Caffeinated Clint – Say No to Remakes

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – wash your fuckin’ tomatoes with good water, not tainted frickin Indonesian backwater spit, if you want me to keep buying your darn overpriced food court sandwiches! The last thing I need is another bout of this darn food poisoning.
Hey, how about I come over to your place and make you tea, Mr. Chef? You give me ten bucks and I’ll piss on your salad… see how you feel after that, chump! Ahem.. but I digress, I’m not hear to whine about having to permanently staple my ass to a toilet seat this week because of another unhygienic take-away place, I’m actually here to beg Hollywood to stop remaking the films we love!

Stop it. Please. Or I’ll send a round of backwater spit-washed tomato sandwiches your way. No, in all seriousness, our childhoods are being raped right in front of our eyes…. And the worst thing is, in twenty-years time, the authorities aren’t much going to give a shit that some studio gave it to us up the ass without authorization.. because everyone will be so darn used to remakes by then. They’ll be as common as stretch marks on a porno star’s wang.

This week they announced that “Poltergeist” would be remade. Fuckin’ “Poltergeist”. A film that still holds up darn well. If JoBeth Williams looked like Kathleen Turner on crack back then, and if Craig T.Nelson bore those liver spots, it might be a different case but they looked GREAT back then… in fact, everything about the film looked great. Looks great. You don’t need to be swallowing ice with Ben Cousins to see that it’s still a visually exciting and well-shot film. My good friend Zelda Rubenstein and I were having breakfast not long, and we discussed the film. Seems everyone involved in it thinks they were involved in a classic too. I think the original actors, like Zelda, will be feeling like someone hit them over the head when they hear of a remake (and I’m already planning to tell Zelda NOT to do one of those gratuitous ‘better do this for the fans’ cameos in the remake).

Some of the horror movies they make today, like say those shitty “Grudge” movies, are dated from the moment the distributor unleashes them onto the unknowing audience – but films like Tobe Hooper Spielberg’s “Poltergeist” hasn’t dated at all. It’s still as terrifying, and as a fun, as it was back when Leo Sayer ruled the wireless. If you want to put bums on seats MGM, re-issue the original film on the big screen… give the kids a real treat. That’s the go. Don’t tarnish not only our memory, but the late Heather O’Rourke’s memory, by doing a shitty remake of a film that doesn’t call for one. But more so, is it worth it? Is it? I’m thinking… no. You saw what happened to the messy “Black Christmas” remake, and if you blinked, you would’ve missed the “Halloween” remake (which actually wasn’t too bad – well, half of It anyway; right up until the point Rob Zombie was told to just copy Carpenter’s film!) that played in theatres a couple of months back. They’re not a recipe for success… so you’d be better off just spending your time and energy on doing something original.

And by original… I don’t mean a feature film version of an old TV Show or one of those plotless performance-less video-game inspired flicks (how unexciting does that “Dragonball” movie sound?). I’m talking about an original movie – something just as scary, just as iconic, just as fun as “Poltergeist”. There’s gotta be a script out there like that. I fuckin’ hate the sequels, but I’ve got to hand it to the “Saw” guys… they created the first real horror icon of our times. Now that’s what more people should be doing… don’t reuse other people’s creations… let them be… do something yourself.

It’s like this darn “Evil Dead” remake they’re talking about doing. Don’t. The appeal of “Evil Dead” was that it was a shitty little movie made on a shoestring budget by a group of passionate kids. Who wants to see a $30 million dollar version of it? But more so, who wants to see someone else besides Bruce Campbell play the lead role?

And does anyone actually want to see a remake of “Friday the 13th”? and is Sean Cunningham really that hard up that he’s OK’ed this? OK, so the first “Friday” has dated, but it’s still good fun, and there’s plenty of sequels to it aren’t there that haven’t dated. The last thing we need is another one of these flashy tightly-edited MTV-style remakes. I don’t think they’re even scary. I mean, did anyone even jump –Jessica Biel’s tits need not answer- in the recent “Texas Chainsaw” remake? Nah, me either. I think why the original worked so well was because it was raw… filmed almost like a documentary… you believed it was happening. How the fuck are we supposed to believe the new “Texas” is ‘real’ – they’re all recognizable actors; the money’s right up there on the screen, and the soundtrack’s more over-powering than anything in the hurried script.

Anyway, back to horror icons, did you hear they’re remaking “Child’s Play”? Now, no offence to creator Don Mancini, but dude, you’re better than this – – – the first film stands up real well, and is a terrifying little flick. It doesn’t need to be redone. Sure, the sequels blow harder than Divine Brown on a Saturday night but Chucky’s first foray in film is, dare I say, a classic. Don’t fuck that up. You’ll never match it, you know it. Magic occurred first time around. But more so, you can’t play Chucky up as a humorous character, and the series as a comedy, like you’ve been doing the last couple of years and then do a complete 360 and return him to his scary roots. It won’t work. Chucky’s funny. You did that. If you wanna bring Chucky back, team him up with another established horror icon, like Freddy, Jason or Michael, and do a team-up flick. That’d be fun.

It’s getting frickin’ bad out there…. I swear, we’re just a year or two away from a “Nightmare on Elm Street” remake. You know it’s true. My wife says, “no, they won’t do that”… but I truly believe they will. I don’t put anything past the suits. If there’s a buck to be made, or if there’s time to be saved by not having to commission an original screenplay, they’ll do it. Can you imagine an “Elm Street” remake without Robert Englund? CAN YOU? Well, think about that when you’re buying your tickets to the upcoming “Hellraiser” remake or pre-ordering “Day of the Dead” on DVD.

Fuck picketing for writer’s rights….. picket against the slew of Hollywood horror remakes!