WHAT REMAKES SHOULD BE MADE?
July 9th 2010 01:07
If the original movie had a great premise or synopsis, but didn’t have the production values (or director and actors) behind it to make it as convincing as it should’ve been then a remake is a good call. On occasion, the direction and acting might’ve been fine, but the budgetary constraints and maybe the morality of the time made the movie more of an atmospheric gem, thus a remake allows the story’s true potent carnal viscera to be unleashed, such as the original Cat People (1942). On many occasions the movie was simply too trashy to be taken seriously, yet from a modernised perspective could be updated to spectacular effect!
In the case of Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead, a zombie carnage cult classic , he made sure the special effects were state of the art (as much as I love SFX guru Tom Savini, his work on Romero’s original is more graphically cartoony than genuinely shocking). In some cases, it might just be the “updating” from black and white to colour, and the performances less stylized, that gives the movie some much-needed zing, although that artistic and technique decision is arguable of course.
So, with remakes given the Horrorphile green light (I wanted to say crimson or scarlet light, but that suggests halting), but under strict conditions, what movies should be remade? Here are (another) five movies I think could be remade and turned into an exciting contemporary cinema experience for the hungry horrorphile. However I must mention that I’m in no way saying the originals of the first two are inferior movies, on the contrary.
The original: Robert Weiner’s silent, black and white expressionist masterpiece about a story being related that concerns a traveling carnival and the doctor and his sideshow clairvoyant, a somnambulist, who predicts a murder, then abducts a girl.
The remake: In a small European modern day township a young couple being embroiled in the sinister goings-on of a deranged traveling carnivalist and his entranced serial killer.
The new director: David Lynch (The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks)
The original: John Carpenter’s super-low budget sf black comedy about a small crew of men onboard a claustrophobic spaceship whose job it is blowing up unstable planets. Along the way they encounter a bizarre alien creature and a temperamental bomb.
The remake: Ditching the comedy to make a creepy and disturbing thriller of cosmic madness and impending doom when an onboard bomb activates and can’t be disengaged, whilst an outlandish and disturbing alien stalks the frazzled crew.
The new director: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (King of the Hill)
The original: Tobe Hooper’s very-low budget, almost theatrical, chamber piece concerning the dodgy affairs of a disgruntled Louisiana hotel owner, his annoying guests … and his very hungry pet crocodile in the swampy pit next door.
The remake: A modern grindhouse experience with loads of sleazy sex and gruesome reptilian carnage using state of the art prosthetics and CGI amidst a heavy, humid atmosphere of pure menace.
The new director: Xavier Gens (Frontiers)
The original: Lucio Fulci’s shameless cash-in on Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (originally called Zombi 2, although it’s not a sequel, but more widely known under its UK title Zombie Flesh Eaters), concerns the search for a woman's father at a tropical island where a doctor desperately searches for the cause and cure of a recent epidemic of the undead.
The remake: An all-out zombie apocalypse on a lush tropical island, featuring eye-popping gore and a bunch of spunky, charismatic actors getting munched, and including an outrageously over-the-top battle between a zombie and a great white!
The new director: Michele Soavi (Stagefright, The Church, Dellamorte, Dellamore)
The original: David Blyth’s made-on-the-smell-of-an-oily- rag shocker about a man who was hypnotized as a kid by a mad scientist to kill his parents and ends up in a mental institution, and as an adult he returns to seek revenge.
The remake: A surrealistic psychopath on the rampage with a tunnel vision perspective from the killer’s point-of-view. A boundary-pushing 3-D experience unlike anything you’ve ever seen … or felt!
The new director: Gaspar Noe (I Stand Alone, Irreversible)
So what movies do you think could/should be remade?
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