Top 5 Friday: Movies to be Remade

I know, I know. Remakes get a LOT of flack. The very mention of a new director even touching a classic practically makes fans foam at the mouth. Lucky for me, none of the movies on my list are necessarily considered "classics" in the realm of Poltergeist or A Nightmare on Elm Street. I believe that there are definite circumstances that call for the ill-fated remake. A lot of remakes fail because they're mirroring an already perfect movie. Why watch Rob Zombie's Halloween when John Carpenter's already exists. However, some movies are just plain bad and have ideas that can be expanded and improved upon. Here are my ideas for movies that didn't quite work the first time and could probably profit from a remake:

It

Stephen King's Pennywise the Clown is probably one of the most frightening literary antagonists to be created in a Word document. A movie about an evil that can manifest your worst fears should have been a lot more horrifying, brutal, and well, scary, than It was. Granted, It was a miniseries and it ran on basic cable network ABC. I don't think even the longest of movies could convey the book's depth and characterization, but a new miniseries airing on a more appropriate network like HBO or Showtime would come pretty close.


Intensity

Yes, another adaptation but hey, I don't only watch movies. I'm literate too. Dean Koontz's Intensity is one of my favorite books. If It is the only book that's managed to truly scare me, then Intensity is the only book that's managed to make me hyperventilate while reading it. Too bad the movie didn't have the same affect. The movie is about the game of cat-and-mouse between a psychopath and a young woman over the course of one weekend and originally aired on Lifetime. Alexandre Aja's High Tension comes close to what this movie should have been, even going as far as to have a nearly identical first half as the book did. Intensity just doesn't have the source material for a made-for-TV movie; it needs have a hard R-rating and violent script that does the book justice.


The Slumber Party Massacre

Oh, 80's slasher movies. You were the best of movies, you were the worst of movies. The Slumber Party Massacre falls into the latter category. This is one of those movies that is so utterly awful that it transcends its terrible nature and becomes somewhat enjoyable. Somewhat. The plot is pretty basic: high-school girls get butchered by an escaped lunatic with an affinity for power tools. Throw together a cast of pretty faces from Gossip Girl and maybe a cameo from a starlet of The Hills and a good advertising campaign and it could be a hit. The movie's tone would have to be tongue-in-cheek like Scream or the much-better-than-it-should've-been Sorority Row and I think it would make a fun viewing without stumbling into SBIG territory.


The Hunger

Bashing Twilight is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, so I'll just say vampires are in right now. The Hunger is Tony Scott's directorial debut that stars Catherine Deneuve as a vampire whose human lovers age rapidly. David Bowie plays her lover who seeks help from a doctor (Susan Sarandon). Deneuve and Sarandon share a steamy seduction scene that made it a cult classic. The movie as a whole is kind of weak on plot and character but very heavy on mood and atmosphere. With society's obsession with youth and the current vampire trend, a remake of The Hunger would take a bite out of the box office and manage to put an edgier feel to the original.

The Funhouse

Carnival settings and clowns are always creepy, and in the right hands Tobe Hooper's 1981 film about four teens locked in a funhouse with the deformed son of the carnival's owner could be downright terrifying. The original is unsettling, but it definitely takes its time to get going. Slow pacing doesn't bother me if it has a point or builds suspense, but here it just kind of dragged. Once it really got going it was great, but it just took too long to get there. The Funhouse would be great with a modern perspective filled with more tension.

This post was actually kind of hard to do because so many movies have already been remade or are in the process of being remade now. So what do you think? What movies would you like to see remade and why?