times. Most people remember Psycho. Horror fans probably know Psycho II. Some remember Psycho III. Then there's Psycho IV.

The fourth movie premiered on Showtime in 1990 and does something surprisingly modern, functioning as both sequel and prequel. Norman calls into a radio program and begins recounting his childhood, including his relationship with his mother and the events that transformed him into the man we met in Psycho. Perkins returns as Norman, while Henry Thomas plays the younger version of him.

The entire Psycho sequel series is more interesting than its reputation suggests. Psycho IV might be the most forgotten chapter of all.

7. Warlock: The Armageddon

1993

Julian Sands playing an evil warlock should have produced a horror franchise people still marathon every October. Instead, Warlock has become one of those series that seems trapped permanently on a dusty video-store shelf.

The Armageddon brings Sands back, but essentially resets everything around him. This time the Warlock is searching for magical stones that can unleash Satan from Hell. Subtle stuff. The movie is filled with early-'90s fantasy horror, practical effects, supernatural powers and Julian Sands looking like he's having a wonderful time being evil. It isn't exactly restrained, but that's part of the appeal.

8. Waxwork II: Lost in Time

1992

Waxwork was already weird. The sequel decides that wasn't nearly weird enough. After surviving the first movie, Mark returns and ends up traveling through portals into different horror worlds: Frankenstein, Alien-inspired science fiction, haunted houses, medieval fantasy. At one point Bruce Campbell shows up.

Waxwork II feels less like a traditional sequel and more like someone flipping channels through the history of genre movies. It doesn't have the wonderfully contained premise of the original Waxwork, but it does have something many sequels lack: ambition. It's messy, ridiculous and completely committed to its own insanity. I'll take that over boring.

9. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

1987

This might be the greatest example of a sequel having almost nothing to do with the movie before it. Prom Night is a slasher. Prom Night II is about a murderous prom queen who returns from the dead. Mary Lou Maloney was killed in 1957 after a prank went wrong, and decades later, her spirit returns and possesses a student. Suddenly we're dealing with supernatural revenge, possession and dreamlike horror.

The reason for the dramatic change is simple: the movie wasn't originally conceived as a Prom Night sequel. But here's the funny part. It works. Hello Mary Lou has developed its own cult following precisely because it isn't interested in recreating Prom Night. Sometimes completely abandoning the original is the best thing a sequel can do.

10. House IV

1992

The House franchise is chaos. The original House stars William Katt as horror novelist Roger Cobb. House II tells an entirely different story. The Horror Show was released as House III in some markets despite having essentially nothing to do with House. Then House IV arrives and William Katt is suddenly back. Imagine trying to explain this franchise to someone in 1992.

House IV attempts to reconnect the series to the original by bringing Roger Cobb back, but by then the franchise barely had an identity left to return to. It's a perfect artifact from an era when horror franchises could continue almost indefinitely as long as someone could put a recognizable title on a VHS box.

11. Howling III: The Marsupials

1987

The Howling is a werewolf movie. Howling II is already insane. Then Howling III asks an important question: what if werewolves had pouches? This is a real movie. The third Howling introduces a race of Australian werewolf-like creatures that evolved from marsupials, and yes, the movie commits to the concept.

There are werewolf babies. There are pouches. There are strange government experiments. There are Australian marsupial werewolves running around. At a certain point you have to stop asking whether something is good and start appreciating that human beings actually made it.

12. Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation

1990

The original Silent Night, Deadly Night became infamous because it featured a killer dressed as Santa Claus. By the fourth movie, apparently nobody cared about Santa Claus anymore. Initiation revolves around witches, rituals, insects, spontaneous combustion and body horror. Brian Yuzna directed it, and if you've seen Society, that last sentence probably tells you everything you need to know.

The connection to Silent Night, Deadly Night is almost comically thin. This is exactly the kind of sequel that could only exist in the video-store era: put the franchise name on the box, figure out the rest later.

13. The Stepfather II

1989

Terry O'Quinn returns, and that alone makes The Stepfather II worth remembering. The original Stepfather is an unnerving psychological horror movie built around O'Quinn's performance as a man obsessed with constructing the perfect American family. When reality fails to match his fantasy, he starts over. Violently.

The sequel brings him back and essentially asks him to do it again. That's also its biggest problem. The original slowly reveals what kind of monster this seemingly ordinary suburban father actually is. The sequel doesn't have that mystery. We already know. Still, watching O'Quinn slip back into the character gives the movie more legitimacy than many forgotten horror sequels ever received.

14. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

2000

Few sequels have misunderstood the appeal of their predecessor this spectacularly. The Blair Witch Project became a phenomenon because audiences weren't entirely sure what they were watching. The cheap cameras mattered. The ambiguity mattered. The lack of conventional horror imagery mattered. Then Book of Shadows arrives looking like a completely normal studio horror movie.

It follows people obsessed with The Blair Witch Project who travel to Burkittsville and begin experiencing strange events. There are hallucinations, violence, goth characters, and a lot of very 2000 filmmaking. It's fascinating, not necessarily because it's good, but because you can practically watch a movie studio trying to figure out how to make a conventional franchise out of something that succeeded by being unconventional.

15. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

1985

And then there's Freddy. Watching the Nightmare movies again in order makes Freddy's Revenge feel even stranger. The first movie establishes one of horror's simplest rules: don't fall asleep. Freddy exists in your dreams. That's where he can get you.

Then the sequel arrives and apparently decides that rule is optional. Freddy wants to possess Jesse. He begins manifesting through him. Eventually Freddy walks into a pool party filled with completely awake teenagers and starts killing people. Wait, what happened to the dreams?

Freddy's Revenge feels less like a Nightmare on Elm Street movie and more like a possession movie that happens to contain Freddy Krueger. Then Dream Warriors arrives two years later and suddenly everything feels right again. Dreams matter. Sleep matters. Freddy manipulates his victims through their fears, and the dream world becomes bigger and more imaginative. It's almost as if the franchise briefly wandered into the wrong theater and then found its way back.

But that's also what makes Freddy's Revenge fascinating today. It's the weird branch of the Nightmare family tree, and sometimes the sequels that don't fit are much more interesting than the ones that do.

THE SEQUELS THAT TIME FORGOT

There's something I miss about this era of horror. A successful movie could produce a sequel that was cheaper, stranger, barely connected to the original and occasionally completely insane. Sometimes that produced garbage. Sometimes it produced something great. Sometimes it produced werewolves with pouches.

But these movies became part of the experience of wandering through a video store and discovering that a movie you loved somehow had three sequels you'd never heard of. Streaming changed that experience. Today, franchises are organized neatly on a screen, algorithms tell you what comes next, and Wikipedia tells you the entire production history before you've finished the opening credits. There aren't many surprises left.

But horror still has a few buried in the back catalog. So the next time you revisit a favorite horror movie, don't immediately watch the remake. Look at what came after it. There might be a sequel everyone forgot. Maybe everyone forgot it for a reason. There's only one way to find out.