With an Evil Dead remake coming this year

[denofearth]

It looks promising since it's from the same guys who did the series even with Campbell as producer, i think it might be a good horror remake that honors the original.

A good horror remake is hard to find as there can be a gem and sometimes a dozen misfires only to tarnish the legacy of the original. Moviefone has made this unique article which is good advice to the filmmakers out there on how to do a good horror remake:
blog.moviefone.com/2011/08/18/the-10-essential-rules-to-making-a-good-horror-remake/

I hope the new ED movie falls into one of these categories like number 8 "Honor the original".

Who agrees with the article even on the rules?

On number 8 they should had also added Cat People, Night of the Living Dead 1990, Cape Fear and Nosferatu on there besides Let Me In and Funny Games as they fall on the "Honor the original"

[Torgo]

I don't much care what advice a movie follows as long as it doesn't suck.

The new Evil Dead looks mindrapingly balls to the wall though. I have my fingers crossed for it.

[TheNewMads]

i disagreed with that writer on a lot. props for recognizing the excellence of the philip kaufman "invasion of the body snatchers" remake, but I actually thought the 2007 remake was serviceable. i also enjoyed the remakes of "i spit on your grave" and "last house on the left" (although the epilogue in "last house" was completely ridiculous). i don't get "stay away from torture porn," as the originals in both instances were tortore porn avant la lettre. the remakes in both cases were actually more tasteful than the originals.

[Crowfan]

All the trailers I've seen for the remake look totally kick ass. I'll go see it.

[Skyroniter]

I'm treating my ED for when the remake is right.

[denofearth]

I agree the last 2 examples on rule 5 "Stay away from torture porn" make no sense as i agree that the original I Spit and Last House were originally torture porn films and were marketed as shocking violent exploitation movies and if you can look through that gore, the remakes to both are quite decent. But would Rob Zombie's Halloween be considered torture porn?

Total misconception on The Thing (1982) being a remake, it's not. It was a re-adaptation of John Campbell's 1938 novella "Who Goes There" which was loosely adapted in 1951 despite 1951's version being quite good on it's own but poor as an adaptation of the story, Carpenter's version was a more proper and faithful adaptation to the original story. Same goes for "Let Me In" which was a re-adaptation Americanization adaptation of the Swedish novel. Re-adaptations and remakes are 2 very different things, remakes means if the original movie is based on an original thought/original story idea not based on a book/comic/graphic novel/novella then it's a remake like The Blob for example.

Who agrees on number 8 "Honor the original"? and who else thinks Cat People (1982), Night of the Living Dead (1990), Cape Fear (1991) and "Nosferatu" (1979) also belong on that category for other good examples that follow that rule on the article?

Who agrees on number 7 "No carbon copies"? i mean i agree that some movies just don't need improving upon and if a filmmaker's plan of attack is to do a lazy shot-to-shot same word-by-word clone of a successful classic original then don't be surprised when that filmmaker fails and it's just plain laziness with no creativity to it or new dialogue for if we wanted to see the original, we'd watch it.

Who also agrees with them that perfect horror films like Rosemary's Baby, Jaws, Poltergeist, American Werewolf in London and The Exorcist should NEVER be remade? i do and those movies are quality perfection.

Who agrees on number 4 "A good cast doesn't make up for a bad script" and that it goes for all horror movies too and not just remakes right?

Who agrees on number 2 "Just because it was good in Japanese, doesn't mean it will be good in English" and that The Ring was the only good remake of a J-horror film and it's time for filmmakers to move on?

And who also agrees with number 1 "If the original was rated R, the remake should NOT be rated PG-13"? i mean Prom Night, Stepfather and The Fog are guilty of this, i mean some filmmakers shouldn't candycoat the script for the sake of making money from teens and i agree, teens grow up! and when they are finally old enough to see the remake that is rated R they'll be glad the studios and filmmakers didn't dumb/water down the remake. I also agree that if they do a PG-13 remake of an R-rated original, fans would go after the filmmakers with torches, KEEP the original rating.

[crowschmo]

Mar 2, 2013 3:54:09 GMT -5 denofearth said:

Who also agrees with them that perfect horror films like Rosemary's Baby, Jaws, Poltergeist, American Werewolf in London and The Exorcist should NEVER be remade? i do and those movies are quality perfection.

