157: The Highs and Lows of the Remake

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To your stations. Yeah. We'll be back. Name the remake of the groundbreaking horror movie in which the villain. Halloween.

Texas Chainsaw. Dawn of the Dead. The Hills Have Eyes. Amityville Horror. Less House on the Left.

Friday the 13th. A Nightmare on Elm Street. My Bloody Valentine. When a Stranger Calls. Prom Night.

Black Christmas. House of Wax. The Fog. Piranha. It's one of those, right?

Right way down among brazilians coffee beans grow by the billions so they've got to find those extra cups to fill they got an awful lot of coffee in brazil what's. Up and welcome to movie meltdown i'm brian i'm fred You're the one that said to do it now. I'm Greg. And we are back for another episode of The Caffeinated Movie Geek and Cookies. Cappuccino on my butt.

I still drink coffee. The last fucking thing you need is another cup of coffee. It's time for The Caffeinated Movie Geek. I thought you were going to do a little bit longer intro, but hey. Have you done this before?

I have. What's funny is we were, like, preparing for this moment for 20 minutes, an hour, and then we can't get it together. Sounds about right. We're drinking coffee and eating cookies. Yeah, yeah.

That's how you bribe all these people. Oh, no, wait, just us. All these people. We're coming to you live via digital recording from Nancy's Bagel Rounds, where the few of us will get together, drink coffee, talk movies, and eat cookies. I don't know.

What else do we do? Sometimes we take pictures. Yeah, occasionally. I want to document each one, so if somebody can just take photos each time as we go. If you're going to be in a picture, Greg, you might want to zip your pants.

Thank you. Just like every week we have. All right, so, gang, I ask you, what blend of coffee are we drinking this week? Thundermox. Oh, God.

They specifically said they wanted to do it in unison. Next time we're going to do it, we'll harmonize, though. You go low, I'll go. We're going to do the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young kind of. Yeah.

We don't even have enough to do that. Oh, yeah. We don't have enough of a crew to do that. We've got Crosby, Stills, and. Well, I can sing two parts at once, like Morticia's sister on The Addams Family, if you remember that.

She could sing harmonies with herself, and she had flowers growing in her hair. That was lovely. Yes. All right, so with that, I guess I will knock out my geek activities this time around. Actually, I've seen quite a bit, and a few of them I'm going to save for the second half because I've actually watched quite a few remakes lately.

But one that I watched just yesterday is really– it's half the reason. Like, I kind of half wanted to watch it like a week or so ago when I first saw it show up. But after last week's, you know, the last full movie discussion that we had, it really needed to be watched. I watched Trespass, which is Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman– Basically, people break into their house and hold them hostage, which sounds really familiar to a movie we just talked about. So, yeah, I almost wanted to watch it in comparison because it's doing such a different version of that.

This is like the most Hollywood version of that exact same story. And I didn't realize until the end why. I mean, I think I kind of remember when the trailer first came out, seeing who directed it. It's Joel Schumacher. Oh, yeah.

It's so weird. He does, like, such back-and-forth stuff. I mean, he can do stuff that's a little different and kind of good, and then he does the most mainstream, watered-down, generic stuff ever. And that's kind of what the... I mean, it wasn't bad if you like these kind of movies, but, I mean, it's, like, by the numbers exactly how...

I mean, yeah, some of the stuff going on And then some of these shots he works in, he keeps doing these little like cutaways that one of the guys is having these like almost like dream sequence shots of Nicole Kidman that look like they're shooting like a fragrance commercial. Like some of the stuff he shoots is like so cheesy. It's like Michael Bay level of cheesiness, which is saying something because this stuff just looks cheesy. cheesy you know it's like he's they they've both of them they found this way to take something that's very simple and just the framing of a shot or the the color scheme or the way that they have that just looks cheesy that just looks so oh it's so bad the way they just kind of force that into the scene and there's a lot of other parts in the movie that are just kind of normal but yeah he cuts to those and i would almost laugh every time but i'm like what is this we're looking at here It's like, yeah, maybe that's the fragrance.

Schumacher. They just need to run that. I don't know. I think it's Kidman. I think we all dream about Al.

Well, you need the by, kind of like the by Calvin Klein. Oh, yes. Kidman by Schumacher. So, yeah, other than that, it is funny looking at Trifft Pass in comparison with Funny Games, because Funny Games is at least really trying and going out of its way to comment on, you know, these... these cheesy movies and this is that cheesy movie it actually does all the things that it's pointing out and it's funny because this was just made last year so i mean it's not like they're referencing you know that movie it's like this movie came out after like 10 years past the first one plus and still has yeah it's just hitting the exact same points in every one of these house taken over by terrorist movies, which I mean, there's a lot.

I was thinking there's like desperate hours. There's, I mean, there's so many that it's almost its own little sub genre. Now you want my favorite, the refs with Dennis Leary. You know, at the time I had not watched that in a long time. I'm thinking we need to work that in.

It's like a holiday movie for our big Christmas. It could be a good holiday movie, but yeah, I mean, in that lighthearted way, Hey, this guy's holding us hostage. You know, that's, It's more of a fun version, I suppose. Right, right. Yeah, I don't know.

Trespass. It's watchable. It's not terrible. It's just pretty boring as those type of movies go. I don't have any use for most Nicole Kidman movies.

You know, something I really loved her in was an early movie in her career called Flirting, which is about a boys' school in Australia that was across the lake from a girls' school And it was just like a growing-up romance, and she was not the romantic person. She was like an older student at the school. It was like a hall monitor and had this authority that sort of went to her head. But then when she decided to be cool and be friends, it was just hilarious. It was great.

I was so hoping you were going to say BMX bands. That's exactly right. That's the best word to say. We're adding that to the list, aren't we? Yeah.

I've seen it a couple times. I'm not a big fan of hers. She's one of those that is all over the map. There's stuff that is so... This is so boring.

She doesn't even try very hard. This is just so lame. And then she'll do other stuff that she shows she's got talent. I don't know. It's very strange.

What was the ghost? Was it The Others? The Others is a really good movie. You know, I liked a lot of it. It's well made.

Yeah. It's no orphanage. No, it's no orphanage. I'm happy that the orphanage hasn't been remade yet. Give it time.

Because I think it would be really bad. Give it time. I told you all about it. That was on an episode, wasn't it? Yeah, it was.

Where we had the two-part love our kids. Yeah. And that's why I watched it after you talked about it. I decided to watch it. I was stunned how great it was.

Good. I'm glad somebody said it. I loaned that to someone and never gave it back, and I've not heard from him in a long time. So if you're listening, Chris, I want my movie back. Give me that back.

I know you listen sometimes. You've told me about it. So aside from that, I also saw this one was almost directly tied to a purchase, which if you're on the Facebook page, I actually posted on there. Last weekend I went to the big cheesy flea market. And found the, uh i think it's the deadly hands of kung fu nice comic book that had the special one-off special edition with billy jack in it oh yeah which is it was pretty awesome i'm glad i picked it up but um thinking that i got home and i was like i if i had ever seen billy jack i don't remember 99 of it so The next day, I was like, alright, I'm watching Billy Jack.

So I watched Billy Jack. It's another one of those I would throw out there for us, because there's some interesting stuff going on there. I bet I could retrieve the entire song word for word from my memory. I don't know that we should go down there. No, I want you to do a two-part arm.

A two-part arm. With flowers growing out of your head. It's funny, I can't remember things I need to know, but like stupid, cheesy songs that come on the radio, I find that I know the words to all of them. Every word. Every one.

For me, it's bad commercials from when I was a child. Even the ones I've forgotten that they existed. Still, somehow I know the words to them. Every once in a while I'll do that. I'll be like, God, why do I.

Know all these words? It's scary. Let's see. The only other one that I won't bring up later because it's not a remake is I Saw Hugo. Which is actually really good.

It was one of those I haven't been to the theater in, I don't know, four or five months. Yeah, it's been a long time. I have no money, nobody else wants to go, but this one, it's like because it was 3D, and as much as I'm sick of 3D, and I don't like giving money to 3D crap that they don't pay any attention to the technology, especially if they're just up converting any of that nonsense, I really don't want to give them the money, but I mean, this not only is them specifically setting out to make a 3D movie, but it's Scorsese setting out to make a 3D movie. So for that, it's like I kind of wanted to see it in that experience, because you're not going to get that again. And once you're at home, it's going to be a totally different thing.

And again, in a way, almost to just kind of support what Scorsese's tried to do at this point. And, you know, for him, that's, I think, what is so awesome about it, really. It's like the story itself, like the kid story that's going on there is just kind of a basic story and that almost could have been its own little movie told by anybody it's you know once you get into it you realize it's not a kid's movie about you know a robot guy or whatever the hell that looks like it is in the trailer because it's a really misleading trailer that it really is this like love letter to film and it really is all about you know the the guy who makes that you know voyage to the moon and you know it like focuses on all of these early films and and how much It's looking at it through the eyes of these kids who are discovering film and you're realizing that's Scorsese and it's how much he loves film and it's showing this overview of all the early film stuff.

I think that's the impressive part. And to watch him watch how much he loves film and at the same time watch him sort of trying to embrace a whole new technology and grow as an artist. How many years has he been doing this? But it's like he opened a whole new door into film himself. So it is almost that little bit of discovery in there for this director who, you know, by now it should be old hat, but he's found a new way to make it challenging again, which I think is kind of interesting.

The 3D is good. It's just like all of them. It's like, it's almost, it works for that novelty and I like it there. But again, I would almost like to go back and rewatch it in 2D. Like I wanted to get the experience, but it's, it's still sort of distracting sometimes.

