Lethargic Returns

LETHARGIC's HORRORFEST PART 3: INVASION OF THE MOVIE SNATCHERS
I'm doing something different for this update. Instead of a lot of shorter reviews, I'm doing just a few long ones, and this time we have a theme.....remakes of classic horror movies.

After this I think I'm done with movies that I'll want to talk about at length so I'm planning on two more updates with a lot of quick reviews and then I should be out of everybody's hair for a while. For a year at least. But you'll miss me, right? Right?

42. It’s Alive (2009) - For some reason this remake reminds me of the recent GI Joe movie. I really enjoy the GI Joe movie and all the bad reviews of it made me laugh because all the complaints were about how stupid it was, how over the top it was, how lame it was, how corny it was, how cartoony it was. Yet it was based on a stupid, over the top, lame, corny cartoon! Personally, I thought it was pretty cool to watch a live action version of the garbage I grew up watching. There were problems and things I would’ve done differently, but at the end of the day they simply made the cartoon into a big budget live action blockbuster and it was just as fun, dumb and funny as the show was.

For some reason people now expect every single movie like this to be Batman-ed, but not everything lends itself to be remade into a dark and serious film. The source material for GI Joe and Batman are two radically different things. Batman is dark and serious, so that’s how the movies should be. GI Joe was a stupid cartoon, so that’s how the movie should be. It's based on a cartoon that was based on a toy and you expect to get The Dark Knight 2.0 out of it? That would never work in a million years. A serious GI Joe would movie would just end up being stupid, at least you know this one is stupid as soon as you sit down to watch it.
Much like GI Joe, the original source for It's Alive wasn't all that good of a movie to begin with. It has an appeal thanks to its quirkiness and camp value but it's not like its some great classic horror film. It's a movie about a killer baby. People watch it to laugh, not to shriek. The original movie is tolerable because it seems to know how stupid it is. It doesn't hide from its ridiculousness, it embraces it. The remake doesn't seem to understand how stupid it is whatsoever. It tries to turn a corny storyline about a killer baby into a realistic, VERY serious, horror movie. They tried to turn It's Alive into the next Dark Knight. You're not scaring anybody with a stupid little killer baby!!!

This is a remake they SHOULD have gone nuts with and made it over the top insane. Have the baby doing such ridiculous things that you couldn't help but laugh at the stupidity. Instead they went deadly serious with it and ended up re-making a cool, one of a kind, high concept movie into a carbon copy of a million other direct to DVD horror flicks that take themselves way too seriously and you forget you watched it 30 minutes after you hit stop. I'd rather stick with the original goofy version and get at least a chuckle out of the thing.

43. Children of the Corn (2009) - I never liked the original Children of the Corn movie. While the main kid and the red head kid were kind of creepy, it was still really dumb. That and the fact that this is supposed to be a more direct telling of King's original story (making it not officially a remake) gave me hope that it would be pretty good. But the fact that this movie premiered on the SyFy channel kinda tipped me off that I’d likely not like this version either. And I didn’t. It was terrible.

The female half of the couple who end up stumbling into this evil little kid town is the most hate-able character in the history of movies. Annoying characters have been a staple of horror movies for a long time so that you look forward to seeing them getting offed in whatever imaginative way they get offed in. This wasn't like that. This woman was so annoying that it went WAAAAAY past not liking the character, it made me HAAAAAAAAATE her and HAAAAAAATE the movie. I didn't care at all about seeing her live or die, I didn't want to see her at all. She was written as the most overbearing, whiney, screaming, nagging.....two words come to mind that I won't use here....that I've ever seen. Sure, the couple is supposed to be having marital problems and fighting and all but....AHHHHHHH...I HAAAAAATED HER!!! Every time her mouth opened it was like ice picks shoved into my ears. And that's just the character as written. The actress was just as bad. Terrible overacting and nothing but screaming every single word as if being the most hated person in any movie ever was her true goal. Everything else in this movie could've been absolutely perfect and I'd still hate it because of this woman.

