In 1973, the distribution company behind sleazy horror classic The Last House on the Left — Wes Craven’s feature debut — released the similarly grimy Don’t Look in the Basement (a.k.a. The Forgotten). Though it never achieved the notoriety of Last House, it earned a minor cult following. Now, it’s getting a sequel.
Yep, an actual sequel — not, as Last House got, a remake. And it’s not just a cynical cash grab, either. Turns out Don’t Look in the Basement 2 director Anthony Brownrigg is the son of S.F. Brownrigg, who made the original. (The senior Brownrigg, who died in 1996, was a bit of a low-budget horror auteur in the 1970s, though Basement remains his best-known work.)
Basement 2 continues the first film’s mental-patients-gone-wild theme, even returning to film at some of the same Texas locations. In an interview with the local Mexia, Texas paper during the 2014 shoot, Brownrigg said:
“Dad had always wanted to do a sequel. We took some of the notes he had made over the years and decided, ‘We’re going to do a sequel, a modern-day thriller.’ In the first film, almost everybody dies except for two of the main characters, Sam and the nurse. We have Sam who’s actually going to be back 40 years later as an elderly patient, so we’re continuing the story of the guy that survived the last movie and basically ending his story, finding out what happened to him all those years later. It’s more of a supernatural thriller than a horror movie.”
One actor, Camilla Carr — who back in 1973 played a patient who commits murder by suitcase — returns; the original Sam, Bill McGhee, died in 2007, so he’s played by replacement actor Willie H. Minor.
Here’s the Don’t Look in the Basement 2 trailer ahead of the film’s May 24 DVD/Blu-ray release (a VOD release is planned for the summer):
And, since the special edition Blu-ray will include the 1973 original, here’s the very memorable (and influential … remember Edgar Wright’s faux trailer for Grindhouse?) Don’t Look in the Basement trailer, too: