Editorials
10 Horror Franchises That Are Practically Begging To Be Revived
Horror franchises never truly die. Many can lay dormant for years or even decades, but horror fans have a rare enduring love for their favorite creations and that usually means any franchise worth its salt will eventually make its way back to screens in one way or another, whether through a reboot, remake, or long-awaited sequel.
There are a great many current and strong horror franchises — Conjuring, Purge, and Insidious come to mind — but there are also a number of franchises that seem far overdue for another chapter, either through a reboot or a direct sequel.
Here is a look at ten horror franchises that should make their way back to life and a few ideas about how they can do so.
Blade
Considering Marvel reportedly owns the film rights to their vampire-killing Blade character now, it’s hard to understand why the franchise hasn’t been mined yet. Original star and producer Wesley Snipes is constantly asked about the possibility of a fourth film and he seems completely game to do it.
“I am very much open to all of the possibilities,” Snipes told The Hollywood Reporter this year. “If Blade 4 comes along, that is a conversation we can have. And there are other characters in the Marvel universe that, if they want to invite me to play around with, I am with that too. I think the fans have a hunger for me to revisit the Blade character, so that could limit where they could place me as another character in that universe.”
While the first two Blade movies were impressive gothic-like creations with striking imagery and charismatic turns from Snipes, the 2004 third installment, titled Blade: Trinity, was unfortunately nothing but a flat action film with Snipes sleepwalking through his role.
Comedian and costar Patton Oswalt would later reveal Snipes’ heart wasn’t in the picture and he would barely communicate with everyone else on set.
“Wesley [Snipes] was just fucking crazy in a hilarious way. He wouldn’t come out of his trailer, and he would smoke weed all day. Which is fine with me, because I had all these DVDs that I wanted to catch up on. We were in Vancouver, and it was always raining. I kept the door to my trailer open to smell the evening rain while I was watching a movie,” the comedian told The A.V. Club. “Then I remember one day on the set — they let everyone pick their own clothes — there was one black actor who was also kind of a club kid. And he wore this shirt with the word “Garbage” on it in big stylish letters. It was his shirt. And Wesley came down to the set, which he only did for close-ups. Everything else was done by his stand-in. I only did one scene with him. But he comes on and goes, ‘There’s only one other black guy in the movie, and you make him wear a shirt that says ‘Garbage?’ You racist motherfucker!’ And he tried to strangle the director, David Goyer.”
Oswalt revealed Snipes tried to get Goyer to quit the production multiple times and he eventually would only communicate through post-it notes that he would sign, “from Blade.”
Blade is too good of a character to let end with a stinker and mess of a production like Blade: Trinity and since Snipes is still cranking out plenty of action fare today, we know he still has the goods to pull off the world’s greatest vampire hunter.
If Marvel did bring back the Blade franchise, they would likely be more inclined to wipe the slate clean than invite Snipes back in, but it would be a true gift to fans to let Snipes give a proper farewell to his character — in the same vein as Hugh Jackman’s sendoff in Logan, his most impressive turn as Wolverine.
If they did end up inviting back Snipes then there’s only one director fans would likely want behind the camera — Guillermo Del Toro, whose unique aesthetic and impressive monster creations were first successfully gifted to American audiences through Blade II, the strongest installment in the Blade franchise.
Final Destination
A new Final Destination likely hasn’t been made because fans were relatively pleased with the fifth and final installment of the franchise in 2011. The film’s ending created a time loop of sorts for all the installments and gave a fond farewell to fans. But, as we know, nothing in horror stays dead forever. And the Final Destination franchise is centered around a concept that could simply go on forever. A variety of directors and writers could take it in new and bold directions with various installments.
Imagine the Destination franchise having its reigns handed off to someone who typically would not work with such genre fare, like Darren Aronofsky. Imagine what the director of mother! and Requiem for a Dream could do with the concept of people cheating death and then constantly trying to escape its clutches.
Or we could get a film exactly in line with what came before from someone who knows how to give us unforgettable kill scenes (mainly what the franchise was famous for). Someone like Eli Roth could provide an appropriate sequel.
Despite there being five movies and a well-received ending, many fans are surely always up for another round of Final Destination.
Friday the 13th
There is obviously still a huge hunger for Jason Voorhees content, especially when you consider the success the new video game has enjoyed. A reboot of the franchise has never been far from Hollywood’s mind as it’s constantly talked about, but no one has quite figured out how to follow up 2009’s so-so remake from director Marcus Nispel and producer Michael Bay.