Luckily for her, nothing else really worked either. David Anders was his usual solid self as the husband but the part was terrible and gave him nothing to work with. He was simply the stupid character who had to do all the wrong things to make sure they ended up stuck in a town full of murderous children who worship corn. The kids were also terrible. Some of the kids in the first movie did a great job and were freaky little brats. These new kids felt like all the kids who weren't good enough to act in cereal commercials. Terrible little actors.

Of course, even if all those things worked, Children of the Corn would still suck because it's still Children of the Corn and Children of the Corn sucks. It's not even a good story on the page so why would it make a good movie? Stephen King himself helped write the script for this one because he didn't like the first movie. You know why the first movie wasn't any good? Because the story isn't worth making into a movie!! First of all, the original story is only 27 pages long. There is absolutely nothing to it. If you've never done any screen writing or reading about screen writing here's a fun fact.....one page equals roughly one minute of screen time. So a 90 minute movie should be around 90 pages long. So how would one turn a 27 page story into a 90 minute movie? Lots and lots and lots of padding which mainly involve scenes of people running through corn fields.

And besides that....even if Children of the Corn was a 30 minute short it would STILL suck because it is the most farfetched story line ever. Kids kill every adult in an entire town and nobody notices it? For YEARS??? And why do they do this? For the corn??? KIDS HATE VEGETABLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

44. HALLOWEEN (2007) - I have never been a fan of Rob Zombie. Not of him, his music or his movies. His horror themed image felt like nothing but a cheap gimmick he came up with to market himself. I loved his first movie, House of 1000 Corpses, for the first hour or so but felt the last act ruined the entire thing. I hated his next movie, The Devil's Rejects, for the first hour or so and then really liked the end. Overall his movies felt a lot like his music. Fake and desperate. I don't believe he really loves horror the way he claims. I believe he sees the horror fan base that is willing to drive 50 miles to a horror convention for the privilege of paying an extra from Dawn of the Dead 40 bucks for an autograph to be a cash cow that is begging to be milked. I freely admit that I could be very wrong about the guy but that's just the feeling I get. I’ve given him plenty of chances to change my mind and he hasn’t.

When the remake of Halloween was announced I rolled my eyes right along with everybody else. Why do we need a new Halloween? When Rob Zombie was announced as the director my interest raised a little bit. Even though I'm not a big fan and didn't think his first movies worked, the guy HAS shown that he's not looking to just make a generic studio picture. His first two movies were crazy, violent and weird. There was no way a Rob Zombie Halloween would end up being yet another cookie cutter remake like all the other cookie cutter remakes Hollywood has puked up the past few years. This would at least be something worth seeing even if it was a colossal failure. As the pictures and trailers started coming out I started getting really into it. It looked pretty cool but I still assumed it would be bad. When I finally saw it I went in with my "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" mentality but discovered I didn't need it. This movie was better than my wildest hopes and dreams. It blew me away how much I loved it. Rob Zombie had created his masterpiece. It seemed that doing a remake in a set world with set rules gave him the structure needed to contain and focus the insanity that had always sent his own original movies careening off the rails. The problem is…… I didn't watch the final version of the movie most people watched.

An early cut of the movie, known as the work print edition, leaked online around the same time the movie hit theaters. THIS is the version I watched. When the reviews of the “real” movie started hitting the intrawebz I couldn't believe it. Most people HATED this movie. It made absolutely no sense to me how people could hate this movie that I loved so much. How different could the two cuts really be after all? I started reading what the differences were and it started to make sense. I got the DVD when it came out but I was too afraid to watch it until now. 2…years…later. Now that I've seen what the final product is like I completely understand and agree with the criticism, but it also frustrates me to no end that such a cool movie was absolutely slaughtered by a meddling studio.

