The Sleuth Crew came together for this list of ten movies that may be worthy of a modern remake.
Few trends raise more ire in movie fans
than the seemingly incessant need to remake every conceivable film in
history. Blame it on a lack of
creativity, blind optimism, or plain old Hollywood greed, it really doesn’t
matter why it’s happening, so perhaps it’s time to embrace the inevitable, and
discuss which movies actually deserve
a remake. Some films were sloppily
adapted from their source material and just didn’t quite get things right the
first time, and fans deserve a better version.
Sometimes our nostalgia gets the better of us, and we’re willing to let
the laziness slide for a chance at another adventure with our favorite
characters in our favorite worlds. And
sometimes, not often, but sometimes,
a story is so wonderful, so worth telling, that a reimagining has the potential
to allow creative lightning to strike twice. -P.M.
A Clockwork Orange - Patrick McDonald
The inclusion of this movie on this list
should raise more than a few eyebrows.
It’s not uncommon to hear A
Clockwork Orange lauded as one of Kubrick’s “masterpieces.” Beautifully shot and cleverly adapted from
Anthony Burgess’ novel, it doesn’t get much more “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix
it” than this in the film world. Perhaps
because it is so good, and it is woefully unlikely that another filmmaker could
match Kubrick’s presentation style, that a remake, or more accurately, a
reimagining could be worthwhile.
There are some incredibly talented
directors and screenwriters working today – dare we imagine a version of A Clockwork Orange with the tense
pacing, striking imagery, and incredible scoring of David Fincher and his
partnership with Reznor and Ross?
Naturally, it would look and feel very little like Kubrick’s version,
and that is perfectly fine! Alex’s journey and the film’s themes remain
accessible and enjoyable for adventurous audiences, and could easily resonate
with young people utterly desensitized by the insanity that is the
internet. Even casting antihero Alex
would be an exciting exercise today – there are numerous young men (or women?!)
performing that could give the character incredible life. I’d throw Evan Peters’ name into the ring –
watch the first season of American Horror
Story and tell me he can’t pull off the oxymoronic sinister innocence of
Alex DeLarge with ease. In the end, most
detractors would likely counter any of these suggestions with one word –
“Why?” Why remake something unique and
wonderful? That argument, my dear
droogies, is simply your better sense telling you to fear change. A remake should never alter how the original
makes you feel, and has the potential to create something beautiful and
new. So, perhaps the best response is –
“Why not?”
 |
| "No. I don't like this idea." |
The Running Man - Andrew Kotwicki
The Running Man is ostensibly an
Arnold Schwarzenegger summer action sci-fi classic of absurdist brawn and
cheeseball one-liners about a man in a dystopian future fighting for his life
on a deadly televised game show where convicts are pursued by violent
assassins. Some of the big fella’s
greatest moments of comic hilarity in his career are there for the cherry picking. And yet, there’s a sense there was originally
more at stake in the premise than what ultimately wound up onscreen. While author Stephen King may have had his
share of film adaptations of his work deviating drastically from the source
(including a lawsuit to have his name removed from The Lawnmower Man), few are as noticeably antithetical in tone and
intent as the translation of The Running
Man from screen to film. Penned
under the briefly used pseudonym Richard Bachman, King’s nightmarish vision of
a futuristic Roman Empire depicted a scrawny and weak protagonist, ala Jonathan
Pryce from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil,
being pursued ruthlessly around the world by bounty hunters.
Designed with the stopwatch tension of a race
against time as his pursuers close in, King’s version of the story is far
bleaker and more apocalyptic, providing a controversial, bombastic finale that easily
eclipses anything in the Schwarzenegger film.
Understandably, adapting the tale as written would have proven difficult
as darker endings weren’t well tolerated in the 1980s and Schwarzenegger’s
involvement unintentionally tipped the proceedings closer to the sensibilities
of Vince McMahon. That its common
knowledge what people know in movies as The
Running Man isn’t quite what an author of King’s stature had in mind, as
well as the numerous remakes of his books into either films or the extended miniseries,
is all the more reason this is the perfect film to remake. Not as a replacement to the Schwarzenegger
film, which is still an entertaining B movie, but to set the record straight
and finally let King share his horror story as originally intended.
 |
| "This idea is supported by rednecks all over the U.S." |
Fire in the Sky - Andrew Kotwicki
Recently
rumors have been circulating about the internet that Travis Walton, the alien
abductee behind the book The Walton
Experience as well as the 1993 science fiction horror film Fire in the Sky, has been pursuing the
possibility of remaking the film. While
some cinemagoers will no doubt balk at an extraterrestrial terror show as
iconic as Fire in the Sky needn’t be
remade, UFO enthusiasts and readers of The
Walton Experience can’t help but quibble over the irrefutable fact that
what’s onscreen isn’t quite what Mr. Walton described in his memoir of the
events at hand. Far stranger and in a
way more fascinating than what we saw happen to D.B. Sweeney in the film,
Travis Walton’s autobiography of an alien encounter is much closer to Whitley
Strieber’s Communion than it is to
Ridley Scott’s Alien.
