The 411 Top 5 06.21.06: Week 14

Posted by Trevor Snyder on 06.21.2006

The Top 5 Remakes We'd Like to See

Whether you love 'em or hate 'em (and as the last two columns have shown, we here at 411 do both), one thing is for sure: remakes are here to stay. Hollywood loves churning out new versions of their old efforts, especially when it saves them the trouble of, you know, thinking up a new idea for once. So, if we can all agree that we're going to have to endure the remake train for some time to come, the least we can do is try to help guide the studios, and let them know what we'd like to see in the future. To that end, allow us to proudly present:

THE TOP 5 REMAKES WE'D LIKE TO SEE

Trevor Snyder

5) Fantastic Voyage (1966)
4) The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
3) Last House on the Left (1972)
2) Short Time (1990)
1) Metropolis (1927)

5 – I remember as a kid, on a trip to Epcot Center in Orlando, going on one of the those simulator rides (you know, the ones that are basically just seats that violently throw you around while a big screen TV sits in front of you) in which you "shrunk down" and entered the human body to go destroy a pesky splinter. It was a pretty cool ride, although I have no desire to find out if it's even still there (since, as Homer Simpson would point out, even flying over Epcot is boring). So I guess the closest I'll come to reliving the experience would be if someone would finally do a modern version of Fantastic Voyage (and no, Innerspace doesn't count). Let's face it, with special effects today, now is the perfect time for a re-do of this one, although hopefully a new version would stress the action and downplay the camp.

4 – The recent House on Haunted Hill and House of Wax re-do's have shown that remaking Vincent Price classics can be a risky venture if not handled properly. Still, as much as I love the original Dr. Phibes (my personal favorite Price movie) and its sequel, I wouldn't mind seeing a new take on the mad doctor who uses the nine Biblical plagues to kill the doctors he holds responsible for his wife's death. My choice for the new Anton Phibes? Well, you wouldn't want someone who is simply going to imitate Price, but you might want someone whose voice is as cool and memorable as Price's. How about Hugo Weaving?

3 – If you ask me, the recent remake of The Hills Have Eyes was an improvement over Craven's 1977 original, and perhaps Craven himself would agree (since it was his idea to revisit it in the first place). Maybe a new version of Craven's first film could likewise improve on the source material, since the original Last House, like Hills, is at best a "flawed" horror masterpiece. Despite a loyal cult following and a strong reputation thanks to its "documentary-like" realism, Last House doesn't quite hold up as well as other films with similar accolades, such as the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In fact, to me, Last House actually seems like what it is: amateurish work by an inexperienced first time director. Yes, it's still a disturbing concept (A couple unknowingly allow a gang of killers to stay with them, only to realize the group has just recently raped and murdered their daughter and her friend), and some of the torture and death scenes still pack a wallop today. But the movie is more known and loved (among horror fans) for its "snuff film-esque" feel than for the actual quality of the film, which is marred by weak acting and shaky camera work. With the recent surge in brutal, disturbing horror movies (Saw, Hostel, the Hills remake), perhaps now is the time for a new Last House, which will once again attempt to push the boundaries of good taste for its era.

2 - Short Time is an all but forgotten comedy starring Dabney Coleman, from 1990, back when movies actually "starred" Dabney Coleman. This was one of those movies I remember watching a lot in my youth, and I know I enjoyed it back then. However, a recent viewing of it proved that you can not always trust your tastes at 10 years old. Still, it is a great concept for a movie. A cop near retirement learns he only has days to live, but then discovers his life insurance policy only pays off if he is killed in the line of duty. Desperate to leave something for his wife and son, he proceeds to constantly try to get himself killed on the job. However, his "suicide" attempts never quite work out, and in fact his newfound "fearless" attitude turns him into the city's biggest supercop. Now c'mon, there's gotta be a comedian out there today who can work magic with that premise.

1 – The fact that Metropolis, Fritz Lang's silent 1927 masterpiece, hasn't already been remade is actually pretty surprising to me. A tale of a future society split into two groups, the workers and the thinkers, Metropolis still holds up as one of the finest science fiction films ever made. And yet there are plenty of people today who would most likely never give watching it a chance since it is a silent film. That's too bad, and perhaps the best thing that could come out a potential remake would be bringing more attention to the amazing original. But that's not the only reason I'd like to see this one re-done. I truly think a new version could be something special, if handled by a visionary director like Ridley Scott or Peter Jackson. Maybe it wouldn't match up to the original, but if done right, it could easily be the best sci-fi movie in some time.


