Films I Would Remake: Voodoo Island

This is one of the more obscure Boris Karloff films which is a shame cause it has some charm to it.  Basically Karloff is a television celebrity who specializes in debunking the supernatural.  He's called by a rich hotel owner cause the new island he bought seems to have a voodoo curse.  To prove it, he shows him one of his workers who has been made a zombie.  Karloff poo poos the whole zombie thing even as the plastic model in the office bleeds.  He takes the zombie, the doctor taking care of him, a hotel designer, his research assistant and the hotel owner's numbah one guy to go investigate the island.  On the way to the island they also pick up manly man and wormy guy.  Once at the island it's clear they are being followed.  It's also clear the island is dangerous and filled with killer plants.

Now I said this film had some charms and does.  First of Boris is great in his jovial host mode.  There's a nice noir-ish feel to the characters as they bicker with each other.  The build up to reaching the island was suspenseful and certainly had the viewer in a desparate state to know just the secret of the Island.

On the other hand, the plants are disappointing.  The final act is also disappointing in that after all the build up there's little steak to the sizzle.  As a minor point, they go on about voodoo but the island is clearly in the south pacific.  They start their travel from Hawaii and pass Wake Island.  So voodoo isn't quite the name for the tribal magic involved, still why be technical.  A doll with a pin in its head will still be trouble.

As a remake first I'd hire Lance Hendrickson for the Boris Karloff part.  The second thing I'd do hire Brad Dourif for the Elisha Cook Jr. role as Wormy Guy.  Then for the script I would ramp up the character bickering even more, specially the subplot where the older "wicked" woman tries to tempt the meek research assistant into being a bad girl.  We can go a lot further with this plot point than we could in 1957.  Once at the island I would spend more than a buck seventy five for the killer plants.  I'd also put in a twist that they were never interested in putting a hotel on the island but rather they wanted the plants for the pharmaceutical value.  Finally, I'd make the end a lot bloodier clash between cultures.

Anyway, that would be my plan...

Movies I would remake: The First Man Into Space

I remember seeing this film as a child and not being too impressed.  My recollection was that it was a fairly dull film.  I'm glad to say that it's actually better than I remember.  It is set at the beginning of our conquest of space.  Two brothers are trying to pierce the heavens but are continually butting heads.  Commander Charles is in charge of the missions, but he can't seem to control his brother Dan who is the pilot.  Dan is constantly pushing past the envelope.  Eventually, this leads Dan to go that one step too far and his ship is attacked by space dust.  The dust encrusts the ship and Dan like batter on a deep fried chicken.   Well Dan looks sort of like a deep fried chicken if you left it iin the oil for about a week or so.  On the plus side he's now bullet proof and super strong.  On the other hand, he's also in dire need of blood to drink.  So as the Commander tries to figure out what is happening Dan is murdering his way back to base. 

I would say this is a surprisingly thoughtful film for a cheap horror film, except I'm not so surprised when I see that the same fellow was responsible for "Fiend Without a Face," one of my favorite B movies.  The script is fairly strong, and they use some good lighting to gloss over a rather sparse production.  It's not a classic by any means, but it has some good scenes and some heart.

Now remaking this would be a challenge since things have changed so much that you'd have to really alter the script unless you wanted to make it a period picture.  I would remake it in the modern day and change it from a military project to a private company.  This would keep that feeling of exploration as private firms right now are in competition to create the next generation of space vehicles.  This could add some drama on a fiscal level.  In the original film Dan was rather blase about wrecking a multi-million dollar craft.  It would certainly change the stakes if he had his own money riding on things.

As to the nature of the creature, a few small tweaks are needed.  I don't think space dust quite cuts the mustard these days.  I would have the root cause a life form in a meteorite.  The meteorite could crash into the craft and then infect.  As a personal touch of technobabble I would say that the creature creates a coating of metamaterials.  Metamaterials are a new class of substances that scientists are engineering that actually break known laws of science.  One material for example bends light in the exact opposite fashion than normal materials.  It's a good boilerplate cover phrase for a substance that can do whatever we want.  Maybe it could bend light to make the creature invisible or at least very hard to see. 

The big change I would make would be I wouldn't just have one creature.  I'd have at least two. The reason is this:  it would help perserve our sympathy for the Dan character.  In the original film Dan is presented as near mindless murderer (who can still though somehow drive a car) who kills his way back to the base.  Then, at the base he becomes a sympathic figure.  Sick and staggering he's led into a vacuum chamber where they pump the air out to simulate extreme high altitude.  Now he's able to breath and talk, and gives a brief little "I'm sorry, goodbye." speech then dies.  It's nice, but there really is a question of sympathy here.  You could say he was out of his mind and such but he was still able to drive a car, and he knew where to go.  That means there was some consciousness of Dan there.  In my version, there would be two creatures.  One fully changed and a blood thirsty killer and Dan.  The swath of murders would be by the first creature as Dan struggles to keep his humanity and come home.  Authorities, though, wouldn't know this and would be hunting both.  Finally, mortally wounded Dan manages to get into the chamber and give his final speech.

