3 Hated Sequels That Are Clearly Better Than the Original

Why They Hate it: The main thrust of the apathy toward Richard O'Brien's sequel/equal to The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the same thing that would make Indian food suck; No Curry. Tim Curry's Dr. Frank-n-Furter doesn't appear, and neither does the actor in any role. Nor does Susan Sarandon or Barry Bostwick or even Meat Loaf. Combine the feeling that the sequel was stuck with the only B-Team of the first film coming back with a much lower amount of sex and drag and you end up with something that people stayed away from in droves.

Why They're Wrong: Which is unfortunate because Shock Treatment may in fact be one of the most important films of all time. In it, the town of Denton has been completely swallowed by a television studio backed by a fast-food millionaire corporate sponsor. The citizens are defined as either audience members (Who never leave their chair, even sleeping there) or cast members living out their lives entirely within the confines of programs at the behest of shadowy producers.

You might recognize this as pretty much the entirety of television for the last decade. Had a few people maybe sat down and watched Shock Treatment we wouldn't be in this mess. Janet Majors basically gets picked out of a line-up by a cigar-chomping bigwig who raises her to complete superstardom without any noticeable talent or compelling traits, all in the dream of making her a mental cripple utterly incapable of getting her fame fix, and hence complete identity, without him.

All this, by the by, turns out to be a bullshit twin sibling plot twist that reeks of Rock of Love backstabbing shenanigans. Sorry if that spoiled the movie for you, but either you've already seen it and are sadly nodding your head as you read this or you didn't see it and are the reason we are in this reality TV trap in the first place. The point is that the movie completely defines the world we live in, now.

It's a world where people actually ask "celebrities" like Donald Trump his opinion on national politics as if he was going to answer with anything other than a reason we should pay attention to him. It's a world where a video of Kim Kardashian crying over losing a pair of earrings can get ten times the YouTube views as literally the most brilliant direction modern music could take.

Rocky Horror taught us that it's a glorious thing to celebrate your own sexuality with exploration and pageantry... at least until some extremist takes offense and makes with the laser murder. So actually, no, maybe you should curb your excess a bit. Shock Treatment tried to tell us that one day we would all be living in a heartless, lunatic fame machine where everyone was consumed with the need to be recognized regardless of whether they had ever done anything worthy of being recognized for.

The heroes of the sequel ride off triumphantly into the darkness away from the madhouse singing a kickass group number in a stolen convertible. Brad Janet and Doctor Scott in Rocky? They go out to a dirge looking like they were the victims of a combination gang-rape/dirt bike crash. Man, we picked the wrong freakin' film to put on a pedestal.