There’s no denying Fire in the Sky provides, as of current, a profoundly traumatizing
experience of alien abduction, leaving the victim Travis Walton much like a
broken rape victim. Given the malleable
nature of such an outlandish story, with skepticism quick to debunk any
validity Walton’s tale may or may not have had, it’s pretty easy to bend the
rules with an alien abduction film based on a true story. At the end of the day, theaters need to fill
their auditoriums and who in the average moviegoing collective wants to see
something metaphysical and odd when they can attend a funhouse of terror
vision? When you have Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic visual
effects team behind the funhouse, the answer to Paramount executives at the
time was pretty clear. While I’m still
eagerly awaiting a Blu-Ray release of Fire
in the Sky for its spectacular alien sequence, the idea of retelling the
extraterrestrial close encounter of the fourth kind as Walton himself claims it
happened is an intriguing and welcome prospect I would love to see happen! No, it won’t be the same as seeing D. B.
Sweeney being terrorized by emaciated, sickly looking humanoids, nor should it
be either.
Deathrow Gameshow - Lee Lind
Sometimes
the best remakes are those little known obscure films that never made it big.
Even better, the original film doesn't have to be great, which provides a
challenging platform for improvement. Deathrow
Gameshow is a prime example. The original stars John McCafferty as Chuck
Toedan, the host of the popular game show Live or Die. Filmed in front of a
live studio audience, convicts on death row are given the opportunity to win
fabulous prizes, such as a pre-signed stay of execution by the Governor!
Hilarity ensues as contestants struggle to complete an assortment of deadly
challenges. Those who fail are immediately executed, much to the audience’s
delight. The only problem with the film are the deaths. Many are implied, with
little gore to please horror fans. A remake of this film could easily improve
the original with some creative blood splattering ideas. It would make for a
fantastic addition to the gore comedy genre. Creative limb dismemberments,
flesh searing, and piranha pits would provide loads of gags, physically and
figuratively speaking. And what horror fan wouldn’t like to see a splash zone
seating area for the audience. Like all good remakes it would benefit by
keeping the memorable moments of the original intact. The game show challenge
Dance of the Seven Boners would be a must. Most of all the film could go much
darker. It is a sinister concept presented as entertainment. It should make
viewers uncomfortable, yet horrifically intrigued. It’s the reason we all slow
down to look at a freeway accident. Witty comments will always provide comedic
moments, but the best part about a gore comedy is what audiences will laugh at
when they are not hinted to do so.
Hellraiser - Chris Jordan
 |
| "Remake? Yes! More pain. More suffering." |
Yes, Hellraiser may
be a classic of the horror genre... but let's be honest: it's also pretty
flawed and uneven. Its classic reputation was deservedly earned by Clive
Barker's iconic Cenobytes and the truly creepy mythology that surrounds them,
but there's a lot more to the movie than just Pinhead and his cohorts, and it
isn't all so great. As a writer, Barker came up with something very original
here: an unholy hybrid of demonic horror and psychosexual suspense, mixed
together in a story where each of those elements should enhance the
other. But as a first-time director, Barker just couldn't quite pull the pieces
together. While he understood how to create great atmosphere, he didn't really
understand directing actors to create strong, full characters. By the very
nature of the term, a psychosexual horror story needs to have psychological
depth to really work; depth that comes from well-developed characters whose
psyches the film can explore. Unfortunately, Barker and his actors struggled to
create characters capable of carrying the movie, and at least a couple are
either so wooden or so lacking in depth that it is really hard to be invested
in their story, even when we clearly should be. When the focus shifts back to
the Cenobytes and their mythology, the film gets really good again, but
nonetheless, it is still a movie that only half-works; and even if that half really
works, that's a big problem.
That half-unfulfilled
potential, when a movie is good, but falls just short of being great when it
clearly could have been, is so profoundly frustrating. For that reason, this
story deserves a good remake, to learn from the mistakes of the original and be
the film that it rightfully should have been the first time around. A remake is
allegedly in the works now, and although the project has been caught in pre-production
hell for several years, around Halloween Clive Barker said that it is indeed
happening... and that he would be writing it. That sounds perfect: an extra 30
years of experience should easily allow Barker to revisit the story, make it
stronger, and fix his first-time-filmmaker mistakes. All it needs now is a
director who is capable of doing the material justice. Guillermo Del Toro, with
his talent for extra-dark, psychologically-driven fantasy/horror, would be
perfect; too bad he probably wouldn't agree to work on another Weinstein
production after what they did to Mimic. If Barker stays on as writer
(it's still just pre-production, so anything can change), and if a director is
chosen who can handle the material with the right blend of depth and nastiness,
we could get the ultimate Hellraiser film.
