Cinematical Seven: Way Late Sequels

This week Disney opens Race to Witch Mountain 31 years after the last Witch Mountain movie, which, to give you a sense of the time, opened in 1978 and featured the top-billed Bette Davis and Christopher Lee as the bad guys! That's a long time ago, but there are lots of other belated sequels to consider. In order of waiting time:

1. Belle Toujours (2006)
Duration between sequels: 39 years
Luis Bunuel made Belle de Jour in 1967 and died in 1983. Lots and lots of years later, the 98-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira picked up the story thread and re-united the two lead characters. Sadly, original star Catherine Deneuve was either unwilling or unable to re-create her role as the icy Severine, and so Bulle Ogier had to stand in for her. Michel Piccoli once again plays Henri Husson, who years earlier caught Severine in an awkward position -- secretly working daytime hours at a Paris brothel. Now the two elderly characters meet for an equally awkward dinner to discuss -- or not discuss -- what actually happened. Oliveria's work is far more austere than Bunuel's, but it has some delightful and thought-provoking moments.

2. Saraband (2005)
Duration between sequels: 30 years
Bergman created his final masterpiece with this film, re-uniting the now-divorced characters from Scenes from a Marriage (1973), played once again by the great Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. But as in real life, the drama quickly moves on to the younger characters. Bergman shot the film in 2003, but it was not released here until 2005.

3. Mother of Tears (2007)
Duration between sequels: 27 years
Not necessarily a direct sequel, Dario Argento intended this to be the third in a trilogy begun with Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). Argento's daughter and sexy star Asia Argento wasn't even old enough to watch the previous two films, and now she's old enough for a shower scene. Mother of Tears may not be one of Argento's great works, but I found it to be a great guilty pleasure and a potential future cult classic.

4. The Color of Money (1986)
(TIE) Herbie Fully Loaded (2005)
Duration between sequels: 25 years
Twenty-five years is a long time in the life of a pool hustler; Paul Newman aged from the cocky young Fast Eddie Felson to the wine-tasting mentor figure in Martin Scorsese's slick, colorful sequel, and the Academy dutifully awarded him the Oscar he should have won for the original. And after the same amount of time Lindsay Lohan rescues Herbie the Love Bug from the junk heap. Both films are pretty much reviled on all sides, but I'm very fond of both of them. They both have a big-hearted smoothness that makes them easy to watch.

5. Psycho II (1983)
Duration between sequels: 23 years
Not long after the Halloween and Friday the 13th sequels started raking in big bucks, Universal decided to revive its own legendary psycho killer, bringing back no less than Anthony Perkins to play him, though director Hitchcock had died three years earlier. (Vera Miles also reprised her role as Lila.) After two decades, Norman Bates checks out of the asylum and returns home, only to see the same gruesome killings start up again. Taken by itself, the sequel really isn't too bad. After this, Universal was no longer shy about whoring out its famous property: Perkins returned to direct Psycho III (1986), then there were TV movies in the late 1980s and finally Gus Van Sant's ill-fated, much-hated 1998 remake.

6. Land of the Dead (2005)
(TIE) Rambo (2008)
Duration between sequels: 20 years
Twenty years is a long time in the life of a Vietnam veteran who still goes on ass-whooping missions throughout the world. But even though Sylvester Stallone could still credibly play the role, he forgot once again to make a good movie (though it was arguably better than Rambo III). Fortunately, twenty years is nothing in the life of a zombie, and George A. Romero's masterful fourth entry in his legendary cycle is looking better and better.

7. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Duration between sequels: 19 years
Harrison Ford returned to his best role with gusto, looking his age but taking his lumps like a 30 year-old. Though the movie was exceedingly well-crafted and a lot of fun, it suffered from a bad reaction to bad hype, and more people experienced it as a disappointing event rather than as a simple movie. In time, that situation will right itself, but right now the wounds have hardly closed.

Runners Up:

16 Year-Gap: 2010 (1984), The Godfather Part III (1990), Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), Rocky Balboa (2006)

15 Year-Gap: Escape from L.A. (1996)

14 Year-Gap: Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), Basic Instinct 2 (2006)

12 Year-Gap: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Clerks II (2006), Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

10 Year-Gap: Hannibal (2001), Be Cool (2005), The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)