Ahah! Someone Important Reads My Shit!!!

The two or three of you who read me know that I recently posted a rant about how crappy most scary movies are, about how they lack the creepy vibe that old school flicks possess. I even cited some examples. One of them was "The Fog", by horrror meister incarnate John Carpenter.

The motherfuckers in Hollywood tremble in fear with my mighty powers of observations. Why? They're remaking the movie, that's why. Ol' John, who's spun such notable creep-fests as The Thing and sci-fi send-ups like Escape from New York and iffy flicks like Ghosts of Mars has declined to be in on the deal.

John's reasons for not wanting to get in on the hype? "I have done it once, and I don't want to do it again," Carpenter said. "I did my 'Fog,' and now it's someone else's time. It's very flattering. It's terrific that they want to make it. We have been thinking of doing 'The Fog' over for some time, as maybe a sequel. But now is the season of the remake."

I have my issues with remakes. They are almost never as good as the original, and even more rarely do they exceed the original. (The recent remake of the Punisher, not starring a 'roid-ramped Dolph 'I need someone to wipe my own ass 'cuz my arms are too big' Lundgren, has all the hallmarks of being an aberration.) As I said previously, the original Fog had a lot going for it, not the least of which was Adrienne Barbeaux. Spooky ambience, lots of ... fog ... that sort of thing. I'll bide my wit until I see trailers and ... acquire ... said remake through the usual channels. But I warn you, Hollywood, if it sucks, you'll put another nail in the Remake Coffin, and before you know it, you'll need to come up with something ORIGINAL!

You can find the original news report for The Fog remake here.

Another movie that has fallen into the green light category is "The Blob", which has already been remade once before. In the original, they had an eighty-three year old Steve McQueen playing a teenager, which was laughable then and still is. It wasn't all that scary to me (plum pudding moving around on the screen ain't scary), or to anyone of my generation, but shit, motherfuckas back then must have been squirming in the seats and passing out in the aisles. In the remake, they had Kevin Dillon, who ain't all that great an actor. Better special effects (The Blob pulls some hapless schmo through a drain pipe) and better plot-line (something to do with a satellite falling from space and alien microbes going apeshit in our environment). As far as sequels go, meh.

You can find the original news report for The Blob remake here.

You want to see a good remake? See the 1978 version of "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers". It's got Jeff "I Have Also Saved the Earth With Will Smith" Goldblum, Donald "I'm A Little Bit Jealous Of My Son Keifer's Talent" and Leonard "Why In The Fuck Did I Do Star Trek?". It's scary, especially the ending, when one of our heroes loses. Hah! Fuckin' good ending.

Read my original rant on the lack of horror-cojones here.