The endless self-cannibalisation in Tinsel Town continues shamelessly; this time its the turn of another comparatively recent iconic horror movie to get the remake treatment: Nightmare on Elm Street. New Line and Plantinum Dunes have lined up a first-time film director Samuel Bayer (who handled a lot of music videos previously, including Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit) to re-work revered horror auteur Wes Craven’s original film. The increasingly turgid (and often comical – sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) sequels to the 1984 original may have dulled its edge somewhat but, speaking as someone who loves horror flicks, the original film remains an important and influential addition to the canon of modern horror movies and while I know I should give any new version the benefit of the doubt its hard to see exactly what a remake will do that would improve on the original (probably throw in a gross of CGI effects) and I can’t help but think, like the slew of other remakes of fairly modern horrors – Friday 13th being the most recent, Halloween the most unforgivable) -that its being done for the sake of pumping out an inexpensive new entry into some studio’s franchise rather than trying something original.
I’m not keen on remakes of good movies at all (to be honest I’m not even keen on English language remakes of foreign films for the most part), although I can understand it in the case of a very old film from the 20s, 30s, 40s, say, but why this seemingly endless focus on remaking films that are only two or three decades old and often acknowledged classics of the genre? I’m pretty sure there are enough good writers out there with ideas begging to be made who probably can’t get a foot in the door with some studio suits and that’s shortsighted because without encouraging more new, fresh stories what will these studios remake in ten years? Remake their own remakes? Is it too much to ask them to stop regurgitating (and usually ruining) some perfectly good movies with lacklustre and utterly unnecessary re-heats? A remade Friday 13th is hitting cinemas now and just the other week we heard about the proposed remake of The Crow. Why? Why, why, why?… Robert Englund, who introduced the world to a new horror icon with Freddy Kreuger (an undead monster stalking teens in their dream – “sleep kills” as the simple but effective tagline read) in the original movie, is not expected to take part in the remake. Here’s my horror movie pitch – a masked murderer stalks Hollywood dispatching studio executives in the gruesome manner of the deaths in the films they had re-made (while wearing a Dr Phibes mask). I’d watch that. (via Hollywood Reporter)
Sat, Feb 14, 2009
Film, TV and radio