‎RelaxingDragon’s 2019 in review • Letterboxd

A beautiful, deeply affecting movie about finding one's self in a changing kind of world that both is and isn't home all at once. Which sounds a bit less accessible than the movie actually is. It's a supremely watchable film, very well executed with some great cinematography and solid score,…

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Manhunter

Dracula

Night of the Living Dead

The Definitive Horror Franchise Ranking

34 films 66 likes

**READ THE NOTES**

**UPDATED AUGUST 24, 2019**

Ah, the horror franchise. The endless bonanza that sprung up every time you wandered into a video store, glanced at a shelf, and said aloud "Wait, they made *how* many sequels to Lake Placid?"*. Stalking slashers, underground worms, supernatural horrors, haunted houses, classic…

**READ THE NOTES**

**UPDATED AUGUST 24, 2019**

Ah, the horror franchise. The endless bonanza that sprung up every time you wandered into a video store, glanced at a shelf, and said aloud "Wait, they made *how* many sequels to Lake Placid?"*. Stalking slashers, underground worms, supernatural horrors, haunted houses, classic monsters, zombies, killer Santas, flying death balls... They're all there and more, and they just keep coming!

And that's before you even start considering remakes.

Through all this bloodshed and terror, of amazing gore effects and outrageously low production values, the ultimate question lingers, one long asked by countless film weenies throughout the ages: which one is really the *best*?

Enter this list! Over the course of several months I've compiled a total of 34 feature franchises with 252 movies between them, watched every single one of them (by way of Netflix disc rentals and Instant streamings, theatrical screenings, Amazon Video rentals, Youtube uploads, a few shady links, and even two on good old fashioned VHS tape), and stacked against each other for a head to head Battle Royale. It all adds up to what I hope can be a definitive list of things that can in no way be objectively compared to each other except for the fact that they're all long-running horror franchises.

Now, each entry (marked here by the first film of the series in question) will go into more details on their specific highs, lows, and numbers, but here's a general set of rules as to how I computed all of this:

-Each entry's score is made up of four parts: my personal LB ratings, the community LB ratings, the official RottenTomatoes review percentage (in the event no such critical average exists, the community rating was substituted), and the IMDB star rating. These four scores were averaged together, and that's the list entry a franchise gets (in the event of a tie, the series with the highest ratings in the individual categories gets the nod, with my personal discretion acting as a further tiebreaker where necessary). The individual category rankings are listed in each entry as well. Also, due to the many ties, individual ranking amounts won’t match up with the total number of entries.

-The minimum entry amount for a franchise to come into play here is 5 movies (sorry Jaws!). I figured that this was the right amount for a series of movies to be more than just "It's got a sequel or two" and get it firmly into "They just kept cranking them out!" territory.

-While I'm counting remakes as official parts of franchises, I'm only counting officially sanctioned remakes, or at least movies that are kept together as a proper series. In several series this can get tricky, since many of them became In Name Only sequels as time went on, but I still tried to stay consistent, usually going by the IMDB and Wiki entries as guides. Further details and reasons for omissions are noted in the specific entries below.

-I'll also add more franchises as I come across them, because every time I think I've got them all a few more crop up. If anyone out there can think of one, let me know! Although if your suggestion is Ringu, believe me, I know, I'm just having severe difficulty actually tracking down copies of anything past the first 2. Additionally, when new entries come out for any given franchise, its entry will be updated and shifted as necessary.

-Not a rule, just some trivia: a lot of recurring sequel titles cropped up on this list. Two separate movies are a Legacy, three are The Beginning (with an additional one being A New Beginning, while another was the more eye-catching Bloody Beginnings), four are somebody’s Revenge, another four more are someone’s Curse, yet another four are someone else’s Return, and a full five are The Final Chapter (with an additional Final Sacrifice, Final Friday, and Final Nightmare thrown in for good measure). How many of those movies were actually the last one of their respective series? The answer may surprise you!

-Some general numbers for the list as a whole (which just goes to show how far down enough crummy sequels can drag the ratings of any classic):
My Average LB ranking: 2.5
Average LB ranking: 2.6
Average RT score: 35%
Average IMDB score: 5.2

That should about cover it. Now, take a look down, and gaze into the abyss that is my obsessive need to over-complicate and drag out what started as a small and simple project of stacking a few slasher franchises against each other last October.

*5. They made 5 sequels to Lake Placid, one of which was the crossover to the Anaconda series (which yes, is also a series!)

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