The Day the Earth Caught Fire - Andrew Kotwicki
In the era of modern science fiction disaster films being remade ad
nauseam, one of the more thought provoking slow burns of the genre that has yet
to have a second look with today’s modern technological feats is the 1961
British classic The Day the Earth Caught
Fire. With the nuclear fears being
stirred once again by the recent Godzilla
redux, this is perfect character driven visual effects fodder that could
both provoke discussion and showcase some brilliant special effects work. What’s more, people need to forget about the
disastrous M. Night Shyamalan vehicle The
Happening. Anyway, the film in
question concerns meteorological changes the Earth gradually begins exhibiting
after a barrage of nuclear testing coming from both the United States and the
Soviet Union. A journalist whose
marriage is on the rocks experiences the slow burn of an apocalypse firsthand
as vegetation and life gradually dries up from increasing heat and humidity. What made the original film so effective was
that it depicted seemingly natural phenomena such as intense fog and drout
gradually transforming our planet’s landscape until it looked much like an
extraterrestrial desert.
Where the
original film used shifts in sepia tone to tint the black and white images
closer towards the look of a blast furnace, modern filmmaking has become so
accustomed to the monochromatic look of directors like David Fincher that it
would be an easy fit for audiences to accept the world around them turning into
a shade of deep reddish orange. The
disaster genre is so often maligned by the critical establishment that a
thought provoking and realistically paced drama about such an epidemic
threatening all of mankind would absolutely be a welcome antidote to the usual
Roland Emmerich fare. It’s worth noting
the original film (though tame by today’s standards) was given an X rating in
the UK for its nudity, as the characters began disrobing due to the intense
overheated atmosphere with the sweat of their naked bodies glistening on the
camera. With the current acceptance of
provocative sexual content and nudity as seen in shows like Game of Thrones, such an adult treatment
of the material that could only go so far in 1961 seems to be a welcome and
mature freedom to apply to inarguably the most believably real science fiction
social critique ever made. This story
deserves to be told again and not simply remembered as a product of the bygone
era of thought provoking 60s British cinema.
Bad Day at Black Rock - Andrew Kotwicki
The idea of remaking a controversial John Sturges classic with Spencer
Tracy seems unthinkable, but in our current xenophobic cultural climate and the
concept behind shows like David Lynch’s Twin
Peaks, Bad Day at Black Rock seems
more vital now than ever. In the middle
of a barren desert known as Black Rock, a military man named John Macreedy
(Spencer Tracy) stops in the ghost town populated by a small band of rednecks
and lowlife scumbags to deliver a medal of honor to a local man whose son was
killed in action in the Second World War.
Almost immediately, he finds himself being relentlessly harassed and
threatened by the townspeople.
Unbeknownst to Macreedy, the town harbors a dark and violent secret they
will strive to protect from being revealed at all costs, even if it means
murder!
The idea behind an out-of-towner
inadvertently unveiling a crime hidden by a local town out in the middle of an
open desert evokes the open Hellscapes of films like Wake in Fear and, most recently, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. While you can run in any direction, there’s
nowhere to go, making the setting an open trap.
While the Western genre has had its continued share of ups and downs in
recent cinema, directors like Joel and Ethan Coen as well as Tommy Lee Jones have
successfully revitalized the genre in the mainstream public eye. Part of the excitement behind Bad Day at Black Rock is the seemingly
meek and unassuming Macreedy also has something to hide: he’s a silent warrior
who, much like Ryan Gosling’s nameless driver in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive will sting hard when backed into a
corner. Something of a forgotten classic
of 1950s Cinemascope filmmaking, Bad Day
at Black Rock touches on everything from thrilling drama, film noir, and
social commentary. Most of all, it
depicts a lawless town with a lone figure ready to clean house and deliver
justice where it’s deserved.
Deadly Friend - Blake O. Kleiner
You remember the Alice Cooper song
“Teenage Frankenstein”? Well, if you apply that title literally, you get a
pretty decent idea about Deadly Friend. The story of a young genius who
resurrects the love of his young life with a robot brain (played creepily by a
young Kristy Swanson), this is one of director Wes Craven’s sweeter offerings.