I mean, it's, There's stuff it does that is amazing with the 3D technology, and there are times where, especially this opening sweeping shot where you feel like you're moving, like it actually physically feels like you're zipping along with the camera. So, I mean, it does that kind of stuff and does it well. It does a lot of the layered stuff amazingly well, and stuff really does look, you know, like there's depth to it, like it's, you know, just kind of not cheesy 3D stuff coming at your face, but a lot of stuff that's almost sitting outside of the screen and in the foreground that's actually outside of the screen in the theater sometimes. So it's like that kind of stuff is cool, but at the same time, just, I don't know, 3D in general, I'm kind of getting bored with it.

It's overplayed at this point. It's cool to see what Scorsese's doing with it, but again, I don't know how much I'm getting in line for a lot of this other stuff. If they continue to keep doing this, I don't know. I think the only. Way I would continue to see 3D is if.

Somebody really pushes, I, I'm not 40. Well, I'll go when they make 40. I thought we already had, yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I'm saying, you know, where it is over the top immersion in, in 3d overwhelmingly. So, because otherwise it's just gimmicky. And then the other, the other way, the other end of it, because I'm not going to sit there with those glasses on for two hours.

It just, I can't do it. Um, And the money aspect. Movies like Final Destination, though, where it's already cheesy. you're doing it just for the spectacle. Which was the last one. That's what I was thinking.

I think that's the last time I went to the theater. That's the last thing I've seen. And I can get behind, not for the price, but I can get behind that. That's fun. For the spectacle.

Again, which is kind of what I like about the old, you know, it's still sort of playing that same William Castle card. You know, it's just like, look at this crazy stuff we're doing in the movies. Come on down. From that, you know, sales pitch angle, the fact that they're owning up to, I mean, This is going to be a big, goofy show. Come on down and see it.

It's like, I understand that. I do like that kind of nonsense end of it. This is just going to be fun, so let's do it. So, I don't know. I can get behind that every once in a while, but I'm not going to be doing it every week.

Other than that, there's like three other ones, but they're all part of the list. I've seen three more movies, and they're all remakes, which is sort of what led us into this. I've seen a lot of remakes, too, yeah. So, I guess... We will take a break and come back and go ahead and get into the question of the week.

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Sounds better. © transcript Emily Beynon. Hello there, ladies and good gentlemen. I'm here to talk to you about something very important today. That's outside the cinema. I know a lot of you listening now enjoy the film world.

Boy, outside the cinema covers all kinds of good films. If you're looking for the classics, perhaps you're looking for a good old Nazi film where the Nazis torture and rape everyone in sight. Or giant monsters crawl from the sea. Or perhaps an Italian film where Edward's finish takes a close off for no apparent reason or renegade bikers just do whatever they damn well please perhaps even occasionally turn into a werewolf then Outside the Cinema is your place to go that's www.outsidethecinema.com Outside the Cinema your source for cult movie discussion. Hi, this is Stephen Jeffries, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown.

Oh, you're so cool, Brewster. I can't stand it. It's part of your problem, you know. You haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.

And now, on with the show. Remake me Overtake me. All right, we are back and it is time for the grind. Once again, in this segment, we discuss a specific topic or question related to movies. And as often as possible, we'd like the suggestions to come from you, the listener.

Again, we've gotten a few on the Facebook page, but we still would like to get some good generalize. Everybody kind of comes up with very specific, you know, what's the best this or that. I kind of like to be more general. discussions of, you know, kind of a grand topic to cover, which hardly anybody's given us one of those. So if you have something like that, email it to us at geeksatmoviemeltdown.com and we'll try to work it into the upcoming show. This topic, as I mentioned, because just since last time we were here, I've watched three movies that were all remakes.

I can't wait to hear which ones these are. And. Yeah. And I mean, the last two, the last two movies that we've discussed on the show have both been remakes actually. So, or have been remade and we were talking about the original, but yeah, it got me thinking about remakes in general.

And I thought I would kind of throw it out there this week for you guys to address the obvious issues with it. And then maybe actually the more I looked at it, I started coming up with some pretty good examples of a good way to do a remake. And there's more than I, My knee-jerk reaction is to hate the whole idea, but the more I looked at it, I was like, there's a lot of really good technical remakes out there. So, I mean, you can't condemn the entire process. There's some good stuff.

One of which is the first one I will go into that I watched. I finally watched Fright Night, the new one. Oh, yeah. The one that I meant to go see at the theater and didn't, again, because I never go out to the theater. The Colin Farrell.

The Colin Farrell, and I... I mean, you can go back and listen to the episode. We talked about it. I did not like the idea from the get-go. Right.

As, again, knee-jerk reaction to most remakes, but especially of stuff that I love. And I love the original Fright Night. I think it's one of the better horror movies in general. It's probably my favorite vampire movie that I can think of offhand. It's definitely one of my favorite vampire movies.

So it was a really tough... Going into that one, knowing, you know, how much it had, you know, sort of to live up to or, you know, the deck stacked against it going into that. Yeah, Fright Night is really good. Like, I was not expecting to... I mean, it's just kind of fun.

I mean, it knows it's a fun horror movie and it totally takes advantage of that. So, yeah, I mean, as much as I expected to have issues with it, like, just about everything they did... was right really like in a way that i i didn't expect it kind of hits all the notes of the first one like there are but it almost switches them up sometimes things happen in a different order than it did in the first one or i mean they they slightly adjust the character so that they're not quite you know the same as they were but they end up sort of falling into the same basic situation and they they fill the same you know spot in the the characters but Yeah, they do just enough different to make it interesting, and everybody involved kind of does a good job with it.

Yeah, it's pretty damn entertaining. I had a lot of fun with it. There's a little bit of cheesy CG stuff in it, but again, it's a new movie. They always put cheesy CG in it. There was cheesy stuff in it.

Yes, but again, I. Only recently saw the original. Yeah, we're still going to do an original Fright Night episode, but we just haven't gotten. Around to it yet. Am I the only person who gets a gay vibe from Chris Sarandon?

He seems kind of gay for somebody who is married to Susan Sarandon. I mean. Think i've always kind of gotten a gay vibe from vampires anyway. Yeah well i mean that there again we could say this for the whole episode but i mean there's a weird relationship going on in that movie in particular yeah right yeah but yeah that's a whole different story but yeah we talked to chris saran and he's actually really cool i don't know if i get that in the real world he seems kind of different well i. Mean um Dog Day Afternoon.

Yeah, there's definitely, again, in his roles, he, you know. Prince Humperdinck really could care less about Buttercup. That's true. He's kind of fancy in that. He was going for just.

Butter, you know. He liked that six-fingered man a little too much. Again, a very odd relationship there, you have to say. You know I love watching your work. That's true.

So, yeah, he's kind of working on... a very special list of movies there but. Man uh what does that six finger imply in terms of a shocker i don't even want to know. You don't want to know you can find out the hard way. My my kids i recently showed them princess bride eight and five of the kids they loved it um And so much so that they even quote lines quite a bit from it. Anytime on television they see someone kissing, they'll go, wait, wait, wait.

Is this a kissing book? And I love my kids for that because they've already caught on to quoting movies. But the DVD skips right when they're showing the six fingers on his hand when they've come out of the forest. And my daughter was just I have to see it. I have to see it.

So we had to get online and find a picture of what the six fingers looked like because it never shows it again after that point. So anyway, we can move on since we've... That's awesome. Yeah, but the remake is good as the general bullet point. Fright Night, yeah.

And that was sort of what kicked it off for me because that was early on, like a week or so ago, and I was like, I went in expecting to not... Again, I was going in... I wanted to watch it, and I'd heard pretty decent things from people. It got a decent response when it came out, but I went in with such a... Not even a bad attitude, because I wanted to like it.

I was renting it. I wanted to have a fun time watching the movie, but there was just so much working against it. And then to get in there and actually see that they found a way to do it in sort of an original way and sort of have their own spin to it, I thought that was. Not only impressive as a movie, but it reminded me that you can do that. So yeah, that's why I wanted to throw it out there.

In general, just kind of talk about why do a remake? And why do people keep doing it? And is there a better way to go about it than sometimes happens? I think you have to love the original, but at the same time, not love it too much. I think sometimes in a remake, you see.

I don't know. I don't necessarily like shot-for-shot remakes. I like when people can go in and mess things up and make it different. I don't think you always necessarily have to update it so that it fits current ideas. And in fact, I think a movie should always...

I think a director... I'm going to put it on the director, not a writer. But should always shoot for a film to be timeless. Yes. Not something that sticks out in my mind is making the cell phone or Facebook or something. along those lines drive a major part of the movie.

It's kind of like the... What was the Colin Farrell movie? Since we're... The phone booth. Oh, yeah.

That he's stuck in the phone... That wouldn't... It's only less than 10 years old. Even when it came out, people were like, a phone booth? Really?

Right. So. But anyway, yeah, just in general, I guess before we get too deep in it, I think they have to have some love for it, not just in it for, hey, we could remake this and make money off of it, but also not love it too much and then not be willing to let go of a scene or a segment or, you know. I think that's what I realized looking at them. It's like everyone that I liked a lot of times was not only somebody talented redoing it, But it was somebody that really seemed like they were interested in the project, where then I went to the other list that was like, especially the cheesy horror remakes that they kept doing, and it's like, when they hand you the Friday the 13th remake, or the Freddy remake, you know, it's just like, those guys, you know, it's not like they were they decided they wanted to do that and they worked on it for years.

It's like the studio just went, Hey, remake this. And they handed it to them and they went, okay. And it's a paycheck. And, and that's, I think you can tell, like you look at those and those are like at best, you know, I mean, both of those are watchable, but neither are great. You know, it's like, they're okay.

