Top Ten Films Begging For A Remake

Normally I'm opposed to remakes and reboots. It's not that the concept offends me, it's just that so many remakes were either pointless, like Gus Van Sant's Psycho, or turkeys on steroids like The Haunting. The odds of a successful remake seem to be very low. Despite that fact, I'd love to see someone take a crack at these films, some of which I've included simply because it's shocking they haven't already gone through the Hollywood recycling machine.

10. The 10th Victim (1965)

In the near future bored sophisticates enter a game in which they hunt each other and then in turn become hunted. The whole thing's legal and televised, and the government uses it as a form of population control. This Italian film sounds dystopian, but it's really a black comedy and it comes with a double dose of 1960s style. Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress provide beauty and cool, and the soundtrack has one of those maddeningly catchy tunes Italian films of the time specialized in. Running Man was a bit like this, but it's a wonder Victim hasn't been given the full Hollywood makeover.

9. The Magnificent Seven (1960)

There's supposedly a remake of this classic western in the Hollywood pipeline. The bad news is that Tom Cruise is attached to the project. I'm guessing that means the other six actors will be riding ponies just to balance out the height differential.  A straight remake is a bit pointless; what astonishes me is that no one has updated the concept to seven American mercenaries defending a Mexican town against drug cartel baddies. Wait a minute...that sounds good...hands off, Tarantino, it's my idea and I'm copyrighting it first thing tomorrow!

8. The Dirty Dozen (1967)

I know, I know, Inglourious Basterds was a de facto remake of The Dirty Dozen, but it didn't have the purity of the original concept. Not to mention that it was a self-indulgent load of shite. Given the success of Saving Private Ryan you'd think someone would be game for another stab at this action classic.

7. Mister Johnson (1990)

Virtually no one has seen this film, and that's a good thing. It's about a British colonial officer in West Africa in the 1920s who's trying to build a road through the bush. He's both helped and hindered by Mr. Johnson, a native who is a product and victim of colonialism. The novel this film is based is by Joyce Cary, and it's brilliant; one of the first and best novels about the corrosive effects of colonial occupation. The film is barely mediocre, despite Pierce Brosnan in front of the camera and Bruce Beresford behind it. If any youngish black actor wants to earn himself an Oscar, get this remake done in a hurry.

6. Gormenghast (2000)

This is actually a four-part BBC mini-series based on Titus Groan and  Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. The Beeb threw all kinds of money and talent at this project and they got it completely wrong. They gave it a Felliniesque feel which was totally off-base. The novels are hard to define, but I'll try by saying that they're kind of a collision between Dickens and Lewis Carroll. What's really missing from this mini-series is the humour of the original books, which are often LOL funny. And to do the books justice you'd need a series that's at least twice as long. Here's my review of the original novels.

5.  Troy (2004)

This plodding toga epic is based on Homer's The Iliad but manages to prune out all the best bits. More specifically, the film does away with the supernatural influence of the gods on the battle for Troy. That's a bit like making a western without horses. In Homer's story the gods are constantly interfering in the battle, and given the state of CGI these days I don't see why a remake shouldn't give them lots of screen time.

4. Excalibur (1981)

I don't actually mean this particular film needs to be remade, I'd just to like to see one film about King Arthur that doesn't suck like a Dyson vacuum cleaner, Monty Python's version excepted. Think about it: every attempt to dramatize this legend has gone down in flames. King Arthur, First Knight, and, going back to 1953, Knights of the Round Table have all put a blot on the record of everyone who participated in making them. The worst of the bunch is Excalibur, but only because John Boorman was an otherwise talented director. To be fair, Excalibur did have the late, great Nicol Williamson giving an intriguing performance as Widow Twankey Merlin.

3. Sands of the Kalahari (1965)

This is an odd one. A small plane crashes in the Kalahari desert and the survivors are menaced by a large band of baboons. The survivors also fight amongst themselves for who will be, in simian terms, the silverback male. It's a great idea for a film, but the execution was very B-movie. The worst decision was to have Stuart Whitman, a beta actor, play the alpha male. A decent male lead and some CGI would work wonders for a remake of Kalahari.

2.  Red Sun (1971)

If you're like me you're continually wondering why there aren't more westerns featuring samurais. It's a puzzlement. In fact, there's only one: Red Sun starring Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune and Alain Delon (my review here). Jackie Chan did martial arts in the old west in Shanghai Noon, so I don't see why we can't have a samurai kicking cowboy ass on the prairies. It's a better idea than Cowboys & Aliens.

1. The Naked Prey (1966) 

Actor Cornel Wilde turned to directing as his B-movie career started to wind down and he produced this classic about the hunter becoming the hunted. Set in Africa in the late 1800s, Wilde is a hunting guide, who, along with the hunters he's guiding, is captured by angry natives. The guide's clients meet sticky ends (really grisly stuff for 1966), but because the chief respects the guide he's given a slim, but fighting chance to escape. He's stripped naked and given a brief head start before being pursued by spear-wielding warriors. And the hunt is on. The story is beautifully simple and it's told with brutal efficiency. It's not without it's faults (Wilde was in the same acting class as Stuart Whitman), but it begs for a remake with a bigger budget and some dialogue that's a bit sharper. I'm not only one who loves this film: it got the official film geek seal of approval by being released as part of the Criterion Collection.