At this point, it would be great to see less of a straight forward continuation and more of something surprising and completely out of left field for the franchise. A found footage movie was mentioned at one point. And former Friday the 13th franchise star Corey Feldman (who played a young Tommy Jarvis) had a cool idea about creating a Voorhees continuation.
“I’ve long had this vision of doing our own kind of H20, which I thought would be great,” Feldman told Yahoo last year. “Everyone seems to have this huge crush on the Tommy Jarvis character. People really got, I don’t know, into the concept about where Tommy is going. They tried to bring him back with three different movies. And every single one never panned out the right way. And yeah, that’s because it’s not Tommy Jarvis, it’s a guy playing Tommy Jarvis. But let’s get back to the roots. Same thing they did with H20.”
He continued, “What would have happened if all those other movies were just some kind of bad nightmare? And the reality is that we last saw Tommy in the hospital room with his sister, and we think Jason is dead. You want to bring him back from that point, and continue the story thirty years later. Oh, my god, he still exists! That’s the movie I think everyone wants to see.”
At this point, why not give it a shot? Once the rights issues clear up, of course.
Nightmare on Elm Street
Nightmare on Elm Street is a tough franchise to continue as Robert Englund is so important to the character of Freddy Krueger. He had a wonderful sendoff in the seventh installment of the series and no one has quite figured out what to do with Krueger since then.
The talented Jackie Earle Haley took over the role for a 2010 remake, but that ultimately failed to impress too many people. A sequel never happened.
Even though Englund likely isn’t putting on his knives anytime soon, Krueger is still a horror icon that can always scare audiences in fresh ways.
Perhaps like Friday the 13th, this franchise just needs something different and out of left field.
Candyman
Candyman was a surprisingly strong performer when it was first released in 1992. The horror film starred Virginia Madsen and Tony Todd and concerned a grad student studying the myth of the Candyman, a killer with a hook for a hand. She ends up accidentally awakening the monster and he lets loose on a killing spree.
The film was followed by two underwhelming sequels, but the original remains a mostly well-regarded film. It seems odd that in an age where so many films are being put through new lenses and retooled that Candyman hasn’t been revived.
Put in the right professional’s hands, a new Candyman could be a thrilling and engaging start to a new franchise. It could expand its urban legend theme and turn the Candyman into the classic horror figure he was always meant to be.
The Mangler
Oh yes. The Mangler was a franchise. The totally ludicrous original film was followed by not one, but two sequels. How a movie about a killer laundry-folding machine gets two sequels, but we have never seen a Mr. Brooks 2 is anyone’s guess, but this is the world we live in, folks.
Based on a short story by Stephen King, The Mangler followed a homicide detective as he investigated murders done by a laundry-folding machine possessed by a demon. The film was full to the brim with horror royalty. Silence of the Lambs’ Ted Levine was in the lead; Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund was the man in charge of the building containing the laundry machine; Stephen King inspired the film; and Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper was behind the camera.
How all that talent got together and made The Mangler is a mystery that will forever be fascinating.
The film is actually silly B-movie fun in a lot of parts and some joy can be found from it in a cult sort of way, but the reason the franchise should be revived is because this is a loony concept that could really ignite a fire in the right artist’s belly. Imagine giving the challenge of a story about a killer laundry-folding machine to a filmmaker like S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99) or an artist of a similar caliber.
The story is so utterly ridiculous that a perfectly fun tongue-in-cheek B-movie could be made or it could be pushed to weird greatness like Tusk, Human Centipede, or other films that make most viewers scratch their heads, but leave others salivating for more.
Hostel
The Hostel franchise never should have ended. It had an endlessly fascinating concept: people paying to play out their deepest and most evil fantasies upon innocent travelers just looking to have a good time.
The first two films, directed by Eli Roth and produced by Quentin Tarantino, dug into the minutiae of the world being represented and that was what was so creepy. Sure, there was plenty of gore and lots of kills, but the real creepiness to the films was the unblinking eye they were turning towards pure evil and how people react when faced with such darkness and depravity.
The third film in the franchise skipped theaters altogether and was not helmed by Roth. It was a bit more of a standard affair, but there are still endless possibilities for stories to be told within the Hostel franchise.
