Saturday, December 18, 2010

Movies I Would Remake: Creepers

Ah, Italian horror movies.  Often enthrilling, easily galling, and yet so often completely imcomprehensible.  They tend to treat plots as an after thought and well rounded characters like a vampire in a garlic shop.  "Creepers" staring Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasence represents both the worst and the best of this particular odd sub genre.  It has some arresting visuals and you can't say it's dull.  On the other hand it is a witch's brew of maggots, girls with special powers, psycho killers and mutants.  It just asks for the audience to juggle too much weirdness without any connective tissue.

So how can we make a better version?

Well let's start with a basic question.  In the movie, Jennifer plays a school girl who's rich and famous father drops her off at the weirdo academy in the middle of the "Swiss Transyvania."  Why?  The place has like maybe 20 girls and half the buildings are in repair.  This was the best he could do?  In the world?  Obviously if the screen writer wasn't doing jello shots he would have to find some compelling reason for him to dump her here.  It might be cliched but how about she was born here, and her mother died here giving birth to her.  In his clumsy way it is her father's way of saying, "Hey, I don't want to be with you now, but go ahead and see if you can look up your family roots."

So now we have a girl who can talk with insects coming back to the place of her birth.  A place that happens to have a crazy, disabled, scottish bug doctor who has a knife wielding chimp and takes a rather creepy interest in Jennifer.  Now with the new back story the crazy doctor can be a part of it, maybe he was part of a group that was doing secret research in human insect communications... or breeding.

Now we can add in the crazed killer who's one clue is he seems to like rolling around with maggot filled corpses.  Is he linked to Jennifer's past as well?  See, now it all sort of hangs together.  Maybe it's a bit conventional but at least it won't leave the audience feeling they've been kicked by a mule.  Go over the dialogue a few times wouldn't hurt either. 

And that's what I would do...

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