Unlike most slasher films where the Meet Cutes are just a paint-by-numbers setup
to fulfill the genre’s tits-and-ass quota, Deadly Friend’s protagonists
actually bring the feels. Granted, it won’t have anyone crying for any reason
other than uproarious laughter at the site of a decapitation by basketball, but
it is one of the rare films of the 1980s that made us feel some empathy for
characters who didn’t come off as stock creations lined up for slaughter.
 |
| "Do I get to star? Then, yes." |
Discovering Deadly Friend is like
digging up a forgotten gem from the now-legendary horror director. It’s nice
and shiny, sparkles in all the right places, has an intelligent script by none
other than Oscar-winner Bruce Joel Rubin (Jacob’s Ladder) but then you
turn it over and find a smear of dog crap on it in the form of typical 80s
horror tropes. Of course we have to throw in one last jump scare that’s not
only pointless, but dispels any emotional resonance we may have carried with us
from the theater. This is why the film deserves to be remade—to make good on
the promise of its core story without all of the cliches. Also take in account
that our technology has evolved to where the concept of a human with a
microchip brain could make for incredibly terrifying and prescient science
fiction horror. A human mind recompiling into a hybrid of artificial
intelligence might have already spawned one bad film (talking about you, Transcendence),
but that doesn’t make the idea less fascinating. In the hands of a capable
director like Adam Wingard, a filmmaker with an established understanding of
technological horrors, and a killer sense of humor to boot (see The Guest
for one of the most entertaining film going experiences of 2014), Deadly
Friend could be the modern take on Frankenstein our generation is
sorely lacking.
Army of Darkness - Blake O. Kleiner
Put away your torches and pitchforks; Army
of Darkness is perfect just the way it is. That it happens to be the last
of a trilogy with two other equally adored Evil Dead films makes it
something even more rare, like a unicorn that shits rainbows of blood and guts.
Is there a cult hero as iconic as Bruce Campbell brandishing a chainsaw on his
severed wrist, holding a shotgun with his one good hand, berating a mob of
medieval “primitive screwheads”? If there is, I’m not aware of one. To know
this film is to love it, and if you don’t love it, we can’t be friends. This is
the Citizen Kane of the tongue-in-cheek sword-and-sorcery horror comedy
genre. Oh wait, there aren’t many of those? Well, there should be.
 |
| "Is this Blake guy crazy or what?!!" |
Back in the day, when I was so obsessed
with this film it was playing in my house on repeat—Army of Darkness on
repeat, constant y’all—I searched out every bit of information about it I could
find. One of the things I managed to procure in all my scouring of the internet
was a copy of Sam Raimi’s original first draft, back when it was called The
Medieval Dead. It was like a completely different film, far more ambitious,
and filled with balls-to-the-wall demon action. More than that, it stayed true
to Ash’s character. Not that I would ever give up the “Duke Nukem” lines, but
the Ash in this film is not the same bumbling dingbat we rooted for in Evil
Dead II. Ash went from being an Average Joe Everyman to being a superhero.
Awesome, yes, but even 15 years after reading that script, I wonder what it
would be like to see, not “the Army of Darkness remake,” but to see The
Medieval Dead.
In that world of “If”, the only question
is: Who the hell could play Ash? Well, it sure as hell wouldn’t be the chick
from the Evil Dead remake. My first choice would be Karl Urban. We know
he’s a chameleon (I bet you all forget that was him in The Bourne Supremacy),
Dredd showed us that his lower jaw can carry a film by itself, and his
Bones McCoy can sling one-liners with Schwarzenegger. If this rumor of an Army
of Darkness 2 turns out to be a big game of “just the tip”, let’s see this
series rebooted from Sam Raimi’s original draft, with its original title and
some wicked talent behind the wheel. Someone with a gift for creating
characters and fun action while also bringing a wicked sense of humor to the
plate. I vote for James Gunn, after he’s done with this whole Guardians of
the Galaxy business, of course.
Barbarella - Michelle Kisner
 |
| "You will never match the power of my hair, bitches." |
Barbarella was a fun little
late-sixties science fiction film that starred the always sexy Jane Fonda. It
featured Fonda running around having titillating adventures in suggestive space
suits with kitschy backdrops. While it wasn’t a critical success upon its initial
release, it garnered quite a large cult following in subsequent years. The
imaginative costume design for Barbarella’s many outfits became iconic and
Fonda’s sensual and free-spirited performance was endearing. The special
effects were lacking however, and while the film is still fun to watch, it is
somewhat cheesy and dated.
An update with dazzling new effects and a
new leading lady could be amazing if done right. Robert Rodriguez was slated to
direct a remake with Rose McGowan in the title role, but the project fell
thorough due to studio quibbles. If I had my pick of director, I would choose
Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim, Shaun of the
Dead) as he is wonderful at making quirky and adorable films. Amy Adams
would be perfect as the innocent yet sexually uninhibited Barbarella—plus she
can sing the title song! They could get a famous designer to make the outfits,
someone like Alexander Wang or even Betsey Johnson could provide outlandish
costuming. With some CGI polish on the space atmosphere and some inspired sets,
they could bring Barbarella back into
the modern age with pizazz.