Movie Sequels That Messed Me Up As A Child

Movie Sequels That Messed Me Up As A Child

[Ed. Note: Nate Fernald is a writer, a comedian, and one half of the comedy duo Team Submarine. Unfortunately, there are a few movie sequels that really messed him up.]

Whenever a family movie is even remotely successful, “Big Hollywood” tries to cash in on it by making low-budget straight-to-video sequels. As a kid, I would, of course, rent them immediately because I loved their prequels so much. But there was always something off about them — they just felt creepy and unsettling and, more often than not, resulted in nightmares. Here are just a few of the movie sequels that messed me up as a child.

Honey, I Shrunk Just Our Legs: The final installment of the “Honey” quadrilogy in which Wayne Szalinski (played by Rick Moranis) shrinks only his family’s legs. Not necessarily a bad film. It’s packed with lots of classic jokes like “How’s the weather down there?” “Don’t get short with me!” and “I’ll tiny legs what she’s having!” But in the end, I just couldn’t get the image of Rick Moranis with baby legs out of my nightmares.

Milo Or Otis: This dark sequel to the beloved Milo And Otis follows a veterinarian who finds the two animals abandoned in a barn. Both are suffering from some form of animal fever, but she only has enough medicine to save one. She spends the entire movie watching them shiver while trying to decide which one deserves to live. Pretty heavy stuff to see if you’re a kid. (Especially if you’re an Otis fan.)

Bazaam: This wasn’t so much a sequel, but rather a shot-for-shot remake of Kazaam where the part of Shaquille O’Neal was played by a completely-nude Dennis Rodman. Though the movie was basically the same, Dennis Rodman’s giant, tattooed penis was a little much for my child brain to handle.

Lil’ Doubtfires: Since dressing up as an old woman got his ex-wife to allow him to see his children again, Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) somehow reasons that dressing his children up as old women will get his wife to get back together with him. The movie then follows his slow descent into insanity, ending with him being put in a mental institution and his kids refusing to call him “Dad” as medical orderlies force pills down his throat. That said, the worst part of this movie was how bad the kids were at the Mrs. Doubtfire voice. For weeks I had dreams of being strangled by tiny Mrs. Doubtfires WHO COULDN’T EVEN GET THE G-D VOICE RIGHT.

Truther Truther: In this sequel to Liar Liar, Fletcher Reede (Jim Carrey) is cursed and now can’t stop telling his son that 9/11 was an inside job. Weird thing is, this movie came out in 1998, years before the 9/11 attacks, so it really does make you wonder who was behind everything? Because of this film, I’ve had a lot of trouble trusting my “government.”

Look What’s Talking: Look Who’s Talking gave us talking babies. Then Look Who’s Talking Too gave us talking babies and toddlers. Then Look Who’s Talking Now gave us talking animals. And finally, Look What’s Talking gave us what we’d all been demanding: talking piles of discarded magazines. This was, surprisingly, the first of the “Look/Talking” series to use the line “Hey, I’m talkin’ here!” But the humor ended quickly when it was followed by a horrible scene of a teen girl making a collage while the magazines screamed in pain as she tore out their pages. To this day, I can’t tear an image out of a magazine without hearing Joe Pesci (voice of “Forbes”) screaming for his life.

So those are the movie sequels that messed me up. What were the movie sequels that messed you up?

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