I mean, they did a decent job of what they had to do. Again, they were doing a job and they did the job. They're watchable movies, but neither really feels like there's anything heart to it, you know, I mean, especially, you know, I mean, even the old Friday 13th weren't that, but I mean, like the, the nightmare on Elm street, there was, you know, when Wes put that together, it felt like there was something that he, I mean, he himself came up with the story, came up with the characters. It did feel like there was something invested. And then you look at the remake and it's just a bunch of random kids, you know, it's again, it's taken the, the hot kids of the moment, which by the way, one of them is the lead in the, Another movie I just watched who is hot.

Yeah, I'll get back to that in a minute. But, yeah, you can tell the difference there that it doesn't have, it just doesn't have that much vested in it. And somebody didn't put any heart into it. Yeah, and then it's just like a marketing ploy because you almost just want to go see it because you're invested in a great movie. Yeah.

You know the story. And then you see they're remaking it and you feel like, I better check that out. Yeah. What are they doing to my movie? And so you feel like you're being played, but you can't help yourself because you want to see it.

Especially those series. And you know they're manipulating you. And so the thing you're looking for is like, are they just doing that? Or is somebody really interested in this? You know, I.

Learned a lot with Transformers. I didn't watch the third one. I watched the first two. And because that was such a part of who I was back in the mid 80s or the early 80s, I guess as a kid. And I was so insulted by the Transformers movies when they came out.

I mean, just truly damaged and insulted. And it's not necessarily a remake, but it's. In my mind, it is a remake. It's revisiting a property that was already... Again, it's the same thing.

It's just taking a brand and slapping something else on it and handing it to someone. And the thing I learned was making a remake doesn't change, affect, lessen, do anything to the original. It's a different movie. It's a completely separate movie. Even if it's made by the same actors and the same directors, it's a different movie.

Movies can exist. Companies are in business to make business. It's my problem for associating the two and not being willing to let it go, I think. And so I'm to the point where I'm not going to get upset by remakes anymore and just hope that, maybe they can open the door to one, ideally make a great movie to at least open the door to someone going back and seeing something that is worthwhile, I suppose. And sometimes they can really update movie.

I mean, really well, the one that first came to my mind was, um, Cape fear. That was on my list. Yeah. I was looking through, I was like, you know, did a great, and again, Scorsese, I mean, That's what it is. It's like you give it to somebody not only who is really talented, but, I mean, I know he went into that, like, loving that movie and wanting to do...

But, again, you look at what, you know, De Niro's doing in it versus what Mitchum was doing in it. I mean, it's a different movie, and it's a different way of approaching... That same menacing character, but it's a slightly different way of doing it. And I think, again, it's not just updating it for the times, which they did, but it also... puts its own little spin on it and does it in a different enough way that it's definitely worth watching and, and kind of holds its own as its own movie, not just like a copy of the original. The original.

Yeah. It's funny after the, watching the, the anarchy, uh, funny games, twin movies. Yeah. It sort of got me already. I was looking at, Hey, they're remaking straw dogs.

Yep. And it seems sort of funny because it's this home invasive, violent thing. Um, And I went and saw that, and I just hated it. It was a stupid movie. It was a waste of time.

It had none of the oomph of the original. I didn't care what happened to anybody. In the original, there's the rat man. And by the time you get to the rat man, I just want to beat that guy to pieces with a tire iron. In this one, I didn't care.

It's like, oh, whatever. All right. It So it was completely disappointing to me. But the other one, it seemed like I got into a vein of remakes from that because we were talking about the killers in Funny Games. And I have this thing like sometimes things are so obvious I can't think of them.

And I was trying to make this connection. It's like there's that pair of killers. And what does that remind me of? What movie am I thinking of as the big antecedent for the killers? And, of course, it was the killers.

I was trying to think of the killers, and I couldn't bring it to mind. It's like when I was in a writing class once, and there's this James Joyce short story called Clay. And in it, they play a guessing game where this girl reaches into a bag with her eyes closed, and she feels something. You're supposed to guess what it is. It's this cold, wet, squishy stuff.

And everybody in the class seemed to get the story. And I don't get it. What is that? cold, wet, squishy stuff in that story clay. Right. You know, eventually it comes to me as I'm about to say it and then I just back, oh, never mind.

I get it now. But I was thinking of the movie The Killers because I had seen the 1940s version and I found that because I knew the short story and I knew the short story because I went through this period where I really liked Nabokov and it was the only Hemingway story he liked. was he liked this story, The Killers, and I saw the movie. And then I saw there's a remake, Don Siegel. He did a remake, and we watched that, and it had Reagan in it. And it was Reagan's last movie before his political career, and he played the bad guy.

And the remake, it wasn't even really a remake. It's sort of like a. It's falling to the left, too. But I want to plug Wild and Wooly Video because I went to find it. I find the 40s version.

I can't find the newer version. And the guy says, oh, it's in the same box the disc comes with, the 1964 version. I'm like, oh, okay, good. I ought to learn to read. I would have seen that down here.

And then he said, there's also a 15-minute version by Tarkovsky. And I never would have found it because it's hidden in the special features as a discussion of adaptations. And it was something Tarkovsky, apparently, I don't know much about him, but he's a big deal director. it was a 19 minute version he and some film students had done in film school in the fifties in Russia. And it's almost just exactly the short story dialogue. It's, it's the truest to the story and it's really pretty good.

But one odd thing about it is the, the protagonist Nick Adams in the Russian version, um, He wears this kind of silly cap, and he has a big sweater with a big neck thing. And I think the final thing is the belted overalls. That's a nice look. Yeah, because Nick Adams is supposed to be like an everyman kind of guy, sort of a stand-in for him. Everymen do not wear belted overalls.

He was kind of like a skinny Russian... rerun or something or Urkel or something. I don't know what this guy was, but all the rest of it was pretty good. It's definitely worth, if you rent the twin movies of the killers, it's definitely worth looking for the little 19-minute versions. You point something out there, just an aside, the sign of a good movie rental place employee that yeah that my god they've seen something i'm interested in and they know the special features not that that's just that kind of a resource and i it's too far away for me to drive and get there yeah all the time because i'd never return a movie on time but that's just beautiful that someone knows the special features on a obscure yeah dvd you know yeah.

And then he was telling me about all the other movies the director had done he said well he's kind of a big I know, it's 15 minutes, it sounds silly, but no, it's really good. And he did Solaris and a bunch of other movies. My God, it took me four years to watch the original Solaris. That one's on the list. That one's been made like twice, I think, since then.

But the thing that reminded me of The Killers was just in that original story, as far as I know, that was the original of the two guys who have this kind of, funky patter and it's kind of smart-ass gangster. They're always saying, like, oh, he's a smart boy. So what do people do in this town? Oh, they all come here and get the big dinner. And it's almost like the guys in Pulp Fiction.

It's that pair of killers. And I think the reason Nabokov liked the story is is because style is substance in that story in a way that it usually isn't in Hemingway. It's the ending of the story is somebody says something and it sounds vaguely smart ass, like something the killers would have said. And so it expands from these guys that are killers to just everything in the world that is thoughtless and, and just makes you want to die. I've only ever seen the remake.

I, a guy I worked with, um, who loves movies, but he doesn't see many newer movies, but he claims that that's his favorite movie of all time, the remake. And so I saw it because of the remake. See? You never know. Okay.

And I think it's one of those things where you, I don't know, people, you tap into something at some time when they saw it, you know. I found the remake really frustrating. There's times when I start to like remakes more than the original. There are times when it, you know, sometimes I like them both on the same level and I just keep them separate. But there's other ones that sort of move up.

The more I watch, you know, one over the other, I'm going to be like, this actually kind of did a good job on this one. Yeah, sure. I went back and tried to watch the original Ocean's Eleven. Yeah. That's a piece of cake.

I mean, that's one, I mean... For as silly and funny as that movie is, it's an improvement over the other one. Oh, yeah. And that's kind of, again, it's Soderbergh. So once again, you give it to somebody who's talented and who obviously liked the old one enough that he liked the idea of it, but went, well, we can do something better than that, and look who I can get to be in this movie.

No, it's purely almost formulaic, the way he puts Ocean of Eleven together. But it's still fun, and it's pretty. And it's slick, and it's, you know. It's almost like a go-to for that kind of movie. I mean, if somebody's looking for something like that, like, that's the top of the heap, you know?

It's just like, not only is it fun, you know, and kind of a fun movie to watch, but it's also well done, you know? It's got good actors in it, it's, you know, a good director, and it's, I mean, it's kind of the best you can go with for that type of thing, you know? If you just want a fun movie, that one's a well-put-together fun movie. Yeah. Now this, I wanted to get into another sort of sub category in this one and it leads to one of the other ones i saw this past week and the tie-in i had earlier i did see the new version of the girl with the dragon tattoo oh okay which the tie-in was and because i sat there the whole time trying to figure out who this lisbeth girl like i remember it was a big deal when this girl got cast and but i'm sitting there going do i know her for a minute because she's she's really good at it and i'm just sitting there It's Rooney Mara, who was the lead girl in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, who I remember not being...

I mean, she wasn't bad at that, but again, nobody in that movie had anything to do, so they were all kind of boring. So seeing her just totally own up, just step up and take this movie, and yeah, she's amazing in it. She's the. A girl from the Facebook social network. Yeah.

She's the girlfriend. Again, not a huge role there, but obviously he saw what potential she had because, yeah, he just kind of gave her this movie. She's also the heiress, not heiress, but granddaughter of both the Rooney family, who owns the Steelers, and the Mara family, who owns the New York Giants. So that's football greatness right there. And she's named Rooney Mara.

Anyway. So she really didn't need to get the most coveted job in Hollywood. Yeah, she's got some money. She's got some money. It sucks to be the rest of you actresses out there that were, like, clawing to get your way to that role.

