Remakes, remakes, remakes...
Old ideas, endlessly recycled. That accounts for much of what Hollywood sells horror fans these days...and there's even more to come (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Blob, The Fly...again). But since it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, I'm going to shine a light today on those occasions when remakes have been, by my estimation, remarkably successful. We'll start with the best, and work our way down to number seven...
Old ideas, endlessly recycled. That accounts for much of what Hollywood sells horror fans these days...and there's even more to come (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Blob, The Fly...again). But since it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, I'm going to shine a light today on those occasions when remakes have been, by my estimation, remarkably successful. We'll start with the best, and work our way down to number seven...
1. John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)
Critically-reviled at the time of theatrical release, this film has become a horror classic, and more so, one of the ten most important titles in the genre. Carpenter went back to the original short story, "Who Goes There?" (by John W. Campbell) and adapted that, thus deflecting charges that his remake was somehow unfaithful to Howard Hawks' beloved The Thing From Another World (1951).
Featuring state-of-the-art special effects that still haven't been surpassed, the claustrophobic The Thing exhibits a finely-honed sense of paranoia. Today, the glacial, icy feelings of personal “alienation” evoked by the film positively chill. Furthermore, John Carpenter’s The Thing involves not just alienation from civilization. It also makes a very squeamish, uneasy case for the frailty and fragility of the human form itself; alienation of the flesh. In the era of the mysterious "gay plague," -- the selfsame era of body consciousness, "Let's Get Physical" and aerobics (see John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis in Perfect..) -- the notion of an invisible invader (or infection...) hiding in plain sight but corrupting beauty felt incredibly resonant.
2. The Fly (1986)
Another A-list horror director, David Cronenberg, also provided audiences a meditation on AIDS in the era of Reagan. And as I recall, I came out of The Fly remake all wobbly in the knees. David Cronenberg never shies away from charting the physical, biological disintegration of the film's lead character, a brilliant but vain scientist portrayed by Jeff Goldblum. And because this character's disintegration and illness is contextualized within a sincere, affecting romantic relationship (with a character played by Geena Davis), the movie operates as an almost operatic tragedy.
Human beings are but sacks of water and bulbous organs held together by that thinnest of membranes, the flesh, and The Fly remake plays cannily with the idea that flesh is both wondrous and infinitely corruptible. The same body that makes you feel like an Olympic runner one day can incapacitate and make you feel deathly-ill the next. Seth Brundle's computer may not understand "the flesh," but you can't say the same of Cronenberg's audacious re-crafting of the 1958 original. Here, on display, we powerfully feel the desires of the flesh, as well as the treachery of the flesh. And the end is so gory, so gooey, so apocalyptic, you leave a showing of the film shattered and sick.
Human beings are but sacks of water and bulbous organs held together by that thinnest of membranes, the flesh, and The Fly remake plays cannily with the idea that flesh is both wondrous and infinitely corruptible. The same body that makes you feel like an Olympic runner one day can incapacitate and make you feel deathly-ill the next. Seth Brundle's computer may not understand "the flesh," but you can't say the same of Cronenberg's audacious re-crafting of the 1958 original. Here, on display, we powerfully feel the desires of the flesh, as well as the treachery of the flesh. And the end is so gory, so gooey, so apocalyptic, you leave a showing of the film shattered and sick.
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Another remake that is as good, as relevant, and as resonant as the brilliant original (in this case, a 1956 film). Here, an alien invasion doesn't evoke the Eisenhower era of McCarthy-ism and the Red Scare but rather the Self-Help, Me Generation of the late 1970s By then, the divorce rate was skyrocketing in this country (2 in 5 marriages ended with divorce...) and it seemed that people were choosing to make themselves happy first and preserve their commitment second. Tellingly, the aliens -- represented by a creepy Leonard Nimoy (doing a malevolent twist on his Spock portrayal) -- utilize pop psychology, self-help and other tricks to infiltrate the human community. I'm Okay, You're An Emotionless Alien from Outer Space: the ultimate demonizing of a spouse who, post-marriage has "suddenly changed." Again, the topic is literally "alienation." But it's alienation from spouse this time. The '78 Invasion of the Body Snatchers also trades powerfully in post-Watergate conspiracies and cover-ups, and features one of the best, most nihilistic closing shots in film history.
4. The Blob (1988)
Director Chuck Russell hit it out of the park with this utterly merciless remake of the 1958 Steve McQueen picture. He pulls a Janet Leigh on us by killing off the heroic jock early on, then upturns expectations again by murdering an annoying kid (wearing a Sony Walkman...) with no compunctions and no sentimentality. Finally, his film turns the school cheerleader (Shawnee Smith) into a Rambolina-style killing machine, forecasting the direction of the genre (and the role of women in horror...) in the 1990s.
Over and over again, The Blob remake mixes surprise with shocks. This "blob" isn't even an alien organism, as was the case in the original, but rather a secret government experiment gone wrong (reflecting, perhaps, the country's unease at the with the Iran-Contra scandal). The Blob even finds time to tweak the state of the genre itself (another prophetic taste of the 1990s post-modern approach...), taking the primary characters to a showing of a movie entitled The Garden Tool Massacre.
"Wait a minute," a character in the movie-within-a-movie realizes upon seeing a Jason-style slasher, "hockey season ended months ago...." Smart, brutal and dominated by graphic death scenes of a most gruesome variety (including one in a phone booth), The Blob remake of 1988 was superior in every way to the modest source material.
