Blood Diner (1987) and The Long and Winding Road of Sequels or Not

When it comes to franchise filmmaking, there’s nothing more important than finding the right sequel for a film. There must be a way for the characters to be sent on another journey so that audiences will come back and spend more money. It all comes down to finding the right story to continue the journey. Sometimes that story will come from a sequel to the source material, a sequel to the book that the original was based on or something of that nature. Other times, writers have scripts that get tailored to fit a successful intellectual property. And other times yet, it might just be a natural progression of the characters’ journeys. It doesn’t matter to filmmakers, as long as they continue telling stories that make money.

There are times, however, when the writing of a sequel doesn’t work out. There may be a script written or an idea conceived, but some circumstances that were not originally seen change the entire process. The sequel then becomes its own thing. Or, in some interesting instances, becomes a sequel to an entirely different franchise. What was originally intended to be one thing must be rewritten and reworked into something else. It could work. It could not. That’s the nature of the business.

Blood Diner was one such movie. Michael Tutman (Rick Burks) and George Tutman (Carl Crew) were two brothers who ran a successful diner. Unbeknownst to the patrons, the food was frequently made using human body parts. The owners were forcing cannibalism on the people eating their food. The cannibal diner was actually a front for something much darker and deadlier. The brothers were planning to resurrect a Lumerian goddess named Sheetar with the help of the brain of their uncle Anwar (Drew Godderis). Two detectives were hot on the trail of dead bodies that Michael and George left in their wake.

That might not sound like a sequel to anything. In the end, it wasn’t. But originally, it had a connection to one of the biggest cult movies of all time. Blood Feast was a 1963 film that truly kicked off the splatter horror subgenre. It made gore a major part of the story. When Blood Diner was conceived, it was meant to be a continuation of the Blood Feast story. It was meant to be a sequel to the iconic splatter film, since a true sequel hadn’t been made (one eventually would in 2002). This idea of being a sequel could be seen in the story. There was someone in the food industry murdering women and using their body parts to resurrect a goddess during a feast that hadn’t been held in over 5,000 years. Yet, somewhere along the process of moving from script to screen, the sequel idea was scrapped. Blood Diner became a standalone movie that shared a story with Blood Feast. The ancient goddess was changed from Egyptian to Lumerian. The catering business became a diner. And the 1980s influence came through.

The nail in the coffin of Blood Diner’s chances of being a sequel came in 2002 with the release of Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat. Before that, Blood Diner was considered a sort of spiritual sequel to Blood Feast, in the same way that Everybody Wants Some!! was seen as a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused. It shared the themes, the overall story, and the gore with Blood Feast, though the characters and history were entirely different. But when the official sequel came from the director of Blood Feast, that spiritual sequelness all but disappeared.

The idea of sequels becoming something different only gets more interesting when the focus is put on the big blockbuster films. As opposed to the cult film passion project sequels, studio sequels are pushed based on the money factor. If the original film did good, they could make even more money by turning it into a franchise. They find a story and morph it into a sequel. Or they come up with a sequel idea. But that doesn’t always work out, and the movie must be turned into something else entirely.

The French Connection was a hit film in 1971. It was a police story that had one of the best car chases ever put to film. Popeye Doyle became an action hero of sorts, and Gene Hackman’s performance would be essential to Popeye Doyle’s success on screen. Gene Hackman would reprise the role in 1975 for The French Connection II, which also found success. People ate up the franchise as though it was the next big thing. Of course, the studio would want to continue it. They came up with a script for a third film and pitched it to Gene Hackman. He passed.

That wouldn’t be the end of The French Connection III. It would no longer be called The French Connection III, but it lived on. Gene Hackman passed on it. 20^th Century Fox passed on it. The script moved over to Universal where it was retooled with Sylvester Stallone attached in the lead role. It was released in 1981 as Nighthawks. It found some critical acclaim and made enough at the box office to turn a profit. But it was no The French Connection III.

Then there was the time when there was an attempt to make a sequel to Se7en. The David Fincher crime drama had been a success for New Line Cinema in 1995. It made careers. Mostly the career of David Fincher, but it helped push Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey to stardom as well. It was well received, it made a lot of money at the box office, and it was even nominated for an Academy Award. At some point, there was going to be an attempt at a sequel. It was only a matter of time before that would happen.

Fast forward six years to 2001. Ocean’s Eleven had been released to great success. Brad Pitt was a huge star and was part of the reason Ocean’s Eleven did so well. Another reason for it doing so well was the writer, Ted Griffin. That writer was brought in to come up with a script for a sequel to Se7en, tentatively titled Ei8ht. He wrote and wrote and wrote, but David Fincher didn’t want to make a sequel, so the idea was scrapped. Until ten years later, that is. In 2012, a director was brought on to film the script. A few changes were done to change it from a Se7en sequel, and the film Solace was born. And it was forgotten just as quickly.  The critics didn’t like it and people didn’t go out to see it.

