The horror....the horror...

I've called myself a lot of things regarding my passion for movies -- movie geek, vault of useless trivial knowledge -- but I think the most accurate description is purist. What's ironic here is that my preferred genre is horror, which has become the cloudiest, grainest, most turbid category of them all. Nothing in horror is pure anymore; perhaps it hasn't been in decades, seeing as the idea of sequels gained most of its strength and adoration from horror fans. However, it's not the sequel that causes the voice of Joseph Conrad's Mr. Kurtz (or, perhaps, Brando's Col. Kurtz of Apocalypse Now) to echo in my mind. No, the greatest pain to the horror purist is the one trend more frightening than any bump in the night, any cursed Indian burial ground, or any crazed psycho killer: the horror remake is what causes me to wake up screaming in the night.

Each new crop of horror directors (Tod Browning, James Whale, George Romero, John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven) has brought the genre into a new echelon. The reason each boom of horror has been so great is because it brought something new into the genre. Herein lies the problem: the current boom in horror is exactly the opposite - nothing is new anymore -- all is remakes.



This was okay for a while....Dracula has been remade countless times, sometimes with actual improvements. The classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers of the sci-fi genre was remade in 1978 - a version many prefer to the original (the new Invasion with Nicole Kidman, however, was definitely terrible). In the 70s, top-of-the-line makeup and special effects were beginning to become essesential to the horror film and greats like Tom Savini were invaluable in the 80s. So updating older films was an exciting venture - a way to take an old story and make it frightening to a new generation. Take movies that weren't great to begin with (except for making your date jump into your lap in fear) and remake them into truly terrifying films! Dark Castle really jump-started the trend by remaking House on Haunted Hill, an original Vincent Price classic. The effects in this film are great, Geoffrey Rush seems to be channelling the late Price himself, and there are genuine scares...the one major fault is the ending - yet there WAS no ending in the original....what can ya do? Dark Castle then moved on to remake 13 Ghosts. As much as I adore the original - you could see the strings carrying the ghosts past the camera!! - the special effects, again, made this remake into what it is - an awesome, fun ride with some really cool makeup. Even the new version of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead brought the wit, horror, and camp of the original to a remake that was just as funny as it was frightening....(my favorite is when the baby zombie looks up and goes, "BLEH!")

Old movies that were campy to begin with are ripe for remaking. The problem here is that Hollywood has begun to search for new opportunities in remake-land. Producers have lost their originality and have begun remaking movies that are classics because they are perfect the way they are. I will, only in passing, bring up Gus Van Sant's Psycho. I don't want to frighten you too much. And then there's that disgusting version of When a Stranger Calls. That crap was taken from the first 20minutes (I swear...no exaggeration) of the original and stretched into 87min of my life that I can't get back. Truly terrifying.

One cause for this trend? Ignorance. Hollywood's favorite demographic is boys in their late teens and 20s and boys love a gorefest. They want action and chaos and something to put their dates in their laps, cowering from the screen....some things never change, I guess. They, however, don't KNOW the original films!!! This drives them to the theater thinking these movies are first-timers, and the more gore, the happier these audiences are.

Being one of the girls who has known guys to cover their eyes from the screen in her prescence, I have asked for nothing less than to be entertained and surprised, gore or no gore. There is no surprise with these remakes, save for the senseless changes in plot. The Haunting (1999) took a brilliant book, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - which partly inspired Stephen King to write The Shining - and remade the 1963 film. This movie was so ridiculous, its effects and big-budget stars were blown out of the box office by a little-known Sundance darling that took complete unknowns, half-scripts, and handheld cameras and scared the pants off of its audiences - The Blair Witch Project. Guess why....it was NEW. It was DIFFERENT. It was based in what all quality horror movies water down to - the UNKNOWN.



The most truly frightening aspect of the remake plague in the horror genre is that greed has pushed Hollywood to remake those films that remade the genre. When Jennifer Lopez attempted to remake Casablanca with Ben Affleck, the whole film world almost had an aneurism. But remake Tobe Hooper's Texas Chain Saw Massacre? SURE! How about The Amityville Horror? NO PROBLEM. These two films, from the late 70s, were two of the most brilliant and frightening of the genre...they still are. Then, because remakes like these were hitting it big with an audience ignorant to their originals - someone sold his soul to the Devil and gave Rob Zombie the green light for a remake of Halloween. This man doesn't know how to make an original film. House of 1000 Corpses, his first film, was ripped off from Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But it was gory -- those teenaged boys love their gore....



I consider Halloween (2007) to be the official beginning of the end. Carpenter's classic babysitter-stalking killer has been reduced to the oldest cliche of the 90s --- what? You didn't know that Michael Myers was picked on as a kid??? Please. So now, we are facing a plethora of travesties. Hellraiser (2009) is in production -- minus Doug Bradley, who played Pinhead in EVERY Hellraiser film. The Thing and The Fly, both remade once already, are on the slate. The Evil Dead, The Last House on the Left, Pet Sematary, and The Wolf Man are also coming. There's a Friday the 13th movie, but I'm still not sure about that being a remake or a sequel - the 11th, if you count Freddy vs. Jason.


Entertainment Weekly's latest issue says Rosemary's Baby is being worked out now. These movies are 30 years old, true, but they are fantastic for what they are. Will they remake Jaws? The Godfather? Perhaps Star Wars needs some updating. Shall we try remaking more Hitchcock? I'm not looking forward to the inevitable....they already remade The Omen. If Rosemary is on the block next....The Exorcist can't be far behind....

Hollywood is on a roll...Shutter (opening Mar 21) is a remake of a movie made in Thailand; Prom Night (Apr 11) starred one of the original scream queens, Jaime Lee Curtis. There are more of these things coming...some good, some bad....but as far as I see it...."remake" has become a dirty word.

Oh, and did I mention a remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street is in the works? Yeah....WITHOUT Robert Englund. Blasphemy. Pure blasphemy.