5. Nosferatu (1979)
In 1979 -- the same year that John Badham romanticized Dracula for the Bee Gees generation -- Werner Herzog remade the legendary 1922 Nosferatu (by Murnau). But where Badham heightened the romance in the tale of the good count, Herzog did precisely the opposite, focusing on, of all things, rats as a harbinger of death and decay. Dracula (Klaus Kinski) is no lovelorn prince here, either, but the equivalent of an addict: unable to control his rage and literally quaking for his next fix. Van Helsing is depicted as a useless man of science and comes across as an ineffectual old man. One of the film's finest moments involves a tracking shot across Dracula's dark, dank crypt, where we see a row of decaying corpses...their mouths forever opened in horror; protesting silently the vicissitudes of fate. This shot captures Dracula's curse of death and eternal life, as does his telling line, "It's more cruel not to die."
6. The Ring (2002)
4. The Blob (1988)
Director Chuck Russell hit it out of the park with this utterly merciless remake of the 1958 Steve McQueen picture. He pulls a Janet Leigh on us by killing off the heroic jock early on, then upturns expectations again by murdering an annoying kid (wearing a Sony Walkman...) with no compunctions and no sentimentality. Finally, his film turns the school cheerleader (Shawnee Smith) into a Rambolina-style killing machine, forecasting the direction of the genre (and the role of women in horror...) in the 1990s.
Over and over again, The Blob remake mixes surprise with shocks. This "blob" isn't even an alien organism, as was the case in the original, but rather a secret government experiment gone wrong (reflecting, perhaps, the country's unease at the with the Iran-Contra scandal). The Blob even finds time to tweak the state of the genre itself (another prophetic taste of the 1990s post-modern approach...), taking the primary characters to a showing of a movie entitled The Garden Tool Massacre.
"Wait a minute," a character in the movie-within-a-movie realizes upon seeing a Jason-style slasher, "hockey season ended months ago...." Smart, brutal and dominated by graphic death scenes of a most gruesome variety (including one in a phone booth), The Blob remake of 1988 was superior in every way to the modest source material.
5. Nosferatu (1979)
In 1979 -- the same year that John Badham romanticized Dracula for the Bee Gees generation -- Werner Herzog remade the legendary 1922 Nosferatu (by Murnau). But where Badham heightened the romance in the tale of the good count, Herzog did precisely the opposite, focusing on, of all things, rats as a harbinger of death and decay. Dracula (Klaus Kinski) is no lovelorn prince here, either, but the equivalent of an addict: unable to control his rage and literally quaking for his next fix. Van Helsing is depicted as a useless man of science and comes across as an ineffectual old man. One of the film's finest moments involves a tracking shot across Dracula's dark, dank crypt, where we see a row of decaying corpses...their mouths forever opened in horror; protesting silently the vicissitudes of fate. This shot captures Dracula's curse of death and eternal life, as does his telling line, "It's more cruel not to die."
6. The Ring (2002)
This scary remake of the brilliant Japanese Ringu (1998), set off a blazing trend of J-horror remakes here in the States. But that fact aside, the American version of The Ring re-contextualized the story of Samara to post 9/11 America. Thus The Ring is consumed with the notion of the mass transmission of suffering and horror.
The terrible pain of the few gets broadcast to many and is repeated on a loop; a coded reflection of our modern world, and the ascent of international, 24-hour news cable stations. If you break it down, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC exist to broadcast the suffering of a few to millions of people. There's a school shooting in heartland USA, and suddenly cameras appear on the scene like vultures, broadcasting the terror of young students to the entire country. Such ubiquitous, highly disturbing images hang in the ether of the mainstream media, take on a unique life of their own, and even perpetuate themselves (with ancillaries like newspapers, the Internet, etc) - and what is the cumulative result on our psyches? Can we know how such images will effect every individual who comes across them? Will the depiction of real evil on the news foster evil in real life? Does the mass media, by revealing such horrors on such a routine basis, inure audiences to the suffering of others? And are we so disconnected from our common humanity that we must witness the real, horrible suffering of others to stay engaged with our emotions?
The Ring creepily suggests that "witnessing" -- the act of watching -- is enough to make us all culpable. When we watch them -- just by flipping on the TV (or in the case of The Ring, pressing the play button on our VCR) -- that's enough to hold us accountable. The horror touches us as surely as it did those who "suffered" in the transmitted event.
7. The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
Just after the divisive 2004 Presidential Election, Alexandre Aja re-interpreted Wes Craven's 1977 savage siege film (about a battle between the Haves and the Have-Nots) to reflect the scarifying Red State/Blue State Divide so ruthlessly exploited by Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove in '04.
Here, the subject of the remake is explicitly the application of American power (and how Blue States and Red States view that application of that power...). The deranged savages in the desert dwell this time in mock town used as a test site for nuclear weapons, a symbol of America's violent past. In the battle between the Carters and the savages, the film reflects the on-going Iraq War, and even uses Old Glory herself -- an American flag -- as a weapon of destruction. Aja's film is about violence, about our history of violence, and how, to this very day, many of us see violence as the solution to problems. It's also, like the source material, incredibly intense, incredibly bloody, and harrowing.
Here, the subject of the remake is explicitly the application of American power (and how Blue States and Red States view that application of that power...). The deranged savages in the desert dwell this time in mock town used as a test site for nuclear weapons, a symbol of America's violent past. In the battle between the Carters and the savages, the film reflects the on-going Iraq War, and even uses Old Glory herself -- an American flag -- as a weapon of destruction. Aja's film is about violence, about our history of violence, and how, to this very day, many of us see violence as the solution to problems. It's also, like the source material, incredibly intense, incredibly bloody, and harrowing.
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