10 Bad Movies That Killed Great Horror Franchises

No genre of film is as synonymous with franchises as the horror genre.

Due to the relatively low costs of making such features, horror has a tendency to revisit even a moderately successful initial concept time and time again. Even if that concept isn't all that great, significant profit margins can be achieved by simply using the name of a recognised IP and churning out, well, something.

Still, regardless of the habit of sequel after sequel after sequel after prequel after remake after reboot after... you get the idea, there are some movies that are just so bad that their franchises will struggle to truly recover from them.

Sometimes, these films outright killed their respective franchise dead to the point it completely ended or necessitated a reboot to bring life back to the property. Other times, these features were followed by several further entries in their series, but the vast majority of audiences had simply stopped caring by that point; such was the awfulness of the problematic picture in question.

With that in mind, then, here are ten woeful movies that doomed some truly great horror franchises.

Yes, Jaws: The Revenge is the worst film in the Jaws franchise, but Jaws 3-D is the movie which really killed this series.

Of course, Steven Spielberg's Jaws is one of cinema's greatest ever movies; a movie which is so often credited with ushering in the concept of the summer blockbuster. Following that classic was always going to be a tough task, but Jeannot Szwarc's 1978 Jaws 2 is a fantastic, oft-overlooked and underappreciated picture in its own right.

Jaws 3-D, though? Yeah, that's a rough, rough watch.

Caught up in the 3-D craze of the time, Joe Alves 3-D has aged awfully, but even more worthy of a mention is just how naff those 3-D effects looked back in comparison to contemporaries such as, say, 1981's Friday the 13th Part III.

This third Jaws effort did have a kernel of a good idea - an underwater park stalked by a toothy presence - but the execution was horrendous, with Bess Armstrong's Kay Morgan the only truly likeable character. Also, Jaws 3-D clearly missed the presence of Roy Scheider and Lorraine Gary as Martin and Ellen Brody.

To its credit, the 3D aspect of this threequel did bring in a decent box office take from intrigued audiences... but the vast problems of the movie itself soured so many on the Jaws franchise.