Ten Good Things In Ten Crap Films

The law that states that even a blind squirrel will occasionally find a nut also says that buried within the reeking compost of bad films one can sometimes find a black truffle of cinematic excellence. And here they are:

10. Mr. Billion (1977)

This one starred Terence Hill, an Italian actor (real name Guido Falcone) that Hollywood tried to turn into an international star in several grisly films in the mid-1970s. Hill always looked glassy-eyed and wooden, rather like a reluctant student in an ESL class. This film has him trying to claim an inheritance in the U.S. with the help of Slim Pickens. The gem in this movie is a scene in which Pickens discovers that his beloved trailer home has been destroyed. Pickens grief is so real you'll actually feel your throat tightening.

9. Alligator (1980)

Yes, indie film hero John Sayles wrote the screenplay, but it's still a cheapo creature feature. The best thing in Alligator is Robert Forster, who delivers an amazing performace, particularly in a throwaway scene involving a suicide bomber who walks into a police station. Quentin Tarantino gave Forster the lead in Jackie Brown 17 years later largely because of his performance in this film.

8. Zardoz (1974)

The title character is a faux god whose giant head floats over Irish hills and moors bellowing out commands to his barbaric, post-apocalyptic followers. The head is a great magical/fantastical image. The rest of the movie is completely mad and bad, starting with Sean Connery's fetish wardrobe and ending with a plot that resembles a stoner's idea for a R-rated Star Trek episode.

7. Star Wars (1977)

I realize I'm in the minority position when I call Star Wars a crap film, but I just can't get past the bad dialogue and acting (Sir Alec excepted). The opening scene, however, with Princess Leia's space ship being chased by Vader's ship still gives me a thrill. Why? Because this was the first time special effects were truly special. I can remember being in the theatre and thinking that the film world was about to change. And then Carrie Fisher opened her mouth and everything went to hell.

6. Fraulein Doktor (1969)

I can't remember much about this film except that it was a mediocre spy story set in WW I. What I do remember is the final sequence, which is a poison gas attack by the Germans against the Allied lines. This entire sequence is stunning. It's like an apocalyptic fever dream as imagined by David Lean. The highlight is the sight of the German cavalry's horses completely swathed in gas mask suits. Yes, full suits. It all looks incredibly nightmarish, and Ennio Morricone's score only makes things better.

5. Jurassic Park 3 (2001)

Pterodactyls. I love pterodactyls, and this crap film has a bunch of 'em. It also has William H. Macy looking very uncomfortable as the star of an action film.

4. Godfather III (1990)

It's a toss-up which is worse: the dense, dull plot involving Vatican banking, or Sofia Coppola's acting. What's brilliant is the ending. The last scene is of Michael Corleone, who is living in hiding in Sicily, sitting by himself in the courtyard of a palazzo. He drops dead of a heart attack and the only creature to notice his passing is a dog who barks furiously at the inert body. This is an elegant and painful counterpoint to Vito Corleone's death in his own backyard in America while playing with his grandchild. Vito struggled to escape Sicily and Michael ends up back there as a fugitive. Too bad the ending isn't strong enough to rescue the rest of the film.

3. Excalibur (1981)

So much to choose from: the risible costumes (chrome suits of armour!); Nicol Williamson's performance as Widow Twankey, sorry, I mean Merlin; special effects borrowed from early Dr. Who; and set design from the people who did the It's A Small World ride at Disneyland. And yet the whole thing has a berserk, kitsch entertainment value. It's like watching a train full of clowns and wild animals crash into a building filled with paint, helium and fireworks; you don't know what's going to happen next, but it'll definitely be worth watching. And congrats to director John Boorman for putting two films (Zardoz was the other) on this list.

2. Zabriskie Point (1970)

Even by director Michelangelo Antonioni's elliptical, opaque standards this was an unholy mess. The story, what little there is of it, is a clumsy diatribe against Western consumerism and capitalism. His first misstep was hiring two non-actors for the lead roles. The male lead, Mark Frechette, later robbed a bank and died in prison. The female lead was Daria Halprin and she suffered a worse fate when in 1972 she married Dennis Hopper. The good bit? The last five minutes of the film shows a huge house planted in the middle of the desert blowing up good, real good. Antonioni lets us see its destruction from more than a dozen angles, with lots of slo-mo, and adds in gratuitous shots of fridges, bookcases, and other things blowing up. Think of it as the art house version of Jackass.

1. King Kong (1976)

More than 40 years after the original was made, the best innovation Hollywood could come up with was special make-up effects guru Rick Baker stuck inside a gorilla suit. It was a very nice gorilla suit, probably purchased on Rodeo Drive, but it was still just a suit. The other special effects, what little there was of them, were equally lame, and the plot and dialogue were no better than the average episode of The Love Boat. The diamond in the dross was Jeff Bridges, an actor who throughout his career has been cursed with appearing in ambitious films that fall flat on their face: TRON, Heaven's Gate, Tucker: The Man and his Dream, Starman, and even TRON: Legacy. Despite the dodgy films, Jeff is always a great actor, and in Kong he acts up a storm. When he's on the screen you can almost pretend that you're watching a good film.