6 Movies You Didn't Know Had Catastrophic Unofficial Sequels
It's a given that if a film is financially successful, Hollywood will crap out another movie with the same title and the number two shoved onto the end of it. And we all go to see them, either because there are no other options, we despise originality, or we just really like numbers in things. But not all sequels are some sort of official corruption of creativity ... because sometimes they're not official at all. Turns out that if you don't give a defrosted damn about copyright law or moral integrity, you can make a sequel to anything! Like ...
The Alien Sequel that's not Aliens
For those who thought James Cameron's Aliens was too exciting and high-budget, there was a completely unauthorized sequel to Alien made back in 1980. 20th Century Fox, upset at this obvious ripoff, reportedly tried to sue the filmmakers, but they argued that it was based on a 1930 novel called Alien. It was a weak case and everybody knew it, but we guess the judge was impressed by their moxie or something, because it worked. Alien 2: On Earth, also known as Alien Terror, is an ultra-violent, low-budget horror movie that finds the titular alien coming to Earth because, well, spaceship sets are expensive.
Alien 2 starts off with some folks exploring a cave -- naturally, this being an Italian film, just because they're in a cave doesn't mean things can't get randomly and inappropriately sexy.
Finally, after some good, deep spelunkin', a member of the group is attacked by an alien. Here's what that looks like on a budget made of good intentions and spaghetti sauce:
In this dramatic scene, one of the alien's victims is hanging upside down. Hanging so hard that his head falls off.
Since it was cheaper to rent a bowling alley for the afternoon than to build a set, the climax of the film takes place in a bowling alley. Yep, they took the series from a deep space mining ship of the future to "not even the good bowling alley but like, that crappy one across town that smells like Fritos" in two films.
Of course, all of these plot holes and more are totally explained in Prometheus 2, which takes place in a roped-off mini golf course.
The Anti-Borat Borat Sequel Made in Kazakhstan
Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, and presumably ten times that for Cohen's "slander and libel" lawyer. But not everyone was thrilled about Borat, specifically some residents of Kazakhstan, Borat's home country. In 2010, Kazakh filmmaker Erkin Rakishev attempted to repair his country's damaged reputation by producing a sequel to the hit film. When the director was asked whether he was worried about making a sequel to a movie he in no way had the rights to, he had this to say:
In My Brother Borat, an American visits Kazakhstan, meets Borat's brother Bilo, and discovers that the country is actually pretty cool and, if anything, substantially more mustachioed than Borat led us to believe.
If Borat was lying about the country's potassium exports though, we're gonna be pissed.
And once Erkin has built up some of that goodwill, he burns it all to the ground and pisses on the ashes. Bilo is raped by a donkey, gets pregnant, and the two get married. Take that, Sacha Baron Cohen and your racism! In modern Kazakhstan, men aren't backwards hillbillies who "fuck donkeys." No, they get fucked by donkeys, and then start a beautiful life together. Much more civilized!
"I'm not telling you!" says Erkin.
Finally, the end of the film reveals that Borat and Bilo aren't Kazakhs at all - they're Romanian Jews! So to recap, the movie whose only purpose was to show the world that Kazakhstan isn't a backward country full of bestiality and anti-Semitism prominently endorses donkey rape and condemns its characters for being Jews.
The Easy Rider Sequel Made by Some Shady Lawyer
While Easy Rider: The Ride Back isn't exactly an "official" sequel to the 1969 counterculture classic, it wasn't entirely illegal. The producers sued the people who made the original film and actually secured sequel rights. So really, it's only morally and critically reprehensible.
The project was spearheaded by that same Ohio lawyer who thought to sue for rights in the first place, Phil Pitzer. Shocker! Phil also cast himself in the film as well, playing the brother of Fonda's character Captain America. Because in addition to being a producer and an aggressive litigator, he possessed that rarest of acting talents: kind of looking like Peter Fonda, if you're drunk and suffering from mild face blindness.