Right. And she stole it up. But she does an amazing job in it. She really. That only makes it worse for everyone.

Yeah, I guess so. It would have been... They could be like, well, she sucks anyway. No, she does a great job. But.

And that's my thing. Have you seen the other, the Swedish version? I've seen the Swedish version. Okay, that's going to be my thing. Because, as I said last time, I waited because I wanted to see what Fincher was going to do with this one before watching the Swedish.

It is very much that you're trapped in the environment of Swedish geography film to begin with. You can feel the climate. Just in the film itself, which I appreciate. I'm sure there's a lot of it that's lost in translation because, you know, that you miss from the having to read. Yeah.

But you get a lot out of... Let's see, what's the gentleman's name? I forget his name, but the. The writer? Yeah, the guy, not...

He... Seems to be... Mikel. Right. He kind of carries it for me.

She does a good job of being that character. Yeah. But she's just that character. She's not much more than, I'm going to play this shocking role. Now, I guess I don't want to handle too much, but there is one scene that is, you know.

These scenes that everybody kind of... Again, I went in knowing that scene was there. It's handled... Pretty well, but it's also pretty hard to watch. But I'd expect that out of a Swedish film, too.

So, it's good. After seeing it, I thought, I'll never have to see it again. That's what you thought. Right. Oh, okay.

And I'll never have to watch the remake. See, that was what I was thinking. That's what made me originally want to pose this question, is... when they do this, turn around and make one again a year or two later, is it necessary? And I found that when I was going through, you know, listing different ones, good or bad, there are ones that I was like, even if they did it good, sometimes I'm like, but was it really necessary to make this? So that's almost because now having seen this one, I'm like, I don't know that I'm going to get anything out of the original. that I didn't, I still want to watch it, but I feel like, again, because you gave it to somebody who's an amazing director, and that's what I was thrilled, like, even, you know, of the good stuff I've seen lately, I went in, I guess I felt like I'd heard so much about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that I just kind of went in, I wanted to see it because it was Fincher, and because, you know, what I'd heard about it was good, but I guess I didn't go in with huge expectations because I felt like I already knew so much about it.

It was, I was really thrilled with it actually like by the end i was just i really like. That movie and it sounds like it's better. That's and that's what i was thinking i was like so now it's like what we you know across the board you would normally say well what's the point why bother making a remake when they already made this one just like two years ago but again i feel like i'm going to be backtracking here and be like almost let down because what fincher does in this is so good and and Again, I feel like this one is going to be more or less the same story with a lesser budget. Yeah. Because there's no way in hell they gave him Fincher money.

And the Fincher one looks so good. And that's what I, you were saying the environment. Like I think just the, what Fincher does in this, I felt was just like that world. Like that little world that Mikel gets thrown in the middle of. He captures so well, and I don't think it's a really long movie, and it didn't feel like it.

It didn't feel overly long. What I felt like was really invested in that little world. Like, I really, like, by the end of it, you knew all these characters, and you were, like, the whole little area where they lived, and all this stuff going on in this world really, I don't know. He just did such a good job capturing all of that that I don't know that, you know, going back that... it's going to be in there again I'm going to watch it and see but I feel like now it's working the other way now it's like the original has next act against it there the remake did such a good job that I don't know that yeah which I don't know I didn't want to say as much as Rooney did a great job in this one daniel craig's great in this and i really do want to see him you know break out of i think he's signed to do several more bond but i mean he's just now getting to that point that he can do other movies and be you know a regular actor and he does a good job in this i would really like to see him you know i know he's been in a lot of other stuff but he's still that's sort of the go-to whatever you say oh the new bond guy so it's good to see he really can kind of deliver something outside of that because he's not at all bond in these movies.

When you bring that, as far as those recent remakes and also the same thing, the Let the Right One In. That was like the next one I was going, when I said, is it necessary? Yeah. That's what I was thinking of. You know, I thought, because it was right after I saw the original that I heard, oh, you know, they're remaking that.

Yep, I did too. And. I immediately thought, there's no need to remake this movie. There's nothing that they can add. There's nothing they can do other than get a bigger audience.

There's nothing they can do. They're different. Pretty good job. It's a good job. And that was my thing.

Really good job. I think had I seen the remake first, I would have loved it just as much because I love Let the Right One In. Again, when somebody's like, you know, do you like horror movies? And it's usually really hard for me to name a current. Like everything I like is Halloween.

You know, everything I like is 20 years or 30 years. You know, it's like I like old, what normal people would call old movies now. So it's like when I try to reach for something recent that I think is good, that is that level of amazing, it's let. The right one in. Yeah, I like that.

I feel the same way. But, I mean, again, I was kind of expecting them to do a half-assed version, and then I watched Let Me In, and I'm just like, damn, it's really good, too. And it's like the story really doesn't stray at all, but visually it's it's kind of got its own feel to it and he does some amazing stuff with it that it's kind of a shame for this director that i mean it's almost like nobody's going to give him a fair shake you know at being a good director because he does a great job on that one and he's always going to be like compared to the original because the original was so big and sort of broke through into america even without being remade so it is weird that i mean it's one of the few movies i can think of that a lot of people like When it first hit video over here, they were carrying that at Walmart.

Yeah. Which I was shocked by. I was like, what? Walmart carries foreign films, especially like a new, you know, random horror movie that nobody outside of like the movie geek circles has ever heard of before. But it had crossed over enough that it had already kind of hit the mainstream in its own little way.

So I don't know. Those are the ones that I don't know what to think of. Is it necessary? It was crazy. That same thing with the funny games.

It's equally as good. I like it kind of equally, you know, as much. I had the same problem. I mean, again, it's damn near the exact same script. It's almost shot for shot.

So, I mean, it's like, pick one, I guess, because they're the same movie. You know, after watching the first funny games, I had no need to watch the remake. To me, it wasn't going to help or hurt. So I was, I was like, okay, good. It's out there.

I see what this is. I see what it is trying to be. And I'm, I'm fine with it. I'm, or I'm, I'm done with it, I guess. Um, but the only thing that I think I can throw in there is, especially from foreign to English is nuance.

Yeah. Nuance in language that you miss from having to read. You don't know when someone's being sarcastic. You don't know. I mean, you just don't know.

And, um, You can miss a lot. And you can miss a lot visually, for. Me, that you have to read. Again, being movie geek that I am, I want to be watching everything. Again, I like the visuals.

I want to be able to watch. But if you're watching too much of it, you're missing what they just said. So, yeah, it is frustrating in a way. So, you know, it's better than, especially if you take a really good movie, like Let the Right One In, and you're intending to make a really good movie, not just capitalize. then it's fine, especially if somebody's going to put up the money, and you're a competent director, go ahead. You know, you translate books all the time.

Why not translate a movie? In a way, that's, I guess, what it is, is just if they're going to do... I don't know, there's different ways to go about it. I mean, if you're just doing that exact same movie again, it's weird, you know, I mean, it is weird... looking at it from that perspective, especially, you know, something weird like, I think I did to remake his own movie the same way. But I mean, even with the other ones, it is, it is strange to look at something as, as close as let the right one in and let me in.

And, and I don't know, it's different than when they try to do something totally, totally their own. Like, uh, the other one I was thinking of that's been well received lately was true grit. It's a different version. It's, it's got a different feel to it. Definitely.

Yeah. Those are remakes that are different cases, I think, from stories that are just classic, timeless stories, and people do them all the time because that's what you do. Like Hamlet. Like Hamlet, or, you know, nobody was going to redo Henry V until Branagh decided he had the nerve to do it because there was. Such a shadow cast from it.

But he definitely did his own thing with it. But yeah, I think it's new original movies that are getting remade. And some of them are just for the American audience because we're a huge audience. Like The Ring. That's what I was thinking.

We had that huge run of Asian horror that The Ring kicked off, which, again, I saw the original Ring and was amazed by it at the time. that's another, yeah, I would, well, I mean, that's the thing that you hit the end of that movie. I was like, Holy shit. Like I was not prepared for that, that first. And again, that was a bad VHS version that I think Misty bought at a convention. You know, this was like 12 years or, you know, it's been a good 10 years or more since that happened.

So it's like that found its way to the underground in America. And it already sort of picked up a little bit, but, The thing is, they made that remake. It's a good movie, too. I was surprised. Again, went in expecting it to be a bad, hacky remake, and they did a good job on that.

So you look at, they started off doing it pretty well. I think it's the next wave that kept, you know, the grudge is okay. They did a decent job. They did the sequel, which I don't know if everybody needed, but then you start looking at, like, the eye, or shutter, or mirrors, or pulse, or All these other Asian movies that they kind of sort of. When you start talking about that, there's been a lot.

Which I, like, pulse a little more than most people. That's, like, the low end of the list. Everybody hated that one. But, yeah, nobody... I mean, the more it went on, it's like nobody really wanted those.

So it's like, I don't know who was okaying that, because I guess the ring made so much money, they were just like, oh, any Asian horror movie will do. So, you know, they were giving it, again, to anybody. Yeah. Just here, go make this movie. Yeah, trend spotters, they go, this is hot now, this is what we're going to do.

Jump on that bandwagon. They're waiting for the next Japanese movie to come out so they can. Make another one. No. What about, okay, let's say then, you know, that's not needed.

What if somebody like Fincher was handed. Battle Royale? That's rough. I mean, would that be. Again, if anybody could do it, you'd get a good shot there.

Yeah. But. That one's such a weird one, though, because I don't know that you could do it in America. Like, I don't know that our audiences would put up with what's going to go on on screen. I don't know that any studio would get behind the original way that that story works.

