50 Remakes, from Worst to Best

[The Curmudgeon]

Another fun, enjoyable list from Total Film that offers a few surprises ("Willard" was a remake?) and it's nice to finally see SOMEONE out there enjoyed the new Wolfman film. A few surprising omissions (no love for Brendon Fraser's "Mummy"?) but a pretty detailed list all the same.

www.totalfilm.com/features/worst-to-best-horror-movie-remakes


Anything on there that shouldn't be? Did they miss anything out?

[trashcanman]

I disagree that Freddy in the Elm Street remake was horribly cast and in addition to the typos and poor enlgish in this, there are flat-out falsehoods like saying that House on Haunted Hill was a retread of the same story when the two films had very little to do with one another aside from the title. I didn't know Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was a remake. The remake of Maniac better than Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Please. Should have called it Elijah Wood Stares At His Own Reflection and Kills Women Because His Mom Was a Slut: The Movie. Ridiculous. And the Evil Dead remake had almost zero tension; just a ton of gore. Nothing much to write home about unless you're new to this horror thing.

[Ben]

I didn't know a lot of those were remakes. The theme of the list seems to be messy/under-funded/downright-hokey originals that were at least taken seriously the second time around if not actually done well. I remember watching the original Last House on the Left and shaking my head at how ridiculous it was. The cops in that movie might have worked in the circus they were so silly, the soundtrack was horrendously goofy, and in the midst of all this we're presented with a rape scene? Uhhh... The remake was more graphically brutal but less disturbing overall since the violence wasn't gratuitously nonchalant.

[trashcanman]

I think the goofy soundtrack actually made the original more upsetting somehow. But yeah, horror movie cops are almost always beyond stupid. I think The Human Centipede was the only time I actually thought to myself "those officers are not complete idiots". Haven't watched the remake of Last House or I Spit on Your Grave. Sitting through those rape scenes was hard enough the first time around.

[Ben]

I can tolerate the dumb cop thing most of the time because it allows the "horror" to happen (how fun would a horror movie be if they cuffed the axe-murderer right away?), but the guys in Last House were clowns. I can't think of a horror movie off the top of my head where the police aren't stupid, but I know I've seen a few.

I used to seek out movies that were lauded as super-duper disturbing because it takes a lot to make me uncomfortable, and I wanted to see if there was a film that could truly horrify me. I stopped with that after I saw Irreversible. Haven't had any desire to ever watch I Spit on Your Grave after that one.

[trashcanman]

I had the same experience, but backwards. In ISOYG, the rape scene(s) lasted for like half the movie and it was literally the most exhaustingly harrowing thing I'd ever seen in a film. Although the second half made it worth it, it still made me feel like I never wanted to watch another film based around a rape so when Irreversible came out, I passed. I wish I'd passed on Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door too. Some things you just can't unsee. Cannibal Holocaust was the exact moment I hit the ceiling how disturbing a film can be and still have me sit through it and enjoy it on any level. After that it was time to go watch some Looney Tunes or something.

[Ben]

I've never walked out of a movie, and I've never turned one off early because it was "too much." Irreversible came close, though. There was a scene early on where a guy gets his head crushed. The viewer's natural response is to pity the victim because of the sheer brutality of the scene, but at the end of the movie I went back and watched it again just so I could derive some gratification from the film as a whole. Nothing like a 10 minute rape scene midway through a film to make people cheer for a graphic head crushing. I'm also a little disturbed that I find myself googling Cannibal Holocaust. What on Earth...

[trashcanman]

Actually, I did turn Goodbye, Uncle Tom off because it was too disturbing. It's a faux documentary that recreates the slave trading system from those days in a little more detail then I was prepared for. I made it half an hour in and realized I had two more hours to go and tapped out. No way was I going to be that depressed for that long. I think the fact that that kind of shit really happened is what made it so bad I couldn't subject myself to any more.