A lot of remakes these days aren't called remakes. The studio likes to throw around the word "re-imagined" because they know the word "remake" makes a lot of people sick. The term is usually non-sense but in this case it is absolutely deserved. This IS a re-imagining of Halloween. Zombie didn't just try to make an improved version of the original, he made his own version. He took the basic concepts out of the Carpenter universe and put them in the Zombie universe and made something entirely new out of something old. The work print version of this movie SHOULD have been held up as a shining example of how horror remakes should be done, right alongside Cronenberg's The Fly and Carpenter's The Thing. Instead, the vast majority of people out there didn't get to see it. The work print version is a very detailed, character driven, emotional roller coaster that really changes the entire way you perceive Michael Myers. The final version tried to do the same but only did so in very broad strokes. All the fine details that made the story make sense have been cut. Why does Myers like to wear masks? You understand in the early, but just barely in the final cut. Why does Myers stop talking? Fully explained in the early cut, not explained at ALL in the final cut. When Myers is still a boy we see him kill a nurse. Why? Theatrical version cuts the entire motivation for him doing that out of the movie. Pretty much all the characters in the movie become nothing but caricatures. All their motivations have been left on the cutting room floor, all the small moments which really told us who they are and what they're feeling...gone. Sure, there is a moment in the final version where Loomis screams that he failed Michael at the top of his lungs, but it's just words. In the early version we truly see that Loomis loves Michael and not being able to save him from becoming this monster has ruined his life.

The biggest difference between the original Halloween, the work print version of Zombie's Halloween and the final version of Zombie's Halloween is Michael Myers himself. In the original movie he's really not a person or a character. Much like the characters say, he's the boogeyman. Even in the credits he is not called Michael Myers, he is called The Shape. He's not a person, he's not even an animal, he's just walking death, killing everything in its path. You don't care about him as a person in any way. You don't think about his motivations or wonder why he's doing what he's doing, you just go for the ride.

Rob Zombie did something with his movie that I never thought possible. He made Michael Myers a person. We watch him grow from a boy to a man. We see him as a sweet kid who loves his mom and wants nothing more than to just be with her, yet we also see the darkness growing inside him. We see the conflict going on between his human side and his evil side and we watch as all the people trying to help just end up doing more harm than good. So when he finally puts that mask on and invades Haddonfield it's completely different from the original. You're still scared for the people he's after, but you're also sad that he's been pushed this far. You're sad that the darkness has now almost completely taken him over.

He also has motivation in this version. In the original, he had none. He was just a shark looking for his next meal. Remember, in the original, there was NOTHING about Michael and Laurie being brother and sister, all that stuff was added in later. Originally she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the new version we see from the very start that she is his entire motivation and his intention is NOT to kill her. He is going after her because she's his last connection to humanity, he wants her to save him and love him. When he finally captures her he makes no effort to harm her, he puts down his knife, gets down on his knees and hands her a picture of him holding her as a baby. He's not trying to scare or harm her, he just wants her to know who he is but his mind isn’t right so he knows no other way of doing it. When Laurie can't understand him and just stabs him and tries to escape it's a sad moment. Instead of thinking run, run, run you're think no, don't run, stop, he's trying to tell you something dummy!!! When Loomis shows up and starts begging Michael to stop, pleading with him to surrender so he won't have to shoot him…it's a sad moment. In the original movie Loomis running in and shooting Myers is the big YAY hero moment, here it's just another sad moment because you don't want to see Myers shot and you don't want to see Loomis be the one to do it. But in the released version, almost all of that is lost. We don't have the same connection to Michael so when he starts killing people it just becomes a new version of Carpenter's Halloween. It’s no longer a re-imagining, it's now just another remake.

And when the killing starts, it really starts. Yet another difference between the work print and the released version. The body count is very, very low in the work print and some of the kills that do happen occur off screen. The released version has nearly 10 extra kills in the movie including the off screen deaths now pushed front and center because anybody watching this movie would never be able to go 10 minutes without seeing some blood, right?? And that's where you can obviously see the studio meddling that killed this movie. “Hahrump hahrump, we can't have a Halloween movie were Michael Myers doesn't kill a whole bunch of people! Hahrump hahrump!”

