My mom never allowed my brothers or me to watch R-rated movies until we were thirteen or fourteen or so. We'd still occasionally see them, but only when our cool aunts or uncles would take us. However, if the movie was on TV and on before midnight, my mom thought that was okay.
Eventually, my friends started getting tapes from some sort of underground railroad of slasher movies on VHS. So my friends saw the original Freddy, Jason, Halloween and whatever other horror flicks were out there, but I never did because my parents weren't really cool.
When I finally started seeing horror movies, I only saw the sequels. So before every movie my friends needed to explain, "Jason is this giant guy with a hockey mask who's mom was murdered or something. He dies in every movie, but always comes back to life. Last time some chick threw a rock on top of him and he sunk to the bottom of some lake or river or spaceship or something. Jason is pretty much the exact same guy as Michael Myers, but just wait, in like four minutes there's going to be boobs."
Every once in a while, we'd watch a lower-numbered sequel or an original, and as adolescents we came to the conclusion that they all sucked. And here's where KC's Brilliant Theory on Sequels came into existence.
You see, in Freddy 1, Halloween, or Jason 1 (or Jason's mom, whatever) the bad guy kills only two or three or four teenager people. You might not even see the monster guy. The talent is all acting kids doing their best. The director is trying to tell some sort of story or make a point. Some of the murders aren't that gory. There's only a slightly decent possibility you'll see a set of boobs. Worst of all, the heavy metal soundtrack might be a little outdated.
However, the higher the sequel, the higher the body count! You might see fifteen or twenty dudes or chicks getting their heads chopped off! Somebody might even explode! The higher the sequel the more you'll see the bad monster guy! The actors usually include some awesome athlete and/or rapper of the moment! The director doesn't give a fuck about plotlines, he's just trying to cram as many dead bodies on screen as possible! Barrels of fake blood spooge all over the celluloid! The metal is always incredibly heavier than the last installment! And there are tits galore!
And that's exactly what I wanted to see when I was a 10-year-old lad. Violence, T&A and death metal. So in my adolescent years, I would tell you that Freddy 15 was better than the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Which, ironically, is the only one of those movies I'd even remotely consider worth watching nowadays.
So there you go. My old theory about sequels. What do you think?