August 2009's DVD release of Dennis Iliadis' surprisingly thoughtful version of The Last House on the Left begs for a reconsideration of this most derided of cinematic subgroups (in fact, many forget that Wes Craven's original 1972 version was itself a remake of nothing less than Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring).
While junk like this decades' Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and The Hitcher (among others) can certainly put a distaste in ones mouth to remakes in general, just a brief glance at what happens when creative minds work to retell a classic story is enough to inspire hope for upcoming remakes of A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Wolf Man, Poltergeist and more. These seven titles rise above their fellows; rather than simply regurgitating what came before, they further the legacies of their predecessors.
1. The Fly (1986, David Cronenberg): It has been stated by Cronenberg that, had this re-imagining of the 1958 science fiction film been made as a straight drama, it would have been too depressing too watch. Remake or not, The Fly's mastery knows no bounds: as doomed romance, its despair is heart-shattering; as physical horror, its gore rises to Shakespearean levels of profundity (it's no surprise that Cronenberg and composer Howard Shore later collaborated on developing The Fly: The Opera). It stands as nothing less than one of the greatest movies ever made.
2. Nosferatu, the Vampyre (1979, Werner Herzog): Adapting F.W. Murnau's silent masterpiece to his own eccentric style, the German master's chamber piece vision of physical and spiritual decay might be the most humane vampire film ever made. An ethereal sense of death intoxicates from the opening credits on, while Klaus Kinski's performance as the rat-like Count Orlock sustains equal parts physical repulsion and soulful sorrow.
3. The Thing (1982, John Carpenter): This tale of interspecies paranoia might be the greatest movie Alfred Hitchcock never made. Though indebted to bravura performances, locations, sound design and Ennio Morricone's subdued score, it's the deft use of puppetry, makeup and models that drives this films central gut punch: a malicious alien life form, found frozen in the Antarctic, capable of perfectly imitating any organism and surviving even after it's been blown to pieces.
4. War of the Worlds (2005, Steven Spielberg): One of the 1950's silliest sci-fi allegories became the richest cinematic representation of post-9/11 America under the steady hand of cinema's greatest living artist. Though imperfect (ditch the bookending Morgan Freeman narrations, please), the bulk of this invasion/survivors tale - including the scariest sequences put to film this decade, hands down - stands equal with the director's greatest masterpieces.
5. Halloween (2007, Rob Zombie): Zombie's re-imagination of the penultimate slasher film doesn't even try for John Carpenter's genre perfection, and wisely so. Instead, this arty splatterfest is a brilliant articulation of familial rage and brooding angst for the Columbine and Virginia Tech generations. Here, Michael Myers isn't so much evil as broken beyond repair by a hateful and apathetic society. Love hurts, indeed.
6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978, Philip Kaufman) & Body Snatchers (1993, Abel Ferrara): Two stylistically distinct remakes of the 1954 classic, in which aliens systematically replace humanity with emotionally void clones, are each of virtually equal worth (yes, it's a cheat to count this as one spot). Kaufman's much-lauded version stresses the loss of emotion and humanity; Ferrara's underappreciated take goes one further and ponders the very resilience of the soul.
7. The Blob (1988, Chuck Russell): The ruthlessly brutal yin to the charming 1958 original's hidden-in-the-shadows yang. Nobody is safe in this take on cinema's greatest pile of insatiable red ooze, and with characterizations more well-rounded than 95% of its brethren, the gory demises witnessed here prove both gut-wrenching and emotionally affecting.
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