In the early cut, Myers generally only killed people he had to or people who really deserved it. That's something else that keeps the viewer from seeing him as a real villain, he's not killing people left and right for no reason. The best example is his escape from the asylum. In the early cut an annoying orderly, who has been bullying Myers for a while, take a catatonic patient into Myers cell to let his friend rape her. Myers tries to ignore it and mind his own business but once they start messing with him, he goes off, he kills both guys and uses their keys to escape. This scene showed us that Myers wasn't really interested in killing or escaping or anything, he had to be provoked before doing anything, and it was two guys who got what they had coming to them. In the theatrical version 4 guards are transferring Myers to a new prison in the middle of the night. Myers uses his super human powers to break the chains holding him and slaughters all four for no explained reason and no real motivation. He then kills pretty much everybody else working in the place. That is something Carpenter's Myers would've done, not Zombie's. This being the first thing the adult Myers does completely alters the entire way you see the character for the rest of the movie. He's now back to just being The Shape again, rendering all the set up we've been through up until now rather pointless.

The other major place you can see the studio being a problem is the ending. The early cut had a great ending that worked completely thanks to everything that came before it. It wasn't the standard “is he dead or not” cliffhanger ending from a slasher movie. It wasn't the cliché ending where you think the killer is dead and then he pops back up and grabs somebody's leg. It was an emotional impact based more on the drama of the movie than the horror. But the studio wouldn't let that stick, they had to change it so there could be a sequel. Zombie said all along that he didn't want to do a sequel and his original ending showed that. There was no question at all that this story was over. There could never be a sequel to it. But the studios love nothing more than to suck every last dime out of a horror franchise so the ending just HAD to be changed. Pretty much the entire last 15 minutes were changed to just another typical slasher movie killer chasing a girl scene. No more drama, no more emotion, just standard, hack, generic, tired clichés.

Ok, I'm TRYING to end this, I promise. I could literally talk about this all day long. I totally and completely love the work print version of this movie. It works on multiple levels. I totally and completely hate what was released into theaters and what was released on DVD. There's never been a movie that is a more glaring example of what's wrong with the studio system than this one. A great movie was destroyed because by focus groups, test screenings and meddling executives who care nothing about creativity. I gained a LOT of respect for Zombie as a filmmaker when I watched his original version, but the version he actually released took it all back. I wish he would've fought harder for his vision like he seemed to do with House of 1000 Corpses. I wish he would've pushed to have this version released as his director's cut. The director's cut they put out does have a couple of these scenes put back in, but not nearly enough, it's simply a longer version of the theatrical release while the work print is a radically different movie. The fact that he then went back and a made sequel after saying he wouldn't just made all my original thoughts about him come back. At least now I believe the man is capable of making a great movie. I just hope that next time he's willing to fight for his vision and not let the suit and ties ruin it again.

45. Prom Night (2008) - Ya know, I pay a LOT of attention to this stuff and even I didn't know that a remake of Prom Night existed until now. I wish I still didn't know. This movie is a prime example of why there is so much bad connotation behind the word remake. There is just no reason why anybody should remake Prom Night. Prom Night is one of the classics of the 80s slasher craze but it's not iconic. You can justify making a new Jason, Freddy, Leatherface or Michael Myers movie because those are horror icons. They will all four be around for the rest of time in some way, shape or form. Somebody want to name the killer from Prom Night? Anyone? Helloooo?