Anyhoo, that's how I'd do it buckeroos. Here's the trailer to the film, enjoy!

Movies I'd remake: "The Pit."

There's a story that was actually called "The Sucking Pit."  So I guess by that standards "The Pit," isn't that bad of a title.  It breaks my rule though of never title your work in a way that it can be easily used against it.  It's too easy for some critic to have the headline "The Pit really is the PITS!"  A word to the wise there, bucko, and abolutely free.

The movie is about a truly creepy kid.  I mean he just oozes creep from every pore like sociopathic acne.  Everyone in town feels it and hates the little bugger.  He has no friend except for his teddy bear (kid by the way is 13-14, way tooo old for teddy bears)  When not creeping people out or cutting out the nudes from art books and pasting the librarian's face on top, he goes out into the woods.  Not for anything healthy, of course.  Out there in the woods there's the titular pit, and down there are hungry things.  Well, creepy kid, plus hungry things, means people start disappearing.  Things eventually get out of hand and the things in the pit come out to play. 

OK, in concept not a bad film.  We can all deal with the creepy, evil child.  Things in pits are always great fun.  So how can we make this better?  Well first, let's get some good actors.  The script here is no great shakes but the actors are like community stock theater, and probably were.  They either "act" "like" "this," or ACTTTT LIKE THIS!!!!  Neither really works, you do have to ground your weirdness in some reality usually for it really take root.

Speaking of which the other main thing I would do is strengthen the "character" of Teddy and bring more as part of the plot.  As is he's not only the weird sounding board for creep boy but he does creepy things.  Teddy bears should not move by themselves, ever.  I'm talking to you Teddy #$&*(*@  Ruxtpin.  What we need to do is more directly tie Teddy to the things in the pit.  They already look like teddy bears to some extent, and it makes more sense for Creep kid to have some Carrie psychic powers than for Creep boy to just happen to find things in a pit AND have creepy Carrie psychic powers.  This can lead to a three way mind game with the pit things being the id, and teddy being the super ego. 

Oh, and for God's sake, I'd make it look like people actually fell into the pit and not jumped in because the director said so.  It was as goofy as some monty python skit.

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...

Films that could be remade "Don't Open Til Christmas."

You know what no one has done right yet? A christmas serial killer movie. Oh, they've tried. Oh yes indeedy, but good? no. No, no, no. So why not take one of these turkeys and try to do it something good.

This one has a good hook, someone is killing anyone in a santa suit, be it a bum, a rich guy at his office party, or a bimbolicious model. This can work, you start of with a couple of murders, and then cops clue in to the MO. Then you can go all sorts of ways. How would the holidays be affected in say New York, if it was five days till Christmas and already seven Santas were dead. Could be a very interesting way to take on mass media in murder culture.

Most of the original film's plot and character I would chuck. The boy friend who might not be what he seems, the girl friend who's in peril even though she's not in a red suit, and the ever present calm arm of the law are way too stock for this weirdness. We need some punch for this and we don't need to construct this as a mystery because shows like this always end up as scooby doo when done as a mystery. "Mr. Jenkins??? I'd get away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling kids."

Anyway that's my thoughts.

Movies I would remake: The Ape Man

I have long had the opinion that remaking good films was fairly pointless.  It was good the first time, right?  It would seem to me to be more profitable to find a film they screwed up and doing it right.  In that spirit, there are few films so hysterically wrong as "The Ape Man."

It starts with people waiting for a ship to arrive.  One is a tough journalist type of the period who's doing a last round of stories before reporting to duty, after all there's a war on you know.  A strange hickish looking fellow is going around saying things like, "You are Dr. Bellows and you are looking for the missing Dr. Jello," or "Hey, go see that girl over there.  There's a good story there."

There is indeed an interesting story.  Bela Lugosi has been doing some odd experiments that have left him looking like a muppet version of Bela.  He's pretended to be missing so folks won't comment on his need to go to the salon.  Now he just needs to keep murdering people for their spinal fluids so he can try to cure his condition.  Of course, our reporter and his girl monday-tuesday-wednesday-friday figure it all out and save the day.

The reason I want to remake it is this:  remember that hick character I was talking about?  Well at the end of the film he pops up again and the Reporter asks him who he is.  He smiles and says, "I'm the writer of this film!"  The end.  I love that they went bizarrely meta for a monogram cheapie.  One can take this and go in all sorts of direction.  Wouldn't a character love to ask his creator questions like, "Why did you kill all those people?" or more importantly, "Why did you do all this to me?"  This could turn into quite a fun movie as a remake.