I don't know that our kids look enough alike. Well, I'm sorry, that's part of the thing of the movie. Right. It's these, you know, these Asian kids, and they all kind of look alike, and there's... And you go through a bunch of them really fast.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Part of the charm of the movie is it almost has like a folk art weirdness that like in a way it would seem like such exploitation violence, but it doesn't because it's like weird in a way that's convincing. Like an untrained painter can be really convincing. And it has those odd epilogues at the end. Who does two or three random weird epilogues at the end of a movie?

And also, the translation of the subtitle seems to go awry suddenly at the very end. All of a sudden, nothing makes any sense. People are saying stuff and you're going, what are they trying to say? I attributed that to me watching it online. You know, I was like, OK, this because I had to stop and restart it a couple of times.

And, you know, I think because I was thinking about this when you brought up the remakes. I think once the Hunger Games comes out now, because that's accepted and that's a nasty idea. The whole thing. That it's this popular, that something like this is out there, and it's almost, what a heartwarming movie. You know what I'm saying?

No, this is horrible! So, then why couldn't you then sneak in? I think, again, I think there's... And sometimes you can, because I thought that with, again, going back to Funny Games... Like when I watched the original one, as soon as it was over, I was like, okay, I need to go get the American one because I couldn't imagine them doing that movie again exactly like it was and having it play for American audiences because our movies don't do that.

We don't set them up like that. We don't have the weird things going on like that, and we definitely don't end them like that. So I expected it to be a cheesy Hollywood version, and they would have changed something. Which it wasn't, but at the same time, maybe that's why it didn't go over. Like I said last time, nobody paid any attention when that came out.

And maybe that's why. Maybe the few people saw it and went, the hell was that? And like, word got out and nobody else touched it after that. So it's kind of that same thing. I don't know.

I mean, you could almost, if they got that one in, I mean, it's not quite as... violent as Battle Royale is and would be if we tried to remake it, but. You know what? You could. I mean, there's some tone things that slip through sometimes. But Battle Royale doesn't feel as terribly violent.

No, it's cartoonish. Because you don't really have a lot of time to get to know. I don't... See, I had the exact opposite thing. Like, to me, you were talking about the people all kind of being...

Like, I was surprised how much with that huge cast, how many of them I... got attached to very quickly and how much you identified with them and you really were kind of saddened when you may have only had a couple scenes with them, but I can't believe they killed her off already. I was surprised. They killed off all of the Transformers in the original Transformers, except for fucking Bumblebee. You're obsessed with the Transformers. But that was 1986, and you saw them getting their robot hearts ripped out.

Of them in the first scene, all of them, and you saw a theater full of 10-year-olds just almost weeping themselves, but then they went and saw it again. Was that made for American audiences? Oh, yeah. I thought it was. I couldn't remember where it came from.

And it was all, they did it all so they could release the next wave of figures that you'd have to go out and buy. Of course. That's understandable. But, you know, that was 30 years ago, and it played, and it can still, I don't know. I think, I mean, you see in Harry Potter movie, characters that you love, even kids, die.

Yeah. And we'll allow it. I just think we're wearing the edges off of that. It's like we're kind of wearing down the American audience that has been very set in what they wanted from a movie. And you couldn't go too far one way or the other.

It had to be pretty run-of-the-mill and safe. And we're getting to the point we can get away with a little more. But still, it's not quite what some of the stuff they throw out there across the sea is. I guess we're kind of away from the remakes thing a little bit. I don't know.

It's kind of all remake-y in a way. When you start thinking about remakes, I mean, it's kind of similar to... I mean, you have to draw a line between the experience of watching a remade movie of a story that you know from another movie, or you may have read the book and then you see the movie. Or you may see the exact same movie 20 years later that you saw before, and it's like a remake because you react differently. I've had that late at night.

I was like, hey, I'm... No. Hey, I. No. Or sometimes you're scared to watch a movie that you really love because.

Yeah. When I was going to watch, and this was Don Siegel again... I loved the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I didn't want to see the remakes. Right. But I wanted to watch it with my wife.

She'd never seen it, and I'm like, you've never seen it? Were you raised by wolves? What happened? But I made her watch it, and I was a little nervous about it, but it's like, no, it held up. That was on my list.

It held up. That's one that I think almost... Well, I don't know that it does it better. It does something different with it. Like, it takes. what was going on in the time period of the first one, and lets that sort of exist in the first one.

And then that one has its own 70s feel to it, and it feels like what was going on in the world there. So it comes up with an entirely different way to look at the whole thing that's going on. In that movie. Yeah, I was just talking about just watching the original again. And it holds up in its own way, but it's got a very different feel to it.

But the 78 version is great, and I was surprised how much I liked that one. See, I love the original in a way that I can't accept the 70s one. To me, it's like a pod replicant of the first one. It doesn't have whatever that spark in the eye or that, you know, it's like he looks the same, and there's just something different. That's a lot of these remakes, actually.

Yeah. Yeah, well, it depends what you're looking for in it, I guess. I mean, it can be a good movie, but if it's not what you want it to be, you're not going to be. I guess. Maybe it depends on how attached you are to whatever it was in the movie and when you saw it, what stage of development you're in.

Like, you guys know all this 80s stuff that I didn't watch anything during those years. I don't know what I was doing in those years. I didn't see any of that stuff. I don't want to imagine. I think I started seeing TV again, like sort of midway into NYPD Blue was when I got interested in TV again.

I didn't watch that kind of stuff when. I was that age. What do you all feel about remaking the thing? See, that was what I was going... I thought that was actually a good lead-in, was the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, because it's kind of that same...

It's a little older. The original thing is a little older than Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But to me, I think that's almost my go-to. Anytime anybody's totally condemning the whole idea of remakes, I'm like, thing's a remake. And the thing, to me, is one of the best movies ever made.

It's the top of my list anyway. It's right up there. You know what the common thread here of all the remakes that were like, but that works, but that works. Every single one is a competent, good actor or director. Excuse me.

Every single one of them is a damn fine director has remade a movie. And that might just be the common one. Because the new thing, I'm not so sure about. I haven't seen it yet. Again, I heard it.

I haven't either. I've just seen trailers of it, and I'm afraid. But I heard kind of the same thing. It's like, well, it was kind of my thing with the one earlier. It was like, well, it's fine.

It's okay. You can watch it. But, I mean, it's not going to be what the Carpenter version is. The other one, they kind of had that. It was like my feeling about the Lolita version.

There were a lot of things that were good in it. The girl was a great, she did a great performance. And, I don't know, I didn't like just the idea of Jeremy Irons. I agreed with him. He's sort of done the European weirdo already.

It was too right for the part. But the thing that got me was just in the narration, early on he said when he was a kid, he wanted to be a spy. I read the book. He wanted to be a famous spy. If you can't, why even do it?

I don't know. I was done with it then. I could never get past that point of why wouldn't you do the line right? That's one of the ones I was referencing earlier that I love the original, the Kubrick one, when I first saw it. I've seen it at least once since then, but I've come to like the remake almost more I just like the relationship.

It feels like there's some stakes there. It feels real. It feels like there's something going on between the two of them where the first one, and maybe it was just society at the time. Maybe you couldn't have them relating in a realistic way. Almost.

Maybe it was just something with that time period that kind of stopped them, or maybe it was a specific choice by Kubrick. I don't know, but. As good as a lot of the stuff is in that one, I think I became a little more attached to the storyline in the remake, and that's what kind of put it over the top for me. I think I like that relationship more in the remake, and it kind of makes me like the remake more, which is sacrilege, I guess, to like a remake more and to like it more than a Kubrick film. Right.

Were a few things I liked about the musical. Again, thanks to you, I now have a version of the musical, and it's pretty damn catchy, let me say. And yet, almost more mean-spirited, definitely more mean-spirited than the Kubrick. It's harsh. It's harsh.

And the mom in it, oh, it just kills you. I mean, she's so real. I didn't even feel it that much in the book. It's like she's there, but oh, God, what an awful author. Speaking of musicals and remakes, Little Shop of Horrors.

That's true. There's a remake that. And there's one going in an entirely different direction. Well, and speaking of remaking... I had to remake a short film that I saw on YouTube.

And it's just that thing of, like, you see something and there is something definitely wrong with it. And you just want to fix it. There's a lot of that on the Internet. There's a guy on YouTube named Ukulele Mike. All right.

And he's kind of like Wilfred Brimley, only more so. Wow. And he has this video where he's teaching people how to play in this remake, too. somewhere over the rainbow, the way the Polynesian guy does the ukulele version. And, you know, ukulele's an easy instrument. It's something a lot of beginners are going to want to do.

And he charts the chords, and it's super easy, except he draws out this impossible E minor chord. There's no way anybody's going to be able to do it. And he doesn't do it. He does it the same easy way. But he's teaching people.

He's like, here, I'll show you how to do this song. Here's the C chord. It's real easy. Now you do this, and you've got to put your pinky up here and cram this in. And it just angered me so much.

Why would you go out of your way to make an instructional video that's just going to frustrate people? And if I could find him. If I see this guy on the street, there's going to be trouble. So I had to make a little video and show how you do that. It's really not that hard.

And I had to post it online. I'm going to have to look up Fred Miller's. Over the Rainbow. Yeah, we're going to have to find those now. I don't do the whole thing.

I just do, okay, he gives you the C. Then he tells you to do these four fingers. It's the only chord in the whole song where you have to use all four fingers. You have to cram your pinky up there. Why?

When the chord is just like this. Are you specifically calling him out by name within the video? I'm calling him out by name, yeah. That's awesome. It's ukulele mic.

This is bullshit, man. That's awesome. Nice. Oh, man. But that's the inspiration.