Ben Moser

5. The Last Starfighter (1984)
4. Cannibal! The Musical (1996)
3. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. Clash of the Titans (1981)
1. Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1959)

5. The Last Starfighter is one of the great memories of my childhood. So I hesitate to ask for a remake. But it's a great sci-fi flick and gets absolutely none of the credit it deserves. A remake might fix that, and it might not. There's little things that would need to be changed. For example, the idea of a "meteor cannon" is a little silly, as are some of the lines of dialogue from Xur. Under no circumstances should the humor of Beta Unit Alex be removed. By any and all means, Commander Kril's electronic eyepatch should remain in the movie. This is not, however, an invitation to do a campy remake. If anything, it's the camp-tastic moments like Alex explaining to Grig that trailers are "like caves above ground" that need to be fixed. Anyone making this movie would be hard-pressed to find someone to give as memorable a Centauri as Robert Preston, so great casting is a must. A few minor improvements could make this already good movie a great one.

4. In the wake of South Park's initial success, there were rumors that Parker and Stone had a movie out about Alfred Packer, the only man in US history to be convicted of cannibalism. And it was a musical. It's hilarious. Watch it. The movie was made with a shoe string budget and at times suffers from the inexperience of Trey Parker at the time. Even in the DVD commentary, the drunk Parker comments about some basic filmmaking things he missed when putting this one together. So if, and only if, you could round up the key players from the original and give them the money to do it up right, I would be all for getting this in my local mega-plex.

3. To do this would take massive testicles. Citizen Kane is one of Hollywood's sacred cows. To remake it would be to invite the kind of skeptics and nit-pickers that would make comic book movie producers wake up in cold sweats. Which is exactly why this could work. There would have to be some changes. Trying to stay too faithful to the original would doom this remake. Modernize it, make it its own animal while keeping the key elements: the wives, the politics, the ego. Some people find the original to be kind of unentertaining even while acknowledging the movie's importance. A remake can breathe some life into an all-time classic. From a fans' standpoint, this is a no-lose situation. If this remake came out successfully, we'd have an updated and fantastic version of a beloved movie. If it failed to capture what made the original special, certainly the backlash would curb if not eliminate the remake trend for a long time to come.

2. Clash of the Titans is actually a really fun movie. But man, is it dated. Imagine what CGI could do to replace the awkward claymation scenes in this movie. Imagine the action sequences. Imagine the monsters. Imagine a Perseus without Harry Hamlin's 70's hair. Imagine the sets. Imagine the costumes. Imagine my surprise that no one has moved to remake this with a monster budget yet while a The Poseidon Adventure remake got the go-ahead.

1. There's an audience for a Biblical Epic, and this one is pretty good as it is. A good remake, though, could absolutely obliterate box office records. First you'd have to streamline the plot. There are some long and pointless moments in the original that could easily go. Next, replace Chuck Heston's melodrama with some serious acting. Only a quality cast could pull this off properly, so spend big. Finally get yourself a director and cinematographer that understand how beautiful and sprawling this movie should be. Gladiator took a lot of its elements from Ben-Hur, and people loved it(more than they should have, even). The religious audience swarmed theaters to see the The Passion of the Christ(which, as a Christian, I thought failed horribly as a movie and an evangelical tool...but that's a rant for another time). So this could be big.


Bryan Kristopowitz

5) Hostel (2006)
4) Judge Dredd (1995)
3) The Big Wheel (1949)
2) Bruiser (2000)
1) Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Honorable Mentions

- The Barefoot Executive (1971)- A great Disney flick starring Kurt Russell as a mail clerk at the third rated television network UBC. Russell's "Steve Post" character is ambitious and bold. He thinks he knows what it's going to take to bring the struggling network out of the doldrums, but no one will listen to him because he's just a young punk kid. He finds out that his girlfriend's pet chimp can pick the top rated TV shows and devises a scheme to get the animal's programming choices to the network bigs, and eventually a vice president position for himself. It's a great comedy concept and would have a great modern sting in the 5 million channel universe we exist in now. They already did a remake for Disney television a few years ago, but it wasn't any good. Oh, and the remake would have to feature Russell as the cranky network vice-president so expertly portrayed by Joe Flynn.

- Rollerball (2002)- I picked this movie as the worst remake in history, and for good reason. It's terrible. But it does have a great look and an interesting hero in Chris Klein and villain in Jean Reno. Besides scene transitions, what the remake needed most was a point. Once we find out what the heck the movie is supposed to be about, and we're all smart in implementing that, heck, we'd have a movie worth watching.

