Never really understood the motive for remaking classic films. For studios; sure! It's a lower risk investment over creating an original property, but today's audiences seem to be bizarrely gleeful over their favourites being remade. It's as if a modern update will suddently make the original more relevant. A timeless classic is just that - timeless! It has the right to stand alone without some modern take sullying its name.
Most of them turn out to be terrible. There have been exceptions to the rule, where the remake has been good and even exceeded in quality over the original. Controversial or not, below is a list of remakes that I consider better than the original:
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)
The Omega Man (Boris Sagal, 1971)
Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kauffman, 1978)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979)
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Breathless (Jim McBride, 1983)
Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983)
The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986)
The Blob (Chuck Russell, 1988)
Cape Fear (Martin Scorsese, 1991)
Fist of Legend (Gordon Chan, 1994)
12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1996)
Bedazzled (Harold Ramis, 2000)
The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006)
The Hills Have Eyes (Alexandre Aja, 2006)
13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010)
The Crazies (Breck Eisner, 2010)
Maniac (Franck Khalfoun, 2012)
Other notable remakes which aren't better than the original, but range from good to great to classic in their own right, in some cases:
The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960)
A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964)
Night of the Living Dead (Tom Savini, 1990)
The Vanishing (Georges Sluizer, 1993)
Village of the Damned (John Carpenter, 1995)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Marcus Nispel, 2003)
Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder, 2004)
House of Wax (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2005)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
Friday the 13th (Marcus Nispel, 2009)
Sorority Row (Stephen Hendler, 2009)
Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010)
Piranha 3D (Alexandre Aja, 2010)
The Town that Dreaded Sundown (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, 2014)
This blog post was inspired by my recent discovery that the same tossers who wrote and directed the God awful Scream sequels are attached to helm Escape from New York. Hopefully it remains in pre-production limbo and doesn't progress further.
EDIT: Completely forgot to include Breathless. Cheers, The Martorialist!
Agree with most of the ones I've seen of the first list except The Hills Have Eyes remake. Which is not to say I dislike some of the originals.
ReplyDeleteWhere is Breathless tho?
Also gotta mention the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and the 1999 version of The Mummy in the canon of superior remakes.
My bad on Breathless. Totally forgot to add it.
ReplyDeleteLike most classic horror literature, there are a lot of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde films. Always view them as adaptations rather than remakes. Saying that, both I, Monster and Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde are personal faves.
Jack Pierce's make-up work on Karloff in the The Mummy (1932) looks way better than all those CGI effects in the 1999 remake, imo.
Stop the madness! Not only is The Mummy 1999 better than the original, it's a top 3 swashbuckling American adventure movie of all time.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you stand on the various versions of Scrooge - remakes or adaptions? I'd plump for the former, but I can't decide between Scrooged and The Muppet Christmas Carol as my favourite version.
I see them as adaptations.
ReplyDeleteAlways thought Scrooge (1970) with Albert Finney was the best, but over the years my appreciation for The Muppet Christmas Carol has somewhat surpassed it. Probably in the Top Five Michael Caine films for me.