Perhaps Eli Roth would enjoy coming back as a producer to help find his horror roots again. He could even pick young, up and coming filmmakers to take the concept in some weird and fascinating new directions.
The Toxic Avenger
Believe it or not, a reboot of the Toxic Avenger franchise actually almost happened with Tusk director Kevin Smith behind the camera.
“Somebody asked me, ‘Hey man, we’ve got The Toxic Avenger and we’re gonna remake it, do a reboot, and hey, you’re from Jersey,’” Smith recounted recently on his Fatman on Batman podcast. “And you know, I always kind of dug what Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma people do, it was right in Jersey, I remember seeing them on the news all the time — ‘Hollywood, motion pictures in New Jersey? Right here at Troma!’ And Toxic Avenger was insanely well known. So I always respected the Troma world and Toxie franchise. So I was like, all right, I’ll go down the rabbit hole a bit and see what’s what.”
Smith ultimately parted ways with the project because producers wanted a more expensive and polished Toxic Avenger, while Smith wanted something more in line with the franchise’s cheap, but charming origins.
“They were like, ‘No no no, it’s a 35 million dollar movie.’ And I was like, ‘It’s a fuckin’ remake of The Toxic Avenger, the guy in a tutu with a bad makeup job, what are we gonna spend all the money on?’ So right then and there, I’m clearly not on the same page. In my head, if I need to see a Toxic Avenger remake, it should be done in the spirit of the original. Instead, they were literally trying to start a franchise, Marvel-ize it and stuff like that,” the Clerks director said.
Smith had the right idea. Toxic Avenger is too strange to become a slicked-up Marvel franchise, but today it can absolutely find an audience as charming Troma-style throwback. Before Smith was in talks to be director, stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Travolta were rumored for the lead, which suggests producers know which direction they are going in — and it’s likely the wrong one.
Here’s hoping they wake up and bring back the lovable toxic waste hero in the right way. The world needs him.
The Hills Have Eyes
The Hills Have Eyes is a wild enough concept that it deserves to be told every decade or so by young artistic voices looking to prove themselves. Wes Craven blew audiences away when he first introduced the story of a suburban family trying to survive the wrath of mutated hillbillies in the middle of nowhere in 1977. Alexandre Aja impressed in his own way with a 2006 remake.
Both films were followed by separate sequels — and then nothing.
The Hills Have Eyes is prime material for a remake. It’s a story that that can drastically change based on who is behind the camera, especially in today’s culturally divided times.
Universal Monsters
Yes. Yes. I know. A shared universe with the Universal monsters is (maybe still?) already in the works. But let’s be real. The Mummy was a total flop met with little fanfare and the prospect of promised films like Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man is looking dimmer and dimmer every day.
The real problem with Tom Cruise’s The Mummy is that it didn’t know what it was. It never fully embraced the franchise’s horror roots, but it also never fully embraced the low-rent Indiana Jones style fun that Brendan Fraser’s movies had so much success with.
The Universal monsters don’t need to become action heroes in a Marvel-style universe. What we need are films akin to Guillermo Del Toro’s recent The Shape of Water, a loving nod to monster movies of old. Del Toro was actually at one point offered an opportunity to tackle the Universal monsters and he recently revealed it’s a professional regret of his that he didn’t accept.
“I’ve said no to things that are enormous and I’ve never looked back, you know? The only time I repent I didn’t do something was in 2007, when Universal in an incredibly gentle and beautiful manner said do you want to take over the Monster Universe? And they gave me the reins of several properties, and I didn’t do it. That I repent. So this is a confessional moment, I repent. That’s the only thing,” the filmmaker told The New York Times.
It’s a wonderful “what if” to imagine the Pan’s Labyrinth creator taking the reigns of Wolfman, Dracula, and others. Maybe it could still happen. The original monster movies stand the test of time because they are powerfully personal tales about what it means to be human told through the incredibly dark lens of monsters living among us.
Even if Del Toro wasn’t to take over the franchise, there are plenty of other filmmakers who have fallen in love with the Universal Monsters at one point or another. They should be the ones making these films. We don’t need an $80 million Mummy movie. What we need are smaller budgeted and more personal and darker films like Shape of Water. Perhaps Universal should turn to Blumhouse (they distribute many of their films) and ask them to make darker monster movies with limited budgets, but big ambition.
The Universal Monsters franchise deserves to go on and on, but right now it’s simply in the wrong hands.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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