The horror remakes continue

[Last of the V8's]

After the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake of last year the horror movie make-overs continue with...The Hills Have Eyes.
Blurb below:
February 6: Dimension confirms HILLS HAVE EYES remake

We originally reported here that Wes Craven was planning to produce a remake of his classic THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and today Variety has confirmed that the project is indeed a go at Dimension. Patrick Lussier, Craven?s longtime editor and director of DRACULA 2000, was initially talked up as director, but now the reins have been passed to French filmmaker Alexandre Aja, whose ?70s gore homage HAUTE TENSION has won lotsa buzz on the festival circuit and will be released Stateside later this year by Lions Gate. Aja will script the new HILLS with his TENSION writing partner Gregory Levasseur, and Craven will produce with longtime collaborator Marianne Maddalena and the original HILLS? Peter Locke. Presumably this means things are still copacetic between Dimension and Craven, who?s been going through some haute tension of his own working on the company?s much-troubled CURSED.

[thrillpowerseeker]

I loved the original 'Hills'...it so reminded me of cursed earth muties attacking some wayward helltrekkers...remakes are only necessary when the original film was wildly infested with thrillsuckers, Hills wasn't and should be left alone..more evidence that Hollywood is dying on its feet and about time too...mostly these days i'm watching japanese and european films anyway

[Valhalla]

Heya All.

Just came back from my monthly pilgrimage to the sydney comic stores and I found something INCREDIBLE!!

Everywhere I went the graphic novels have been reduced in price.

The reason? The Aussie dollar is doing so well against the US dollar so the stores are pricing accordingly.

The amazing thing is this almost never happens. Usually this difference is swallowed up in profit for the retailer.

And I'm not talking about a small reduction either.

Prices have been dropped by 25 - 40 %

Unbelievable!!

So all you Aussies with a graphic novel wants list flock to your nearest comic store.

Me? I'm finally going to try and complete my lone wolf and cub set, I think.


Val

[paulvonscott]

You know, I like these horror movies, at least partly, because they did something that hadn't been done before.  This is all so fucking tired and I just want to take a meat hook to them.

When you see the original movies they do make these days, like wrong turn, 2 dimensional pap with one note character teens, you can see why they have to recycle.

Michael Berryman rules!  I hope he doesn't give up his teaching job for this rubbish.

Oh and Damnation Alley is my ultimate cursed Earth movie. It also has a prototype angel gang in.

[Last of the V8's]

Yes, Micheal Berryman is a top bloke.
Met him once where he signed some memorabillia for me.
Smashing bloke and really friendly.
Hope he gets a part in the re-make.

[rc]

The mind-numbing remakes of classic horror films will doubtlessly continue, just as classic songs are monotonously covered for the endless supply of new young generations.

Film producers are now cashing in on the notoriety of titles such as TCM & DAWN OF THE DEAD, since the atrocious and insulting spate of "knowing" teen horror flicks is now dying down a little.

It saddens me that the big horror films of today are mostly mega-budget mainstream trash, but it saddens me even more that many low-budget efforts are unimaginative filmstudent "tributes" to the classics with absolutely no originality or redeeming features whatsoever.

You just cannot imagine a film as raw and beautiful as THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE being conceived and released in these times.

Yet there is no reason why not; they cost next to nothing to make, and were not tailored to cater for the fickle demands of any multiplex audience - they were simply made to terrorise the grindhouse and drive-in circuit with utterly no regard for current trends (other than the fact that movie-goers wanted to be horrified back then rather than wallow in self-concious parody).

The grindhouse and drive-in circuits are dead now, but we still have video and DVD as mediums for new small films that could establish themselves and stand out from the Hollywood dross.

Instead, low-budget film makers blow their chances of grinding out a good horror film time and time again with soulless fanboy rubbish.

This must leave the casual observer unchanged in their looking-down-the-nose attitute towards low-budget horror, as they "could never take that crap seriously" because there has been simply nothing of late to change their minds.