The major problem is that they really didn't bother to remake the movie at all besides the fact that the movie takes place during a prom. The entire story is completely different and none of the characters are the same. It's nothing but a generic, cookie cutter, paint by numbers script that would be bad for a direct to DVD movie. There's nothing to it. It's as bland and generic as anything. The original Prom Night was well made, fairly original and had Jamie Lee Curtis as she was right in the middle of her scream queen reign. This movie has nothing to like and nothing interesting. Bland actors, bland writing and bland directing. It's like eating a rice cake. You chew it and all you can taste is air. The title Prom Night being on the box for this movie is like if somebody wrote "Cheeseburgers" on the box of rice cakes. Call it whatever you want but when you open the box there's nothing of value inside.

The sad thing is that people still fall for this garbage. Hollywood can make one awful movie after another, throw a classic horror title on the poster, and rubes will line up outside the theater to watch it. This movie was so cheaply made that it made a profit on its first weekend in theaters. I hope everybody who paid money to see this feels real good about themselves. Thanks for encouraging them to make more crap like this.

46. The Last House on the Left (1972) and
47. The Last House on the Left (2009) - The original Last House on the Left is one of my favorite movies of all time. If you had asked me a year or so ago to name a movie that could NEVER be remade I would say, without a doubt, Last House on the Left. The things that make the original effective just can't be re-done in today's PG-13 world, but I still held out hope that the remake would at least be a good movie in its own way and since I try to give everything a chance I had to give it a shot. I decided to watch both versions back to back since it had been a couple of years since I last watched the original. This might not seem fair to the remake but it doesn't really matter, nothing I could've done would make me like this remake and I have a few reasons to explain why I detest it. But in case you've never seen either version let me give a quick synopsis for you. Two girls go out for a night on the town but instead end up being kidnapped by a group of psychos. The gang unmercifully torture and kill the girls and then suffer one of the worst coincidences a gang of psycho killers could ever be faced with, they end up spending the night with the parents of one of the girls. The parents figure out what they've done and then go all Charles Bronson on the group. Now to why I hate it…

A) In the original movie the two victims were likable, normal girls. They made some mistakes that led to their situation but it wasn't like victims in normal horror movies who are complete idiots to the point that you don't care if they die or not. These girls made mistakes but it was the kind of believable mistakes a real person could make. Watching these girls get caught by these maniacs isn't all that much different than seeing security cam footage of a real life maniac taking somebody. Having the girls not be stupid and more realistic lent more realism to the situation and made you feel bad for what the girls would end up going though. The girls are written completely different in the remake. Gone is the realistic depiction of two normal girls and in its place is the usual modern horror movie non-sense. One girl is the typical weed obsessed slut. The other is a stuck up spoiled brat. Both are so annoying that 15 minutes into the movie I couldn't wait to see them bite it.

B) The original movie didn't have 1/10th of the gore that the remake has. The original kept it as realistic as possible. There were no heads exploding in microwaves or anything like that. Much of the torture was more mental than physical. One of the most horrific scenes in the original is when the bad guys force one of the girls to pee in her pants. There's no blood, no guts, it's just a wet stain on a pair of blue jeans but it is just a horrible moment because you're watching something that can really happen. It's simple, it’s about very mean people doing very mean things, it's not about the over the top violence. The remake is nothing BUT over the top violence. Even the difference in the rape scene was a bit staggering. In the original it was very short and the camera focused on their faces. That gave the scene soooo much more of an emotional impact. It wasn't about what was physically happening, it was about the mental aspect, it was about seeing somebody's spirit be broken. That scene in the remake is totally different. It's all about the act and making it as violent and "sexy" as possible. The faces aren't as important as showing the bare butts or the panties getting torn off. It's yet another example of why horror directors don't get it. Movies today can do amazing things with special effects and gore and violence that make even the people of thickest skin go ewwwww. But they will never scare anybody the way movies like Last House or Texas Chainsaw Massacre did because people back then knew the way to get a scare was to hit you emotionally and mentally, not physically.