That's one kind of inspiration to do a remake, is there's just something wrong. Yeah, maybe you're just pissed off at the director, and you're like, why did you do this when you could have done it? Well, there are, I mean, there are, again, getting into ones that improve upon or do something above and beyond what the other one did, kind of like The Thing did, another one from kind of that same. Era, The Fly. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. That's a very different movie. But, I mean, even horror fans, old school horror fans will be like, The Fly is not an amazing movie. You're kind of attached to it because it's Vincent Price. And everybody loves Vincent Price.

I mean, you kind of have to like it on that level. But it's sort of a cheesy horror movie. Whereas you get Cronenberg come along. That's a different movie that he puts together. Yeah.

I don't know if The Fly was really sort of the beginning of camp. Like, at that ending, it's like, were they really, were they trying to be funny? Were they, I don't know. No, no. It's really sad.

I can't stomach Goldblum. That's his most useful, really. It is. And that's the sad part is that's his best. The rest of his career is just a train wreck.

He's just Goldblum in everything. He just doesn't do anything. Especially once you hit the 90s. He's just playing that guy. He just shows up with his Goldblum car and he's like, alright, insert this in wherever you need it in the movie.

Is he clueless? Is he genius? Or is he just an ass? At some point, I need to say he must go faster. That's all I'm going to say.

It just and so I don't know I can't um he just annoys the crap out of me I really. Loved him as the big bad wolf in the three little pigs fairy tale theater that's my favorite thing he ever did he said something like no I'm just saying nature finds no that was Jurassic Park he said uh Billy Crystal was one of the three little pigs and uh And he said, not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin. And Jeff Goldblum said, chinny-chin-chin, you keep saying that. What is that? What does that mean?

Yeah. That's very Jeff Goldblum-y, I suppose. Like I said, genius, idiot, or ass. I don't know what it is, but it might be all three. Nice.

But yeah, I don't know. We had that kind of run there in the 80s where I was trying to think of The Blob, which I just finally re-watched it. And again, that's on the list. We're going to do a whole episode on that one. But did something different.

And I love the original Blob, but they found a different way to do it in the remake. Oh, and then going back to the funny games thing, King Kong. I remember Tarantino saying... Did it have the racial subtext to a friend of his? And he said, no.

Well, then what is it? Then it's just a big monkey. Which is what we want. And you know what? That's what that movie is.

It's big. I don't know. But the thing that I got from it, like very early on, she's a dancer. She's an entertainer. And there's some guy in the audience, a shot of this big ape-like guy just sitting out there laughing at the cabaret stuff.

And he reminds me of King Kong. And so later when the ape comes along and she performs for him, she sort of charms him, there's something going on with her that I think is what made her want to do the Funny Games movie. There's just something. About the relationship to the idea of a monstrous audience. Because in the end, and I was trying to work out what I thought of that movie and I couldn't quite get it together, but I think I can understand it as a commentary, and it's very masterfully done.

But for me, it doesn't really work as a movie. See, I was making the list, and I was like, I got the King Kong, and I went, it kind of falls on both lists. On the one hand, it's what, I mean, again, visually, it's amazing. It's a competent director. He does some great stuff.

This was also the point in his career where he forgot how to edit. It came from those Lord of the Rings movies and they're three hours long or six hours on the DVD. I want a 12 hour cut of the two towers. Yeah. So by the time he got to King Kong, I guess everybody had already said, yeah, give us more.

So he's like, okay, we can have a four hour dinosaur running portion and they can like spend 20 minutes on the boat going through icebergs or whatever the hell they were doing. I was just like, there's that. It's like an hour and a half before they get to the island. I'm like, what is going on? So, yeah, there's so much of that.

Maybe they could have got out and walked for a while. Then the trees could have walked. I don't know. See, I'm probably one of the few people in the world, and I've already gone on a weird list with my... my remake of Lolita Comet, but now I'm also one of the few people that really likes the 70s version of King Kong. Ah.

The Dino De Laurentiis version. Oh, yeah. The big, hemmy Jeff Bridges. Yeah, I. Yeah.

It's, I mean, it is cheesy, but again, it's one of those that, like you said earlier, maybe it's how you were attached to it the first time you saw it. Again, that was just me as a kid thinking King Kong was awesome and watching a monkey climb up the side of the World Trade Center. Yeah. Yeah. Like that again at the time.

Was awesome what's her name um that's galang yeah yeah yeah again i it has its issues i know a lot of people like to hate. That one but yeah when you have a newly built world trade center you kind of got to put. A monkey on it well you can say that exactly with the new mission impossible you've got a new tallest building in the world you got to put a monkey or tom cruise one. Or the other or both Oh, but the best 70s movie featuring a large primate. Is Thing with Two Heads.

Your favorite. Right. Yeah. The two-headed gorilla. No, there's a movie that just came to my mind, a remake, that I don't know why I'm not, I just lost it.

It's The Killers. Yeah. I can do the other one of mine. The other one that sort of inspired this, I went back and watched the Black Christmas remake after doing the whole episode on the real Black Christmas. In my mind.

And yeah, it falls into that category. And I think that one suffered a little bit because I'd heard from a lot of people that, oh, the remake's actually pretty good. It's pretty decent. I mean, again, it didn't get the respect that the original one got, but everybody's like, oh, it's pretty good. I was really let down by it.

Yeah. Really, and again, that whole episode, Marlena kept talking about some yellow guy in the attic craziness that we were just assuming she was drunk at that point. It's in that movie. It is that remake, but I think this is very telling because Marlena had actually seen the remake and didn't remember that's what it was. Misty had the DVD because that's whose I watched.

I borrowed it from her. She obviously had seen it too. Neither of them could remember that that's the movie it was in. That's how forgettable this movie is. By the time I was done, I was like, there's nothing really useful in this as far as I'm concerned.

That's what happened to me with Straw Dogs. A few days later, it's like, Oh, yeah, I saw that. Yeah. Wow, where'd that go? Yeah, it's just so forgettable.

And they put all this crazy... They almost pull a Halloween, speaking of other bad horror remakes, they almost do a ton of backstory on who the killer is and what sort... And, like, not just give you backstory, but make up all kinds of other crazy shit. Halloween is the... the epitome of what I mentioned earlier of loving it too much. Yeah.

He was too invested in Halloween and he wanted to make it perfect. I've said before. What about that psycho? Oh God. See, that's the one I was going to say.

That almost goes against this rule because there is a talented director and he obviously had at least a little bit of interest in it. I mean, I don't know if it was his idea or they came to him with it, but Either way, I'm just like, first of all, you should have said no. But I don't know. There's just like, that is such a useless movie. Yeah.

I mean, it's all these other ones I'm saying. It doesn't need to exist. It has to come up in this discussion. Well, it was, yeah. Because that was a shocking event.

And it doesn't, I don't know. It's a train wreck. But it makes no sense, really, because it shouldn't be a train wreck, because it's almost the same thing as Funny Games. It's almost shot for shot. It's almost dialogue exact.

There's one or two changes to the dialogue, which is weird for a movie as old as it is, but it's very little done, and how does this one suffer so badly versus the original? I mean, granted, it's Hitchcock. You can't mess with Hitchcock, but at the same time, It's not like they gave it to a hack. I mean, this guy had been doing movies for a good career before that and has done decent stuff. Yeah, he's done decent stuff since then.

So it's like he's a talented guy. How it came to be as bad as it did, I still don't even understand. I can't quite put a pin in it what is so wrong about that movie. But it's wrong. It's just something wrong about it.

I don't know. I was thinking of some movie that I was going to bring up, but I can't. There's a bunch of them. Another one that I've gone to. Go ahead.

The one that I had seen, an older movie that I had seen, the original, and specifically saw it as a result of the original, and it blew it away as far as I'm concerned. It's 310 to Yuma. Oh, yeah. That's a great little movie. Yeah.

The remake is such, it really makes you feel like I have to do this for my family. There's no other choice. I've got to be this person for the next 24 hours or whatever. And it really makes you feel like you're really there. The little villain sidekick guy in that movie is amazing.

It's one of those guys that you know the actor. Yeah, and I've seen him some other things and thought, where do I know that guy from? And why is he so good at that? And I hate that guy. You know, you just see him and you're like, yeah.

And then you look him up and it's like, it's the guy from 310 to Yuma. He's amazing. I love to hate that guy. Yeah. Yeah, he's really intense.

I was trying to think the other ones, like recently, again, of my go-to, yeah, but you got this, to throw it off, Dawn of the Dead. The remake of Dawn of the Dead is great. And I love the original, but it found a way to do something different and it's it's not i'm still a little attached to that original one it's got it's got some really cool again it's got cheesy effects and some some cheesy stuff from the 70s but there's some stuff going on with the story there that that is different than a lot of horror movies especially at that time and and i think isn't even in the new one but i love the new one too i think the new one you know he found a way to do something kind of fun and found a way to update it and make it work for new audiences, but kept, you know, all of the basic elements of what was cool about the original, but do it in a different way.

Yeah. You know, as much as it's just human nature to resist, you hate to hear somebody's going to mess with something that you love, but you can't predict what somebody might be doing with it you just can't circumscribe people's creativity that way and and so in a way it's kind of great when you see somebody take something that you feel is very very it's almost like those jackie chan movies where he's like an action museum preparations guy he's like trying to have a fight while preserving some ancient antique. A Fabergé. Yeah, that's what it's like. Somebody's taking this thing that you want preserved and not messed with, but they find a way to do something really exciting with it.

That's always impressive, actually. Well, looking at something, this isn't actually a remake, but it's kind of like the Transformers thing of revisiting a property. the reboot of Star Trek. I watched it sitting there in the theater going, oh my god, he found a way. Like I said, there's no way you could touch the old characters and there's no way fans would get on board with you messing with the timeline. He found a way.

Like freaking nature, he found a way and he reworked it. I'm like, damn, that's a good job. It's kind of like that with remakes. I've always really disliked Leonard Nimoy. He has an air of superiority.