-Blade: Trinity (2004)- David Goyer, who did the screenplays for the first two Blade flicks, did the writing and directing duties on the third flick and basically managed to destroy the series with a movie that has way too many characters in it. Of course, that was the problem with Goyer's script of Batman Begins, too. Now, the essential idea of this flick isn't bad, Blade fighting Dracula. Now, if we just stick with that and get Guillermo Del Toro, the director of the great Blade II and the original director choice for this flick before he went off and did Hellboy," to do it, we could have a proper end to the Daywalker Trilogy.

- Nemesis (1993)- Albert Pyun's great sci fi action B-movie starring Olivier Gruner is one of those movies that makes absolutely no sense but is good enough to watch several times because… well, it just is. Gruner's portrayal of super agent Alex Rain is just too damn cool to be relegated to one flick. And that's the real reason this movie, story, and idea should be redone. Sequels. Pyun did do three sequels to Nemesis, and they were all terrible. If Nemesis could get remade, with a bigger budget and scope, we could get several more cool Gruner agent stories, and that's what the world needs.

- Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D (1998)- Nick Fury and his super agent United Nations army thingie S.H.I.E.L.D basically appear in every comic Marvel makes, and it's a shame that he doesn't have a more substantial cinematic legacy. He's just a bad, cigar chomping butt kicker with access to giant flying air craft carriers. The TV movie that Fox did way back in 1998 starring David Hasselhoff was good for what it was. It did feel like a version of those Roger Corman Black Scorpion movies that were on the Sci-Fi Channel. That normally wouldn't be a big deal, but, again, Fury needs a bigger canvas to kick butt in.

5. Hostel (2006)- Eli Roth's torture horror movie is easily one of the worst movies of 2006. It shouldn't be, but it is. The upcoming sequel doesn't exactly help out the cause either. The main problem with the flick is its hip and edgy beginning, ruining all potential suspense for the audience and essentially shooting its wad in the first minute. The movie's torture sequences should come out of nowhere, they should first be experienced by the audience at the same time as they are experienced by the main character. That means we don't find out about the decapitation of his Icelandic buddy and the other guy until he finds himself tied to the chair in the torture room, devising a plan to escape. That's what the movie needs. More suspense.

4. Judge Dredd (1995)- This action sci fi movie isn't all that bad, but it isn't Judge Dredd, the one we know from the comics. Stallone does a decent job as the title character, and the look and feel of the flick are good, but the whole thing feels like a sequel to a movie that was never made (much like Stallone's great Cobra, which this reviewer did a cool column about not that long ago). If and when they do a remake, they need to forgo the whole "framed for a murder he didn't commit" crapola for like a third movie or something. We need to understand Dredd in his world, and we need to gain a better understanding of what exactly that world is. And Dredd can't take off the helmet. If Stallone wants to come back, that's fine, but he needs to hold it back and make it just like the comic.

3. The Big Wheel (1949)- This is a great Mickey Rooney flick about a man's travel to the big leagues of auto racing, from junker roadster type deals to midgets to the big cars that raced at Indianapolis. If they were going to do a remake and keep the same essential story, of little car to midget to "big cars," they'd probably have to do a story featuring NASCAR as the big cars instead of the Indy Cars. That is unless they decided to do the whole "Americans can't get a ride at Indianapolis" storyline that permeates most of the open wheel racing newspapers today. It would just be cool, though, to have a modern action moviemaker get exciting shots of the USAC contingent going twenty four strong into the first turn at Eldora. And Mickey Rooney is still alive, he could do the old race promoter thing, maybe an even older version of Earl Baltes.

2. Bruiser (2000)- This is the movie that George A. Romero got made after seven or so years in "development hell" when he realized that the stuff he was working on for the studios wasn't going anywhere and he needed to make an actual movie. So he went and got a few million and did Bruiser, a revenge movie about a wimpy guy that one day wakes up without a face and starts killing the people who have made his life difficult. It's a slasher movie (and it is a slasher movie, people. I don't want to hear any of this hooha about it not being one. There is nothing essentially wrong with the video box cover. Yes, it would have been cooler if it was just the pale white ghost face of the "mask," but it is a knife picture). It's not bad but it's not great, either. You can tell by watching that Romero was really trying to make something good, but budget restraints kept it from happening. If it just had more money and a less pretentious advertising campaign (dangit, it's a slasher movie! Henry Creedlow is the new Jason! Or Max Jenke! Come on, look at that last scene where Creedlow turns around and he has no face again!) we'd have a horror master meditating on the slasher genre that lots of people like and lots of critics hate. Romero's mere presence would make them almost like it, I bet.