C) The original has one scene that I've always said is one of my favorite scenes in movie history. The scene is very depressing and awful so I know it's weird to like something like that so much, but it just brings out so much sadness every single time I see it that I just HAVE to consider it a great scene. The scene takes places just after the rape scene. The girl simply gets up and walks into a lake. She gets to about chest deep then just stops and stands there until the head bad guy shoots her. Nobody says anything during any of it, nobody forces her to go down there, she just gets up and goes down there voluntarily and forces him to shoot her. It is one of the most heartbreaking moments in any movie ever because you're watching a girl give up. She no longer has the will to try to escape. She no longer has any interest in going back to her life. There's no chance of going back to who she used to be, everything she's been through has completely broken her and she just wants it to end as quickly as possible. While none of the members of the group say anything afterwards, the actors play it beautifully. You can look at their faces and tell that even these despicable monsters are shocked, they realize that what they've done to these girls has changed something inside them and that there's no going back to who they were before. Whether it be tears running down my face or goose bumps going up my arm, this scene does something to me every single time I see it. I was truly hoping and praying that the new movie wouldn't ruin this moment. The entire climax of the movie really depends on it. You NEED to be in a place where you complete despise these creeps for what they've done. You NEED to hate them completely so when the parents do what they do to them, you are behind them 100% and it seems just. Did they ruin it? Of course they did!! In this version of the movie they made the girl a competitive swimmer. So when she walks out into the water the reasoning is completely different. She's going out there to swim away and escape. The scene has been changed from an amazing emotional impact to just another horror movie cliché where the 90 pound teenage girl defeats evil yet again.

D) And that should REALLY tell you why I don't think this movie lives up to the original. The girl escapes. She doesn't die. Spoiler alert. The entire climax of the movie is rendered meaningless. The girl has been shot, raped and badly injured, but she still somehow makes it home to her parents. Of course, by now the parents have already unknowingly allowed the group of villains to stay in their guest house. The movie tried really, really hard to explain why these people couldn't get their daughter to the hospital but it just wasn't believable at all. I understand how the parents would WANT to kill the people who did this. I really do. I fully support vigilantism. Somebody kills your daughter, you have my full blessing to do what you need to do. That is what I SHOULD have loved about this movie. If the daughter had died and the parents spent half of the movie getting their revenge, it would likely be a movie I'd really enjoy. Instead I couldn't help but think about how stupid it was. A parent may really want to get revenge, but they wouldn't give up on getting their daughter help to do it.

This movie should've been about watching these parents do everything they could to get their daughter to the hospital, instead they spend all night needlessly killing people. It made no sense. In the original it made perfect sense. The parents lost everything when their daughter died. Their reason to live was snuffed out. They had nothing left to lose. When they get their revenge, it just felt so much more logical to believe they'd do what they do. Also, the original movie wasn't about the parents killing the bad guys. It wasn't about their revenge. It was about the girls and what happens to them. The parent's revenge was like an afterthought. The remake put the entire focus of the movie on the parent's revenge killings. In the original that part is maybe 20 minutes long. In the remake it's over half the movie. The fact that they made that part so much MORE important to this version, yet gave it so much LESS motivation was idiotic.

E) The last thing that irritated me about this remake is that it didn't need to be this way. The original Last House on the Left was a remake itself. It was a remake of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring from 1960. Does anybody sit around and complain about it being a stupid remake? No. Why? Well, because most haven’t seen The Virgin Spring, but also because they didn't just take The Virgin Spring and try to redo the exact same story and make it better. Instead they took the plot and turned it into something fresh and new. This remake just takes the original Last House and makes a bad copy. Like they put the original movie through a Xerox machine but the ink was low so it came out kind of weird looking. They could've done what I Am Legend did. They didn't sell it as a remake of Omega Man or Last Man on Earth. They just used the same source material to make a whole new movie. Had they simply made a new, original movie that was "inspired" by Last House on the Left, or instead did a more direct remake of The Virgin Spring, they could have avoided all these comparisons. Instead they tried to fix something that wasn't broke and failed miserably at it. This remake was truly unnecessary.