Original Sequel Versus Remake Sequel

The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1985; one star total) These were the two hardest movies to sit through out of all the ones I watched for my "31 Days of Halloween" marathon. Whether that's because I was tired after watching 28 other horror movies in under a month's time or because these movies just suck that bad, I don't know. Sequels are known for being lazy and redundant but The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 actually recycles footage from the original for flashbacks. This is redundant on top of redundant because there are also narrated captions before the opening titles reviewing the plot of the original. Was Wes Craven really so worried that people watching the sequel wouldn't have seen the original or was he trying to wrap quicker on an easy paycheck after his success with A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)? Come to think of it, why would he have needed the money after Elm Street and why couldn't he get a bigger budget for this sequel? I've read that Wes Craven disowned this movie after its release but that doesn't mean he didn't put any thought into it to begin with, at least as much as he put into his next full-length feature, Deadly Friend (1986). Both of those movies fall into familiar '80s teen slasher territory during their second halves but their first halves each have some fresh subject matter (motocross in The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 and reanimated bodies with robot brains in Deadly Friend). I don't remember motocross being that big in the '80s but it's featured here a full year before the BMX movie, Rad (1986), and the first proper motocross movie, Winners Take All (1987). Also, affirmative action was hard at work because there's a black couple and a blind girl too, and she even survives better than the rest.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007; two stars total) Sometimes I wish I could sit in on one of those boardroom meetings where a committee develops a movie from pitch to "marketable" script. I'd love to hear some suit say, "Y'know, Jarhead (2005) did pretty well and I hear they're making a sequel to Wrong Turn (2003). Maybe we could do a soldiers-in-training/mutant cannibal movie hybrid for our own remake sequel. Yeah, and instead of motocross like in the '80s sequel, we could show some other extreme sport - maybe rock climbing. Kids today love rock climbing. And some computer-generated images on a laptop. If the military was tracking these mutants, they'd use satellite like they're doing against those cave-dwelling Taliban in Afganistan." I'm not sure if that's really how producers talk, but you have to wonder when each scene in a movie seems like an item off a checklist of what's trendy. I wouldn't be surprised if the writers actually intended an anti-war message about sending insufficiently trained soldiers on an impossible mission against "uncivilized" suicide bombers. I didn't mind this movie on the surface. I liked the opening scene where an abducted woman gives birth to a half-mutant baby and then gets killed, but there's an underlying message there about how certain desert people treat women. I liked the sergeant in charge of the National Guard trainees, but the movie fizzles after he's killed in the first half hour. My advice to others would be to skip this sequel and get Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) instead. That is, if you have to watch a militant, monster-hunting sequel set in the desert from the same year.