I wouldn't mention that to Misty. I know. Was it that night you were at dinner with him and Jeff Goldblum? Yeah. Shatner's got pink flamingos in his yard.

Not literally, figuratively. He probably literally. He knows, okay, I'm playing at something. This is okay. Um.

I can take myself seriously, I can get all the girls, but I'm also kind of kitschy about it. Whereas Leonard Nimoy just takes himself so well. and seriously. In that role, he has to. I know. But again, he doesn't do much else.

In his documentaries and things, he still thinks that he's Spock. I think that's the problem. He still wants us to believe that he's smarter than us. Like the way Ginger thought she was really ginger. Exactly.

That's exactly what it is. And so, that was the one downfall of the new one. That's not a spoiler at this point. I like the Spock in the new one. He was like Ira Glass. on steroids or.

Something right we went into that i think a lot of people don't i did didn't like fans of star trek didn't. Like is it quinto yeah didn't like it was perfectly fine with me i didn't like him. He was perfect but see i don't love star trek yeah and so no they weren't they weren't messing with anything and they actually made it much more enjoyable for me. I was like, yeah, I can get on with this. I know most of the storylines from Star Trek.

I'm a sci-fi geek. I watch it, but I've never been there. Next Generation, yeah, I watched the shit out of that. You can't get much better for Star Trek as far as I'm concerned. That reboot did a lot for me.

I quite enjoyed it and kind of wiped the slate clean and let's move on. I hope. I guess. Yeah, but that was the one part that bothered me, is that we had to have almost, and it's almost like, Nimoy said, fine, you can use the property and you can remake this, but I have to be in it almost like I've got to give my acknowledgement that this is okay to do. Well, they like to do that anyway.

That's true. Ask Batman. But you know what? He's exactly like Shatner. He's got flamingos in his yard, too.

He does have flamingos in his yard. So, that's fine. I met him once when I was a kid, and... That would be a photo of me with a celebrity if I can find that. See, we just saw him last year.

Didn't get a photo, though. He had quite a crowd going there. I was impressed to see the Batmobile up close. I don't know. I mean, I.

Got a list of stuff. I don't know if we want to just try to knock out the rest of the list, or have we said all we need to say? I don't know. I mean, there's There's a bunch more remakes. Oh, there's a ton.

The one that I think should. Be remade is Godfather 3. Just make another one like that one never happened. Godfather 3. In fact, throw it. the cut of the original.

Yeah. Just find a way to actually re-film over that film. Chemically strip it. That was on the film. Even he's kind of said, and I wonder how much of that could have been saved.

To me, there's even a little bit of good story going on there. I like that version of him trying to be legit and trying to go into business. You know, it's the 90s by then, so there's a way to be a businessman and still pull that off. I like that story of Corleone having to do that. But I don't know.

I mean, again, even like Coppola's come out now and talked about how much there were, I mean, the studio was rushing him to get it out for like a Christmas release and how much, you know. Obviously, there were casting problems. There's all this other stuff. So I don't know how much there was a good movie there to begin with. There might have been.

I don't know. What you should just do instead of asking for a remake or even acknowledging the third, watch Godfather 1 and 2 and then watch Goodfellas and call it a trilogy. There you go. The cheesy remake thing reminds me of when they're trying to do that Saw-like movie on The Sopranos. And so the gangsters come in, and they think they know movies, and they're trying to make this cheesy movie.

And Chris Moltisano, they're investing in this, and they're making some horrible... They're not sure whether it's science fiction, or they never figure out whether this guy is... Is it supernatural? Is he back from the dead? It's one of those supernatural or a science thing.

Whatever. Yeah. That's a great sequence. I don't know. I mean, there's so many other ones we could throw out there.

We didn't even get to the Don't Let Tim Burton. Remake a Movie. Oh. That's its own category, really. Yeah, because Len's about to watch one of those right now.

Oh, I feel sorry for him. Yeah. Yeah, you know, the Willy Wonka. I hate that. I just hate that one so much.

Yeah, and then there was the lovely and talented Planet of the Apes. Which we've discussed. With the new one. But again, it's sort of revisiting a property. It's not a sequel really.

It's its own weird prequel kind of sort of But it's also maybe a reboot because we're doing things a little different, so we could continue on. It helps remove the marketing. But it's sort of, yeah, it kind of makes you forget about that. When you see a bad sequel, you feel like Charlton Heston when he sees the Statue of Liberty there. Damn you all to hell!

That's right. Yeah, that's your reaction to a bad sequel. And instead of Lady Liberty, it's Tim Burton. Damn you! You're in the studios all the time.

Oh. So, again, we've decided it's talented people. That's kind of a main. Again, if they just hand you, and then you can look through a list of all these other people, and, you know, the guy who did Clash of the Titans, I'm guessing they handed that to him, you know? It's like nobody cared about it.

It didn't have anything invested in it. Yeah, and we want to cram 3D into it. We don't even want you to shoot 3D. We'll decide after the fact we want it to be 3D, so we can charge three bucks more each time. But the only real example of the one where somebody remade a bad movie and made it into a much better movie we've had on was like Ocean's Eleven, wasn't it?

There's other... Again, you were saying Little Shop of Horrors, which a lot of people would say is a pretty... schlocky Corman movie. Again, I don't like a lot of musicals. I really love Little Shop of Horrors. Maybe it's because people are getting.

Eaten by a plant. He did a good version of that here in town. I've seen several of them that were pretty good. But it's good Steve Martin. It's cast well.

The cast is perfect, actually. Rick Moranis, you couldn't get any better than Rick Moranis. He is Seymour. In his real life, he's Seymour. So I was trying to think something that was almost along those exact same lines.

Did you see the reefer madness remake? No, it's a. Lot of fun and taking a, what was a bad movie. I mean, there's no, I mean, it was nothing but propaganda basically. And they made it, they realized that the dorkiness of it and they totally play it up and they turn it into a musical and like they really found a way to kind of make it fun.

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I'm trying to think of some other that they sort of improved upon. We've hit a few of them, but.

It's funny how many of them we've already talked about on other occasions. Oh, yeah. And that's kind of why I wanted to go ahead and throw it out as an official... Because, you know, we, for a while there, were notorious for, every time we did the news, bitching about the new remake. I mean, we had a whole category set up for.

It, so. Which, again, as time's going on, I've tried to be a little more open-minded about it and be like, and for these very reasons, for some of these examples we've come up with, that it's not necessarily across the board it's going to suck if it's a remake, but it depends on what you're doing and who you give it to. I would like to name the thing that's wrong in the remake after Morticia in the Addams Family. Because I've just always felt that, you know, taking that property and not coming up with a satisfying Morticia is just, that's the example of it's just wrong. You've got to have a Morticia.

And Angelica Houston, she's a fine actress. She's no Morticia. At the time, I didn't. Daryl Hannah. Daryl Hannah's terrible casting.

It's a joke. At the time, I didn't think Angelica Houston was bad just because she seems really creepy to me, like in the real world. She doesn't have the sex appeal from the TV show, but she did strike me as, oh, yeah, that's as creepy as you can get right there. Good going. All of that is offset by Christina Ricci and Raul Julio.

Christina Ricci, it's maybe my favorite thing she's ever done. She's awesome. Red Riding Hood might be my favorite thing she's ever done. I didn't love that. I love...

You just love that it happened? I want so many people to watch it. Wait, was she in that movie Pumpkin? She was in that movie Pecker. She was in that one.

John Waters. Black Snake Mom. Pumpkin was a movie that was almost like just a sustained straight-faced joke until the end where I think she actually, not just figuratively, but actually winks at the camera. Nice. If you're going to wink at the camera, you may as well literally wink at the camera.

It's funny game style again. Right. I was reading it. Yes, it was her. Yes, Christina Ricci.

And it's about high school girl dating a retarded guy. It's just so wrong. And they just, they play it as straight as they can until they can't anymore. Right. They beat the dead horse and then they wink at you.

And then they wink at God. That's a weird experience to have watched that. Might have to watch it. Yeah. Oh, Lord.

All right. Well, we've said you need talented people. They have to have something invested in it. They have to actually care about it or it's going to suck. I was trying to think of other stuff.

I mean, to me, I almost have to have something to say with it. I mean, instead of just, you have to almost have your own spin or update it to the point. I mean, some stuff really is just old and like the circumstances that come into play in that movie just don't work now. And there is a way to do it now and do something different with it. So with that, I mean, there is a way to update it.

And not just be a modern setting. Oh, we've got to make it look nice for the kids. To me, when they do those, that's the one I haven't seen this yet, but I don't understand the Footloose remake. What are you going to do that's not in that other one? What are you updating that's going to revolutionize that plot?

You don't have Kevin Bacon. And the thing is, I talked to somebody who had actually gone their entire life without seeing the first Footloose. had went to the theater and seen the other one and turned around and watched the other one and still likes the new one better. So I don't know if it's just not having it grown up, watching it, having it just be part of Americana at this point. That's just any stupid. It'll at least add some new twists to playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Can you use the new Riz McCormick? Yeah. We can just switch it off to this new guy. The first one was more of a music video. Oh, it was.

I mean, it came at the time when half the movies out there became music videos. Right, right. There might be six or seven montages. Oh, yeah. Full song montages in it.

Yeah. And so, plus dance sequences. So, I think even the videos on MTV were just cuts of the movie. Were just straight up out of the movie. It pretty much was.

And so. I don't know. I mean, it was just geared towards what people were watching at the time. But the kids now, are they gearing it towards something different? Are they going more.