So we look back to the 70's & 80's and to the Orient to get our fix of quality horror, while today's mainstream audiences remain unchallenged and unhorrified by their piss-weak modern favourites.

[The Amstor Computer]

Nice post, RC.

Just a quick follow-up: did anyone else find it surprising that any reference to the family being cannibals had been removed from the remake of TCM? I always thought this was a fairly important part of the horror of the original; the inbred family, living on the edges of society & driven to cannibalism.

[Richmond Clements]

I saw the trailer for the remake of Dawn of the Dead last night (it's on the empire site).
Why oh why??
They even have the Zombie running, a la 28 Days Later, the lazy unoriginal twats.


Next will be a PG13 version of Evil Dead...

[Quirkafleeg]

I'm waiting for the PG13 versions of I Spit on Your Grave and The New York Ripper....

[rc]

I haven't seen it (hey, it could be brilliant I suppose!), but cannibalism is such a taboo subject now that very few mainstream films can get away with using it as a theme.

ALIVE was based on a true story, and RAVENOUS just stayed on the right side of the exploitation track to squeeze through.

It makes you wonder how many cases of real-life cannibalism have occurred since 1974 to warrant the censorship of the portrayal of the act today.

Though the more likely reason is that the subject has been caught up in the general sweep and abandoning of "undesirable" concepts after September 11th.

[The Amstor Computer]

"I haven't seen it (hey, it could be brilliant I suppose!)"

It was watchable, which is more than you can say for most mainstream horror movies nowadays. There were a few nice touches, but it really didn't measure up to the original. The decision to remove reference to cannibalism was probably the most irritating departure, but there were several other very poor choices (giving Leatherface an "origin" probably being a close second)

[rc]

Yeah, you're bound to approach any re-make of such a milestone of a film with scepticism I suppose - but I'll give it a chance.

I rather enjoyed RETURN TO THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (NEXT GENERATION/TCM 4), in spite of its slating from the purists.

It was a virtual remake of the original in its own right, but perhaps being directed by the original's scriptwriter helped give it an edge.

And it's fun to see the two stars Matthew McCaughtney and Rene Zellwegger shrewdly omitting it from their filmographies! I bet interviewers are banned from referring to it too!

[Richmond Clements]

"RETURN TO THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE"
My god. I thought you were joking, but I've just looked this up, and it's bloody real!! Which is more scary than anything that could be in the movie...

"And it's fun to see the two stars Matthew McCaughtney "

I read that as 'McCuntaty' the first time, which I think is more apropriate.

[rc]

If only horror remakes could match the quality of John Carpenter's THE THING, we would be laughing.

A special-effects bonanza it is for sure, but the film also retains the original's sinister paranoid overtones (with good performances all round, and great music) and for once in such a film the style does not swamp the substance.

Of course the difference these days is remakes are greenlighted not because a writer/director has come up with a quality modern vision of an old story, but rather that producers have come up with the cash to buy rights to an infamous
"nasty" title from the 70's/80's and aim to flog their more "accessable" version on the notoriety of the name alone - plus perhaps one or two handsome and empty lead characters thrown in to please the multiplex brats.

I saw the remake of PSYCHO again the other day and enjoyed it a lot - purists of the original seem to be offended it even exists, but I think this almost identical "re-imagining" (to coin a modern phrase) is a bold and respectful attempt at bringing a classic Hitchcock to a new audience without ruining the structure that makes it such a revered and defining film.

Though if they start re-doing all my favourites in this way, I'll have to heighten my ceiling.

[Eric Plumrose]

The problem with the Psycho remake is that it's too reverent of the 1960 film. What's the point of updating it for a modern audience if the melodramatics of the original aren't dispensed with? Hitchcock's version is still great fun whereas Van Sant's just looks hokey. They should have gone back to Bloch's original novel.