Good thing George Lucas didn't make any of these. He wouldn't have remade them, he would have just gone in every couple of years with new and "improved" special fx. Make the shark bigger!! More teeth!! Ramp up the speed!! More blood, we need more blood!!

On the Evil Dead thing: I haven't looked up any trailers, but I don't think you can improve on Bruce Campbell.

[TheNewMads]

Mar 2, 2013 3:54:09 GMT -5 denofearth said:

Who agrees on number 7 "No carbon copies"? i mean i agree that some movies just don't need improving upon and if a filmmaker's plan of attack is to do a lazy shot-to-shot same word-by-word clone of a successful classic original then don't be surprised when that filmmaker fails and it's just plain laziness with no creativity to it or new dialogue for if we wanted to see the original, we'd watch it.

I didn't agree with that. I'm apparently the only person on earth who quite liked the gus van sant "psycho" remake. I always took it as an homage to, rather than an attempt to one-up, the original. ("the omen" was just annoying, though. ironically because the original, though good, wasn't the consummate work of art that the 1960 "psycho" was, so i took that remake as pretty much a cynical moneymaking move.) i agree in principle that carbon-copy remakes are iffy, but they're also very, very rare so i don't really see it as a problem...

[TheNewMads]

The funny thing about "Poltergeist" (and i thought something similar when they did a sequel to the disney "witch mountain" movies) is that its premise was really well-suited to the SFX of the time, when it was de rigeuer to have lightning and storm effects and showing things moving through the air without visible support was a bit deal to do, special-effects wise. which made movies like Escape to Witch Mountain and Poltergeist impressive to watch at the time. But special effects like that now are totally routine, so there's nothing very impressive about them.

that said, if they remade Poltergeist i'd be curious to see specifically how they ruined it. they'd have to come up with another twist ending, since we already know the amazing twist ending to the '82 movie. it would be tough to come up with anything as jaw-droppingly brilliant as that ending.

[denofearth]

But remakes like Psycho and Omen are just poor and boring cause carbon copy word by word clones are very faustrating, you need creativity when doing a horror remake you don't just do a word by word clone of a successful original, it's just plain laziness. Psycho was an insult rather than a homage, like the article says, if we wanted to see the original we'd watch it. I hate those kinds of remakes for it's just boring and not creative.

But do you agree that Werewolf in London, Jaws and Rosemary's Baby are perfection that should NEVER ever be remade?

[TheNewMads]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree re: psycho. i certainly don't think it was an "insult" to the original; maybe if james "king of the world" cameron had directed it i might think that, but gus van sant strikes me as a pretty modest guy and the "psycho" remake struck me as a lark, sorta an enjoyable minor diversion for him. i don't think he was trying to wrest away hitchcock's legacy or anything like that. and i really enjoyed anne hecht's performance in it.

and there's something about psycho that has a stage-play feel to it. it's mostly set in three or four different places, it's mostly indoors... I tend to think of it more as another production of the same play, much as different directors can do different film versions of "romeo and juliet" without the next being an insult to the previous one. i mean, i know psycho isn't a stage play, but that's the way i think of the remake, almost like a different stage production. I guess that's why i don't feel angry about the movie the way a lot of people do. but hey, from what I gather the bulk of public opinion is on your side.

out of that list of "perfect" movies, i'm inclined to agree re: jaws and rosemary's baby (esp. since both have since been imitated so many times, with the exorcist, alien, etc., etc., etc.) but i actually would be curious to see a remake of "werewolf in london," partly because the original tapped in to this old american-british dichotomy of youthful impetuousness vs. the famous british reserve (as so brilliantly performed by JENNYAGUTTEROMGOMG) but the american brand has changed so much since then that it would be interesting to see how a smart director reimagined that dynamic. the american brand has become a lot more cynical and morally ambiguous since 1981 ...

the other reason is that american werewolf gets a bit too much credit for being a "perfect" film. it's a very good film, and i own and enjoy it, but let's face it: john landis is no roman polanski, nor is he even a stephen spielberg.

[TheNewMads]

(by the by, I have to admit I'm skeptical of an Evil Dead remake. The original struck a really idiosyncratic balance between humor and horror, largely accidentally, that will be very difficult to re-create.)