The Ride Back serves as both a prequel and a sequel to Easy Rider, basically covering every time period except for the one where interesting stuff happens to characters we care about. The film answers such burning audience questions as "where did Peter Fonda's bike come from?" Answer: he drew it on a piece of paper first, and then later, he built it. As opposed to what the audience was forced to assume from the first film, which is that his bike hatched from an egg laid by a giant space motorcycle.
But what's one thing the original forgot to include while it was trying to cram in boring old social commentary and existential introspection? Sleazy biker chicks and strippers!
It's a 1960s classic remade into a Motley Crue video, except made by someone who knows less about filmmaking than whoever directs Motley Crue videos. Hopefully, the same production team will eventually make a sequel to Casablanca where Ilsa finally takes her top off and wrestles the all-Nazi volleyball team.
Italy Decides It wants a Terrible Jaws Sequel of Its Own
Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws didn't sweat the small stuff. Like the fact that their shark movie couldn't obtain a real shark, or even mock up a convincing fake one. They just stole most of their shark footage from other movies, including the first few Jaws films. Even ballsier copyright violations include the film's soundtrack, which features snippets of the Star Wars theme.
Not being able to interact directly with any part of an attacking shark kind of limits the options of a film about people being attacked by sharks. Luckily, the filmmakers came up with ridiculous ways for people to die while not being in the same frame as any apex predators. Well, unless you consider "idiocy" an apex predator. Which, come to think of it, maybe you should; this woman attempts to douse the shark in gasoline, but she covers herself instead, then erupts in flames when someone fires a flare gun six inches away.
We're hard-pressed to find a way that the shark is responsible for, or even really involved in, that death at all. So maybe it should have been called Jaws 5: Bystander Jaws.
The Crazy Japanese Planet of the Apes
The Planet of the Apes series was a smash hit in Japan, which we can't actually explain, but which makes perfect sense on a purely intuitive level. There was even an Apes TV series produced in 1974, titled Army of the Apes. It lasted twenty-six episodes, and would eventually be re-edited into a ninety minute film, Time of the Apes. Though slightly connected to the popular franchise (it was a legal adaptation of the novel that the Planet of the Apes movies were based on), that's where the commonalities end. Army of the Apes featured:
Flying saucers made by advanced humans ...
Guitar-playing apes:
And of course, the obligatory robot (this was Japan, after all):
Thank God there was nothing that ridiculous in any of the American Planet of the Apes movies.
In this world, John Wilkes Booth's "Sic semper tyrannis," was followed by poo flinging.
The Italian Terminator 2 Is Also Aliens ... And Terrible
The Italian sequel to The Terminator was released in 1990, and while it doesn't hold a candle to the real Terminator sequel we all know and love, the poster actually gives you a bit of hope.
Though it could also be a sci-fi sequel to Risky Business.
Strangely, this Terminator 2 more closely follows the plot of Aliens. And by "more closely," we mean exactly. Here, you can see the identical Italian doppelgangers of Ripley and the marines from Aliens. Also Fabio.
They're sent in to kill some aliens, who look more like the lizardman Captain Kirk dropkicked than the actual xenomorphs.
"I'm a failed animatronic. Mediocre tissue over a shitty endoskeleton."
And for no valid reason whatsoever, there's a Terminator! With the aliens!
Sure, he doesn't really look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but by the time he shows up, too much of the movie has happened for you to demand your money back. Of course, the whole thing is a shameless attempt to cash in on someone else's characters, but wanting to see Ellen Ripley fight both aliens and a Terminator is an understandable motive ... even if what we get is "Ellie Ropley" slap-wrestling a gorn while a sickly Italian man fails to emote.
It should be noted, however, that we are completely down with Sergeant Gnarly getting his own spin-off flick where he has to beat the Terminator in a surfing competition to save the rec center.
J.M. McNab writes and podcasts for Rewatchability.com. You can also find him on Twitter.
For more insane attempts to cash in, check out The 10 Most Tenuously Connected Movie Sequels and The 6 Most Psychotic Rip-Offs of Famous Animated Films.
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