Again, I haven't. Seen it, but I'm just like, how could you do how could you do it otherwise i mean i guess make it more glee like i mean that's that's now is you know or american idol knockoffs and glee it's like that's. All actual substance to it that's the. Hell you say The first one wasn't completely devoid of that. There were some decent scenes with John Lithgow and the scenes with him and his daughter.

There's a little bit there. As much as you can cram into that ridiculous plot. It's not a bad movie. It's just cheesy. I don't know.

It's not bad. It's just drawn that way. Thankfully they haven't remade that yet. I don't know. I think that I have more of a problem with when they just try to make it modern setting like what they were doing with most of those horror remakes i mean it's the the black christmas one you know let's show well that one was worse because they updated other stuff but when they were doing like the sorority row and the the last house on the left which i haven't decided on those i mean they kept trying to do those which were already shocking movies that i don't know if they lived up to that same impact with that kind of stuff but oh.

I went I'm sorry, it just occurred to me a movie that they ought to just update was Peeping Tom. That's true. Because they should make that now that he doesn't have to carry an eight-pound camera under his coat. Right. It's like that needed to be, well, now you could make that almost kind of make sense because you could have, like.

On his lapel. Yeah, or a pin in his pocket. Instead of carrying that thing. That's true. That is so funny.

And for something that, again, normal people don't really know that one, but in the film world is so well regarded, you'd think somebody would want to cash in on that and make their own version of it, which would probably be terrible, but... At least that is something that, you know, again, like I said, the world is different enough from one aspect that you could update the whole thing and make it something different. You know who you could cast as the Peeping Tom, who would be a perfect throwback? Crispin Glover. Oh, yeah.

Could be a good Peeping Tom. Creepy, and he's already been a Peeping Tom. He's got that going for him. He's got that going for him. So he's got that going for him.

Although, is he even acting anymore? No. Every once in a while, I still see him turn up and stuff. You know who else could do that? Hayden Christensen.

Because everyone hates him already. There's something about him. And I remember, I think I heard Misty talking about him or something. She hates him. But the thing I loved him in was Shattered Glass, where he played that fraudulent reporter.

And he just seemed so right for that. Yeah. because he seems like a fraud he was. So nice to everybody he was so nice but there's just something about him that doesn't like once everything comes out it seemed like yeah that fits that makes sense that he's he's too nice he's up to something there's something wrong with him. The the only thing i ever get out of hayden christensen is when i look at him is I picture him in his mind replaying over and over going, I'm acting now. I'm acting now.

How do I act? I'm acting. You know, just over and over. He's consciously thinking about acting while he's acting. I don't know.

It sort of endeared me. He told this story when he was in Star Wars. Like when he was first doing the sword fights, he was making the noise. Because he'd done it growing up as a kid. Yeah, it would be hard for me not to.

You don't have to make... We'll put the noise in later. But he was out there going. Yeah, I was doing that over Christmas, by the way. My son is.

So wrapped up in Star Wars right now. We've got Star Wars Legos. We've got the Lego Star Wars DS game that he plays non-stop. We're watching the movies now. You know, five-year-old watching the movies.

And he... out of time for him. He's trying to, hey, wait, is this the one? Or wait, what happened? Wait, did the Death Star already get blown up? You know, because they.

Messed it up. See, I never did that as a kid. And, well, he's fine. Well, no, even, you know, still though, it's like, I think they make it more confusing now because there's all these other movies and they don't go in order. Or if they do go in order, they don't make any sense anyway.

So, yeah. Right. And then Chewbacca shows up in the third one. And Yoda's here, but then later he acts like he doesn't know what the hell's going on. And 3PO never knows what the hell's going on, even though he's been in all these damn...

I don't know. It's so funny. You know, he's got to forget something. Somebody wipes the memory. Somebody wipes the memory.

Yeah, there's so many plot holes in that crazy. No matter how many times he keeps readjusting shit on the new box set, it's still like, oh, yeah, well, how come this doesn't make any damn sense? And the thing that confuses the shit out of him is he'll see Jedi, and Luke's talking to Leia about knowing your mother, and he's just like, what are you talking about? She never knew her. Fix that, Luke.

You can't go back and have her know her mother. No. So, yeah. But he loves it. He thinks, and he's not even seen the cartoon one that's got Count Dooku a lot in it, but because Dooku is, it takes at least two Jedi to take him down, plus the Emperor's giving him up, but he's got lightning, and he can disband Yoda and Anakin and Obi-Wan all at the same time.

He's like, He's the best one. You're supposed to think that Darth Vader or the Emperor or even Darth Maul are the badasses. It's due to him. He's the real scary one. In episode two, he is a badass.

Now tune into that first few minutes of three and he's a chump. He's just a sacrificial lamb in that one. He's giving up in that one. He's having a lot of fun with it. I got hit in the place where men shouldn't get hit by a lightsaber.

That's the price you pay, having lightsabers laying around the house. But he always wants to have a red one. Your child's evil. That's all there is to it. Anyway.

All right. Remakes. I don't know. I think we should do this episode over again. We should do it better.

We're never going to get finished. If we've got somebody talented. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I think we've covered all the basics.

We could rattle on with more titles all night long. But yeah, to me, that's all you can do, really, is take the basic idea and either go with it in a different direction or just give us something new, really. Anybody who just kind of half-assed does it. Those are the ones that you cringe at when you see them come out. But all the ones that we've talked about that are good are always talented people, and they usually find Some way to make it their own and do something different with it.

And that's, I think, the only thing that sort of takes it down the right road. But I feel like we've come up with a lot of good options for usually condemning all of the remakes. We've come up with a lot of good ones. I'm done condemning. Like I said at the beginning, I'm done condemning them.

Make your movie. If somebody's going to buy it, they're going to buy it. And it's up to me to let it go if it's ruining something that I hold dear. It doesn't ruin it. It's me letting it ruin it.

You're just out there being an artist and making a movie, as far as I'm concerned. You just have to continually point out which thing you're talking about. No, no, the original. No, no, this year's version of it. Because whatever you're talking about, I hate that one.

All right. Does that wrap it up for you guys? Yeah, I'm good. All right. Before we totally round it out, we've got feedback.

People listen. What was it? Did Randy say about me that I was like. I was going to ask if you ever heard that one. That's my favorite feedback I've got is I'm like a protocol droid with a virus.

I can see that. I also like that he's not sure you really exist. I can see that too. I know you and I can see that. The one I didn't get was that guy who said I was the smart one.

That's like I'm Kate Jackson on Charlie's Angels. It's just because I show less cleavage than you guys do. Oh, you're wearing the turtleneck. Well, I'm known to keep my zipper down in pictures. Yeah, that's true.

I'm obviously the Chrissy of the protocol. Oh, wait, wait. Chrissy, that reminds me. In The Killers... It's Reagan next to Norman Fell.

Norman Fell. Norman Fell. They're sitting there next. To each other. Yeah.

Oh, it's beautiful. Anyway, we've got feedback. All right. And I thought it was fitting for this one because we hear from James, and it's on Black Christmas and the remake. So here we go.

I just want to. Time in on Black Christmas. I agree completely with the fact that the best. Part about that movie is the lack of backstory and explanation on all the weird messages Billy's saying. One of my biggest problems with the remake is that they basically explain all that crap.

I mean, you know, their version, they kind of make a big feedback story up about why Billy is how he is and there's incest and then he births, he like gives. Not gives birth, but he fathers his own sister or some, I don't know, it's fucking retarded. The remake is a decent slasher by modern standards. I mean, some gore, some good, you know, some cool. Kills, hot chicks.

It's all right. It's not, you know, like the worst shit ever. It's not like Rob Zombie's Halloween or anything. But it's pretty bad. Of course, the original, as y'all said quite clearly, the original Black Christmas is awesome.

Absolutely awesome. That was all I was going to say. If you want a backstory, you want to know. Why Billy is the way he is, because I don't know why anyone would want that, watch the remake and then realize that's not actually what you wanted, because it makes the movie a hundred times worse. Thank you, James.

Yeah. And I agree with pretty much all of that. Yeah, I don't need to know. I think it is very much like Rob Zombie's Halloween because for that very reason. It's like they take stuff you don't care about, you really don't want to know.

In my opinion, same goes with both of them. What you don't know about the killer makes that original movie so much better. And them telling backstory in both of these instances just made the movie lame as far as I'm concerned. So, yeah. I really like the original.

Don't like the remake. When you're making something scary, think You know, especially with movies, think about what Hitchcock would do. He's not going to tell you why this person is insane. He's not going to show you the bad guy. We don't see the bad guy in Black Christmas.

Or even, I'm thinking of our example earlier, Psycho. Yeah. You don't know why norman bates is like that hitchcock never did that there's just crazy mother and he's like that and he's messed up and he does what he does now three movies three movies later when they make psycho four for cable they give you the backstory where he too is screwing around with mom and that's why he's so messed up and mom is super overbearing and mom makes him crazy and that's again, that's not a terrible movie. I remember it. Okay.

Again, I haven't watched it since it was on cable years ago, but it's a little better made than even like the third and maybe the second one where as, as you know, knockoff horror sequels go again, you kind of, that's another one you don't do. It's as bad as remaking almost as trying to do a sequel to psycho. But again, that's what you see. You see some other director come along and want to do a backstory on even Norman Bates where, you know, Hitchcock doesn't bother with that. He's just like, that's the fear is she gets in the shower.

You don't see it coming. You don't know why he does what he does. It just happens. And that's the movie. Yeah.

Backstory. There's some movies that you need that in, but not these, not the ones we've been referencing. Right. So anyway, thank you to James once again. And I agree with us.

Anytime you call and agree. With us, that's awesome. And, yeah, I just thought it was very fitting for the remake episode anyway. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week.

Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. Hey! Hey! And the ice is cold And the ice is cold.

And the ice is cold And the ice is cold. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by the Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by the Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!