Yahoo News 7 long-running movie franchises you never knew existed
James Bond: 24 films. Star Trek: 13. Star Wars: 10. Alien: 9. Fast & Furious: 8… These are the movie franchises that everyone knows about.
But there are other, less heralded movie franchises out there, ones that you've most likely never heard of. Or maybe you were aware of the first film, the one that did alright, but didn't realise they were still chugging out sequels. Here, then, are seven long-running film franchises that somehow missed the multiplex...
1. The Home Alone series (5 films)
The first sequel you know about, but it was with the little-seen Home Alone 3 in 1997 that the series went most violently off-track. The Macaulay Culkin-less instalment moved the story away from the McAllisters onto nine-year-old Alex Pruitt (played by Alex D Linz), who, while off school with chicken pox, has to fend off thieves who are after a top-secret chip hidden in his toy car. Neither original writer John Hughes nor director Chris Columbus had anything to do with this one, though the film does boast an early big-screen appearance from Scarlett Johansson as Alex's older sister.
Home Alone 4 brought back the characters of Kevin McAllister (though now played by the charmless Mike Weinberg) and Marv (French Stewart, replacing Daniel Stern) and was released direct-to-video in 2003, while 2012's Home Alone: The Holiday Heist starred Christian Martyn as 10-year-old Finn Baxter who finds himself having to defend his family's holiday home against, yep, a gang of thieves. Surely one day – ONE DAY! – Macaulay Culkin might be coaxed into signing on for a proper Home Alone 3 with a grownup Kevin as the hopeless parent… Why is this not a thing already?
2. The Tremors series (6 films)
The mooted Tremors TV series which would have brought Kevin Bacon back to his most culty hit may be dead at SyFy, but the movie series plods passionlessy on, with the latest, Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell, being dropped onto Netflix only last month (only the US one mind, there's no sign of it over here yet).
Bacon bolted after the really-quite-brilliant first film, but co-star Michael Gross has hung around ever since, even appearing as his character's great-grandfather in the 1889-set Tremors 4: The Legend Begins. The plots are mostly the same for each one, but, fair play to the franchise, they keep things fresh by changing locale for every film, from Mexico to South Africa to the mountains of Canada.
A previous telly series, again starring Michael Gross and picking up from the end of Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, ran for 13 episodes on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2003.
3. The Beethoven series (8 films)
Penned by a pseudonymous John Hughes, the original Beethoven smashed the box office in 1992, grossing $147 million against a tiddly $18 million budget. A theatrically-released sequel, Beethoven's 2nd (with returning stars Charles Grodin and Bonnie Hunt), followed in 1993, but after that the Beethoven series become a sorry direct-to-video affair, with a slowly declining quality of guest actors, from Judge Reinhold in Beethoven's 3rd to Jonathan Silverman (star of Robo-Dog: Airborne) in the latest, Beethoven's Treasure Trail.
Canonically, it's meant to be the same dog in every film, even though logically Beethoven would have gone to that dog kennel in the sky long ago. Maybe that'll be the title of the final film in the series, 'Beethoven Goes to Heaven'…
4. The Bloodfist series (9 films)
Original Bloodfist headliner Don 'the Dragon' Wilson stayed with this bafflingly long-running martial-arts franchise for eight increasingly crappy movies, from the first in 1989 to Bloodfist VIII: Trained to Kill in 1996.
A Wilson-less reboot of the series, Bloodfist 2050, released in 2005, took the franchise into sci-fi waters, with five-time world martial-arts champion Matt Mullins toplining as a street fighter who finds himself searching for his late brother's killer in a future Los Angeles. Of course.
5. The Ernest series (10 films)
Like Fred Figglehorn, Pat Riley and the Annoying Orange, Ernest P Worrell was a comedy character beloved by his doltish fanbase and pretty much loathed by everyone else. Jim Varney's gormless, ever-mugging everyman (catchphrase – "knowhutImean?") began life as a character on a series of commercials, before making an undeserved leap to the big screen in 1986.
The first four movies, beginning with 1986's Dr Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam were all moderately successful, but by 1991's Ernest Scared Stupid, the shine was wearing off. Varney would clock up ten Ernest films by the time of his death from lung cancer, with 1998's Ernest in the Army finally retiring the character for good.
6. The Disney Buddies series (12 films)
In 1997, Disney released Air Bud, a slightly rubbishy, but surprisingly successful comedy about a golden retriever who becomes – we're not making this up – a successful basketball star. A sequel, Air Bud: Golden Retriever (brilliant title, guys) was released in 1998, but crashed at the box office.
Still, that didn't stop the House of Mouse from continuing the franchise as a direct-to-DVD series with Air Bud: World Pup (2000), Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch (2002) and Air Bud: Spikes Back (2003). After that the franchise was renamed 'Air Buddies', and focused on the offspring of the original Air Bud, taking the pups on a variety of Indiana Jones-style adventures. The Air Buddies series clocked up another seven flicks, and even two festive spinoffs with 2010's The Search for Santa Paws and 2012's Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups. Given that the last movie was five years ago (2013's Super Buddies, which saw the pups, somewhat inevitably, develop superpowers) it's probably safe to say that the series is finally – FINALLY! – done now.
7. The Puppet Master series (13 films)
Made in reaction to the soaring success of the Chucky movies, the Puppet Master series answered the question, 'What's more scary than a killer doll?' with the answer, 'an ARMY of killer dolls!' Released straight-to-video in 1989, Puppet Master did decent enough business to spawn a 1990 sequel.
And then another. And another. And indeed another, right up to, well, now (the 13th film in the series, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, arrives later this year).
Bargain-basement horror of the most penny-pinched kind, the series has gone back in time, into the future, turned its titular villains into good guys, made one film using almost entirely leftover footage from previous films and has gone through four actors as puppet creator André Toulon (including Room ledge Greg Sestero). Series creator Charles Band also has two other concurrently running franchises, the Evil Bong series (about a sentient, malevolent bong) and the The Gingerdead Man films (about a killer biscuit, created from a mix of gingerbread and the ashes of a dead serial killer, obviously), both of which were stir-fried for the oh-yes-it-really-exists Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong in 2013.
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