Most Ridiculous Horror Movie Resurrections

The horror genre is well known for spawning endless sequels. Any time a horror movie is successful it seems inevitable that the studio will try to create a franchise. The problem is most horror films end with the defeat and often death of the killer so they run into the same problem with each sequel, how do they resurrect the bad guy?

The big slasher series have developed this into a fine art of comedy with villain resurrections becoming increasingly far-fetched and ridiculous as the sequels pile up. Here we have a look at some of the most memorable horror movie killer resurrections.

My favourite has to be Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th VI. With Jason dead and buried they had to come up with a new way for him to rise from the grave. Tommy Jarvis killed Jason in Friday the 13th IV when he was just a kid and now he has grown up he still can't shake the memory of the machete wielding madman. He has nightmares that Jason is still lurking around and so in order to put his mind at rest he goes to the cemetery with a mate and digs up the grave. He wants to see the corpse with his own eyes but when he does it brings forth the memory of what Jason did to him and he becomes enraged. He grabs a metal fence post which he rams into the rotten corpse. Satisfied the killer really is dead he turns to leave, but before he can lightning strikes the fence post sending electricity coursing through the corpse and sparking Jason back into life for yet another killing spree.

Freddy Krueger is another guilty party in the resurrection game and A Nightmare on Elm Street IV is definitely his most groan inducing return to life. Kincaid dreams he is back in the scrap yard where they buried Freddy at the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street III. Kincaid's dog bizarrely pees fire on the grave and it washes away the holy water keeping Freddy trapped, allowing him to return to life and resume his revenge trip.

Sadly even a quality series like Alien is not exempt from the ridiculous return from death. With Ripley's descent into the fire as the alien bursts from her chest at the end of Alien III the next in the series Alien: Resurrection had to find a way to bring her back. It is actually set 200 years after Alien III and the producers obviously felt that there was no way they could have another film in the series without their iconic leading lady. Their solution was to bring her back as a clone, spliced with alien DNA.

In Hellraiser III they had to find a way to resurrect Pinhead and so the film begins with him nonsensically trapped in a stone pillar. A sleazy rock club owner buys him and is shocked one night when after banging one of his patrons she gets gobbled up by the statue. Now I'm not sure how you would react to that but I don't think you'd agree to keep feeding the creepy statue. Of course that's exactly what he does and naturally he ends up getting eaten himself and Pinhead is made flesh again.

Halloween V offers yet another daft example. Michael Myers was shot at least hundred times at the end of Halloween IV before being blown down a mineshaft. At the beginning of Halloween V we find out he escaped into a river and was found by a hermit who for reasons known only to himself decided to drag the masked killer back to his shack and attentively care for him. Naturally when Myers wakes up he kicks off his killing spree by offing the hermit, that's gratitude for you!

The horror genre is littered with resurrections. Another typical scenario is the bad guy who wants to resurrect a demon or open a gate to hell, you have to wonder if these guys have ever seen a horror film before, I mean what exactly is their expectation when they summon a hideous killing machine? Inevitably the bad guy who resurrected them is usually the first to die.

A few modern horrors have taken a different approach to bringing dead characters back. In Scream III the horror movie geek Randy pops up for an appearance via a video he recorded before his death. This technique has also been used to bring back Jigsaw in the Saw series of films.

Resurrecting dead characters has become another cliché in a genre which seems to thrive on them. It seems very unlikely that we've seen the last of this practice.

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