10 Horror Sequels Not Worth Waiting Decades For

The previously mentioned Psycho II may have conspicuously failed to live up to the legacy of the earlier Hitchcock classic, but next to The Birds II: Land's End it's a masterpiece. Hell, next to The Birds II, even the Gus Van Sant version of Psycho that's virtually shot-for-shot the same as the original is a worthwhile exercise in filmmaking.

A made-for-TV movie whose tagline promises "history has a nasty way of repeating itself", The Birds II has no more excuse than that for making a movie with the same basic "random bird attacks" conceit only on the opposite coast of America and with one older character essentially saying "hey, didn't this exact same thing happen once before?"; all of which ignores that the ambiguity of just how far the bird attacks had spread or what has happened to the wider world is a large part of what makes the final shots of the Hitchcock movie so chilling.

The Birds II was directed by Rick Rosenthal who made a passable follow-up to a horror classic with the original Halloween II and an unforgivably bad one with Halloween: Resurrection. He is definitely more in the latter camp here, but even Rosenthal himself was so dissatisfied with the finished product that he took an "Alan Smithee" credit rather than attach his name to it.

Tippi Hedren, the original movie's star returning for an unrelated cameo and a fat pay cheque, still refers to the movie as a major embarrassment for her too.