The most successful of the sequel to not-sequel films would span the late 1980s until the late 1990s. It would also span three movies. There was one action franchise that began in 1988 which would help shape the action landscape for years to come. Within that time, three movies were released that were a part of the franchise. Also within that time, three what-ifs were thrown into the mix because every good franchise should have some what ifs. That franchise was Die Hard.

The first Die Hard movie was based on a novel titled Nothing Lasts Forever. That might not seem like a big deal. However, Nothing Lasts Forever was a sequel to a novel called The Detective, which had been made into a movie in 1968, starring Frank Sinatra. They had to offer the lead role of the new adaptation to Sinatra because of contract clauses, but he chose not to work on the film. That led to Nothing Lasts Forever being adapted into a sequel to Commando before becoming its own thing and casting Bruce Willis as the now iconic John McClane.

Unlike most instances where sequels were turned into non-sequels or sequels to other properties, Die Hard became a resounding success. It soared well above The Detective and managed to eclipse Commando. It was by far the most successful of the three properties. It led to a bunch of movies trying to capture the same magic in different locations. Under Siege, Speed, Toy Soldiers, Passenger 57, and Skyscraper were only a few of the movies that fell into the category of Die Hard riffs. A couple of them even got tangled up in the Die Hard sequels.

Die Hard 2 came out in 1990, fresh off the popularity of Die Hard. The producers wanted to quickly put a third out, as well, and settled on a script called Troubleshooter. The script saw terrorists taking over a cruise ship that John McClane just so happened to be on. He would have to do his Die Hard stuff again to save the cruise ship. The problem was that Under Siege was in production while they came across the script, so Fox scrapped the idea. Troubleshooter would later get picked up by Fox again for a different franchise. It became Speed 2: Cruise Control.

That wasn’t the end of the line for a third Die Hard movie, though. Die Hard with a Vengeance came out in 1997. The eventual script that was settled upon was one titled Simon Says, where a terrorist took revenge on a detective who had wronged him in some way in the past. It was originally proposed as a Brandon Lee film, but Lee died before it could be made. The script then sat on the shelf for a while. The producers of Lethal Weapon tried to purchase it to make the fourth film in that franchise, but the purchase never went through. Eventually, it was rewritten into a Die Hard sequel, turning Simon into the brother of Hans Gruber, and things moved forward.

Three times in the Die Hard franchise, a film that was meant to be one thing was turned into another. The first film could have been a sequel to a Sinatra flick, or the second Commando film. That didn’t happen. The original idea for Die Hard 3 was sidelined by Under Siege before being turned into a sequel to Speed. The eventual Die Hard with a Vengeance began as a Brandon Lee action flick and almost became a Lethal Weapon sequel before being turned into the Die Hard sequel that it was. That’s a lot of franchise hopping for one series of movies.

These were only a handful of the instances where scripts went from sequels to standalone or standalone to sequels. Blood Diner was a sequel to Blood Feast until it wasn’t. Nighthawks began as a second sequel to The French Connection. Solace was a proposed sequel to Se7en that became its own thing. And Die Hard had a trio of swapped scripts. They all took a script that was meant to be one thing and changed it into something else.

Hollywood can be like that. Any ideas that get tossed around at one time or another will inevitably be tossed around time and time again. Sequels, remakes, reboots, and all those sorts of things come from the desire to use whatever ideas are available. The same goes for scripts. If a script doesn’t work for one franchise, it will be tinkered with until it works for another or works on its own. The franchises must go on, though. And the scripts must survive somehow. That’s how the business works, for better or worse.

For better or worse, here are a few notes:

• Once again, there are no cast connections, so I’m just going to share some of the 1980s horror movies I’ve watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. The Deadly Spawn (week 19), Monster in the Closet (week 55), Elves (week 106), Remote Control (week 246), The Lair of the White Worm (week 255), Slaughter High (week 279), Chopping Mall (week 306), New Year’s Evil (week 318), and Killer Klowns from Outer Space (week 361).
• Have you seen Blood Diner? Was it a good follow-up to Blood Feast, even if it wasn’t a real sequel? How do you feel about recycled scripts? Let me know what you’re thinking on Twitter or in the comments.
• If there are any movies that you think I should be checking out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies weeks, tell me about them. I’m on Twitter and I’ll check the comments. Just leave the suggestions at either of those places.
• There’s an Instagram for Sunday “Bad” Movies that you should be checking out. It’s fun stuff.
• And now we come to the part of the notes that everyone looks forward to. Here’s where I announce what will be coming up. And it’s a big one. Few adaptations of animated television shows get the same amount of hate that this one gets. The Last Airbender will be the topic of discussion next week. I hope you will join me for that.