1. Maximum Overdrive (1986)- The only movie big Steve King has directed, a horror flick about machines "coming to life" and attacking people for no apparent reason. The first hour or so are pretty good as we get to watch the various people freak out and get smashed and smooshed by the trucks and steamrollers and lawnmowers and video arcade games and soda machines. But then it kind of peters itself out with character crapola and a really stupid "reason" for the phenomena. It would work better as a sort of Night of the Living Dead story but with machines, where there is no explanation as to why the machines are killing people. We could keep AC/DC on the soundtrack, though. The Sci Fi channel did do a remake of this with Timothy "Poindexter, Arnold" Busfield called Trucks (the name of the short story King wrote way back when and used as the idea for his movie) but I have no idea how good or bad it is. Haven't seen it (I did tape it, though. It was on after that Bruce Campbell movie Alien Invasion or something. It'll get seen one of these days).


Avery Chan

5) Police Academy (1984)
4) The Mechanic (1972)
3) Van Helsing (2004)
2) Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)
1) The Octagon (1980)

5. Police Academy is a movie that doesn't need to be remade because it still stands up today but nonetheless, I would pay to see a quality remake of this franchise. I see this more as a "riff" movie featuring the Stiller/Vaughn/Wilson crew riffing on the original characters. Imaging Vaughn (or either Wilson brother) as smooth talking Mahoney, or Stiller as gun-nut Tackleberry and maybe Steve Carell as Capt. Harris with Will Farell as his sidekick Proctor. The biggest problem would be replacing Michael Winslow as Jones, the human sound machine. Best case scenario is this would be the comedy equivalent of Ocean's 11

4. The Mechanic is probably the best hit-man movie not called The Killer. The original was a high-concept thriller about a professional assassin who is pitted against his former protégé. Most remakes would update the story to take place in the present but for this one I would leave it in the 70's. Today's technology takes away a lot of the mystique and a low-tech approach would make the film stand out. What would be the point then you ask. It would be a chance to update some of the dated storytelling techniques of the 70's and make the film even more violent to suit the subject matter.

3. Unlike the previous two entries on my list, I have no love for this film. Van Helsing was a total pile of crap and I couldn't even bear to finish watching the damn thing. Before the movie came out however, I had high hopes. The concept, Van Helsing versus Dracula, Wolfman and Frankenstein, was amazing to me and it still is. Even though director Stephen Sommers f*cked it up big time, I still think the concept can work with the right people behind it. No more of this Dracula's babies stuff please.

2. Like the first Superman movie, I loved the first half of this film but was brutally bored with the second. Based on a series of novels called "The Destroyer", the movie follows Remo Williams (Fred Ward), a cop supposedly killed in the line of duty but was in fact "recruited" by a secret crime-fighting organization. The first half of the film is Remo's origin story, featuring his training with Korean master Chiun, hilariously played by Joel Grey (who's white). Remo learned all sorts of martial arts including how to dodge bullets from the crotchety old Chiun, who hated all things American save for the soap operas. The second half had something to do with breaking into an Army base and trying to hook up with Capt. Janeway. I don't' know, whatever. The remake shouldn't change too much from the origin part of the original film, which was pitch perfect, but the second half needs to be a lot more interesting.

1. As Mugatu would say, Chuck Norris is so hot right now so let's remake one of his films. One of his films that I thought had a wicked concept but didn't really live up to it was The Octagon. Norris plays a karate champion who has to kill his Japanese ninja brother and destroy his terrorist training camp. Aside from ninjas, the movie had a lot of cool things about it like badass Lee Van Cleef telling us just how badass ninjas are and a samurai henchman who wears a badass costume and carries a big sword (thought I was gonna say badass sword didn't you?). The movie looks like it was fairly low budget so it doesn't get to cut loose the way it should. Also, for a movie about ninjas, there wasn't a lot of fight scenes. Now is the perfect time to remake The Octagon. Along with Chuck Norris' popularity with the kiddies, the idea of a terrorist training camp is especially relevant. Plus, UFC is hot right now and where do those fights take place? An Octagon.


Cris Murphy

5) The Last Starfighter
4) "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr."
3) John Carpenter's Vampires
2) Buffy the Vampire Slayer
1) The Star Wars Prequels

If you're going to do a remake, you need to find something that had a great premise, but it didn't pan out into a good movie for whatever reason. Only remake something that you can improve upon. It's a simple concept that Hollywood has failed mightily to grasp. That's why I chose these 5 five films.

5) Such a great premise. Using an arcade game as a recruiting tool for interstellar pilots. If only the CIA and military actually thought of that before...ooops. Use the same story and update it for the online/console generation with better special effects, you could end up with a winner.

