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"Margot Tenenbaum was adopted at age two. Her father had always noted this when introducing her."

The above line, courtesy of Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, has not much of anything to do with this week’s column and yet I could hear it running - or more accurately, briskly jogging - through my mind as I contemplated a certain truth. Some Chapter Twos are welcomed like the prodigal son returned; some are regarded as the runt of the litter who nevertheless inspires great affection; and some, such as this week’s selection, are shunned as the bastard child, disowned and driven away to live off twigs and mushrooms in the forest. If the entire world can collectively agree to let it remain “out of sight, out of mind,” so much the better.

I came across an on-line essay this last week that, in response to the efforts of the recent documentary Best Worst Movie to anoint Troll 2 as the worst sequel of all time, counter-offered with Exorcist II: The Heretic to fill that dubious position. This is not a new candidate, and has been kicked around as such since shortly after its 1977 release but the criticisms leveled against it were bilious and set to full mock. I have seen the latter film exactly once, and, as I confessed in one of my earliest columns, I have realized that it behooves me to revisit all the films I set out to write about. I have no doubt I will get it to in the coming year (Troll 2 is another matter). Perhaps I can even make it an early New Year’s resolution?

The belabored point I wish to make is that accepting anybody else’s notion of the “worst” or “best” [fill in the blank] is always a dubious proposition. Should there have been a sequel to The Exorcist? A second sequel? Competing versions of the same prequel? I leave such notions to the bean counters and Renny Harlin’s and Paul Schrader’s respective consciences. It has always been my intention to avoid excessive hyperbole and simply articulate my reactions to the films I choose, adding some context, highlighting a key moment or moments as part of the larger picture. “It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate,” as the asexual vegan sage once said. “It takes practice to articulate an even-handed cinematic view,” he might have added.

I live 20 blocks down the street from the Clinton Street Theater, a charming hole in the wall whose grandest claim to fame has been presenting The Rocky Horror Picture Show every Saturday at midnight for the last 1,664 weeks, give or take a week here or there for weather, illness, and the like. This means that fans have been doing The Time Warp and unraveling untold numbers of Scott toilet paper rolls continuously at The Clinton since April 1978, a mere three years after the parody/homage to 1950s science fiction movies, itself spun off from a London stage musical, failed as a first run feature and slowly became reborn as an experience and way of life unto itself.

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