My Favorite Trilogy

Trilogies are an American cinematic institution. No studio is happy with just two films while few franchises can make number four successfully. While some are loved (Lord of the Rings, the original Star Wars) and some are hated (the new Star Wars), most fall into obscurity and are completely unrecognized. For example, only western fans are aware that The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is the third installment of Sergio Leone’s “Dollar’s Trilogy.” Few realize Wes Craven actually churned out two decent follow up films to his 90’s smash Scream. And while Army of Darkness can be considered the best “second remake” of the original Evil Dead (Evil Dead II being the first “remake”) it is also a pretty bad ass book end to Sam Raimi’s best trilogy (eat that Spiderman).

With all of this said, I must say that my favorite trilogy of all time is one that is completely unrecognized. In fact, I am the only person to consider it a trilogy…but it is a trilogy non the less.

In 12 years, dating from 1985 to 1997, there were three movies that were closely related in tone, subject matter, and genre. They weren’t made by the same people or released by the same studio, but their cohesiveness is undeniable.

These three films are what I like to call the “Mid 80s to Late 90s Teen Comedy / Horror Satires.” The title may not be as cool as The Red Carpet Trilogy, but it will do for now.
The three films are three of my favorites ever. I watched them dozens of times growing up and try to watch them once a year even now.

They are:
TEEN WOLF
MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

If you’ve seen all of these films, you already know what I’m talking about.

TEEN WOLF (an American classic) is the story of a teenage boy who finds High School to be even more unbearable when he discovers he’s actually a Lycanthrope aka a Werewolf.

MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK (a criminally underrated film) is the story of a teenage boy who finds High School to be even more unbearable when he is killed and returns from the dead as a rotting Zombie.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (which spawned one of greatest TV shows of all time) is the story of a teenage valley girl who finds High School to be even more unbearable when she discovers she is destined to slay vampires for the rest of her life.

While it may seem like I am mocking these films by describing them similarly, I am actually stating why I consider them to be a trilogy. All are High School comedies but deal with horror archetypes.

Being a big horror and John Hughes fan, these movies naturally click for me, but there is just something about these movies that I love. I don’t know what it is. It is almost as if the film makers (and everyone else involved) knew that the movies were complete crap and figured they had nothing to lose. So instead to trying so hard to make a great film and screwing up, they just had fun with it…and it showed. It probably didn’t hurt that each film had some pretty incredible talent as well. TEEN WOLF came out just after Michael J. Fox became a household name with Back to the Future. MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK had some dudes in it named Matthew Fox, Matthew McConaughey, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. BUFFY wasn’t too bad either with Hillary Swank’s first screen performance and Ben Afflack in a basketball uni.

But I’m not kidding when I say these movies are actually good. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is an obvious example considering it was written by Joss Whedon who would later become a fan boy god with the Buffy series, Angel, Firefly, and now Dollhouse. MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK, which contains some of the best one liners I have ever heard (“Are you hungry? There’s plenty of food left over from your funeral”), was written by Dean Lorey who would later become the Executive Producer of Arrested Development, which is probably the funniest TV show ever made.

But what could definitely be considered the “glue” of this trilogy, is one man…Andrew Lowery…who starred in both MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Lowery’s pitch perfect “Awww Shucks” vocal tone and incredibly mediocre looks made him the every-teen males of the Mid 80s to Late 90s generation could relate to. He’s the only actor I can think of to pull off the name Johnny Dingle and still look like a bad ass.

Unfortunately, Lowery was unable to hit Shia LeBeouf fame and fell into a life of crap(ier) movies. Perhaps the best bit of trivia is that he is now a producer and writer. In 1999, he wrote the flaming bag of shit Simon Sez starring Dennis Rodman and Dane Cook. What makes this even funnier is he wrote it with Andrew Miller who starred in Cube, but they referred to their partnerhip as “The Drews” (seriously).

Now that I have gone completely off subject, I will wrap up with this. TEEN WOLF, MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK, and BUFFY are three films that could never be made today. They were three films that were not made with a lot of effort, but with a lot of heart. They ended up dying sad, cinematic deaths, but will not be forgotten on DVD. I highly recommend watching them, enjoying them, and realizing that the Mid 80s to Late 90s had these films to entertain them while they dealt with high school…today’s generation has garbage like Jonathan Tucker Must Die.