4) This just needs to be done. Brisco County Jr. was such a great cheesy western show, that it deserves to have Bruce Campbell's chin back on the big screen in a feature adaptation. Forget about all these other crap shows that have movie remakes. Get Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell back together to make a fun and hysterical western.

3) Who doesn't like the idea of the Vatican feeling responsible for creating vampires, and secretly financing vampire kill squads to exterminate them? Too bad this came off as a cheesy blood fest. Otherwise, it could have been a good horror/thriller film. In the right hands and the right actors (not James Woods and Daniel Baldwin), a remake could definitely be better than the original.

2) We can all forget that the original ever happened, right? Get Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar together to create a prequel to the TV show that would be a remake of the original movie. It can't miss.

1) Anybody with any writing chops understands that George Lucas dropped the ball in every single way with the prequel story. The original appealled to kids, but it didn't pander to them. It kept adults facinated as much as kids. It made "The Force" this luminescent creation whose basis came from Taoist philosophy. In the prequels, it reduced it down to microscopic symbiotic creatures. I didn't want to know where "The Force" came from. I liked the mystery behind it all. Plus, starting Anakin Skywalker out as a child was a bad idea. I did like the idea of the Emperor creating the Clone Wars to gain power over the Senate, but not glossing over the Clone Wars itself.


Scott Rutherford

5) "New" Star Wars Trilogy (1999-2005)
4) The Generals Daughter (1999)
3) Spies Like Us (1985)
2) Used Cars (1977)
1) The Andromeda Strain (1971)

5) The "New" Star Wars Trilogy - I'm going to bunch all of these together because they all are the one story and people judge them as one long film. It's interesting that even George Lucas has cast doubt about the quality of the first two films saying he put 70% of the plot in the last two hours of the story. It would be really interesting to see him farm out this project and redo it from scratch. Get really talented current film makers and give them an episode each working on a scripts done by Kevin Smith. I'm not one of those drones that will crap on about how Lucas should have done this and that because this was his baby and should be able to tell the story he wants…he just didn't tell the story EVERYONE else wanted. Give it to the people the know what we are looking for.

4) The Generals Daughter - This was a John Travolta movie from a few years back based on a book by Nelson DeMille. The book = fucking awesome, the movie = fucking terrible. I get the fact when adapting books you have to drop plot and story threads because of time constraints but where is it stated you drop pretty much everything but the premise…finding the killers of a generals daughter. Everything else, plus all but one characters name was changed. I could safely say that makers should have not even bought the rights for the book since they used fuck all of it. The book however is one of the best plotted crime thrillers I have ever read and deserves the right treatment.

3) Spies Like Us - Kevin Smith may have eventually missed out on remaking Fletch but this other Chevy Chase flick could do with a dust off. I know everyone loves Jay and Silent Bob and I would love to see Jason Mewes and Smith transplant themselves into the role of bogus spies used to distract the enemy is comedy gold waiting for mining. It would also be nice to see this particular dynamic duo trying on different characters for once.

2) Used Cars - This is a film I'm forever talking about and with good reason, it's fucking fantastic. The story of a crooked used car salesman bribing his way into politics so he can get kickbacks was a story well ahead of its time and a subject ripe for the picking in this current climate. Sam Rockwell was born to play this role and give me Fred Ward as his nemesis Royal Fuch (get it?) and please give me Jason Lee as the side kick and (get ready for a recycle) Jay and Silent Bob as the techno-pirates that break into presidential speeches to pimp a car yard. Please just give me a remake of this film that kicks booty

1) The Andromeda Strain - I get to number one and realize I'm doing this more off the top of my head so you can take this in any order because this isn't necessarily my most wanted remake. This was one of Michael Crichton's (Jurassic Park, Disclosure, Sphere, Rising Son) first and better novels and was made into a film in the early 70's but the movie world was so far behind his hi-tech stories that it really couldn't tell the story properly. Now that the movie world has caught up I think it's high time they brought this bad boy back up to speed. Couple that with the world being deathly afraid of biological warfare and you also have a topical subject to boot.

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Of course, if any of these suggested remakes are sent into production within the next six months, we'll be expecting a little piece of the action, you dig? All of us can be reached through this very website, so we'll be waiting to hear from you, studios.

Next week, we finally turn our attention away from the glitz and glamour of the silver screen, and focus instead on the small screen, with the beginning of a two week look at the characters we cherish, and the characters that make us ill. First up, The Top 5 All-Time Worst Television Characters.