The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Remakes are previous cinematic works that are given a new interpretation. Almost always the works being remade are popular works in a previous era that have stayed in the public imagination. A remake is an attempt to revitalise the property for a new era.
A remake will update an older work, changing many of the references for a contemporary relevance. It will offer more sophisticated effects and contemporary stars. It is common in films of the late 2010s/2020s for older works to be remade with some of the leading roles gender-flipped or raceswapped. In the majority of cases, the remake fails to have the effect the original had on audiences in that the earlier work was very much a phenomenon that belonged to its era, although there are some exceptions.
It is also worth discussing a remake vs an adaptation. We usually talk about remakes applying to previous successful cinematic works. However, when we refer to a work that was popular before becoming a film or there have been multiple film versions, a new film version is simply referred to as a new adaptation. Nobody ever talks about a remake of Hamlet (1603) or Pride and Prejudice (1813), for instance.
Variants include popular tv series being given film remakes – see Based on TV, or popular foreign-language films being given English-language remakes – see English-Language Remakes. Other types of remakes include animated films and tv being remade in live-action – see Animation in Live-Action.
A side piece of terminology that has come into use in the 2000s is the idea of a reboot where a popular ongoing series is usually revived and reworked in some way or simply an ongoing series is given a new actor and/or a continuity reset.
The second film adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel following The Island of Lost Souls. This has remade with a decent budget but the story’s primal charge has been cleaned up
The fourth film from David Cronenberg, a clear (although by no means uninteresting) attempt to repeat the success of Shivers with Marilyn Chambers as a woman with a vampiric skin parasite that turns victims into maddened killers
The second film from Wes Craven, a classic in the 1970s Backwoods Brutality cycle with a family stranded in the desert as they come under attack from a family of cannibals lurking in the hills
The very first Stephen King adaptation, a hit that made King’s name. Brian De Palma directs with flamboyant visuals that make you gasp but the film would be nothing without its amazing central performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie
This is where all the cliches of Devil Children began. A big hit among the 1970s occult boom, this is essentially Sunday tabloid Christianity – a lurid, doom-filled take on Book of Revelation End Times prophecies that moves with a slick polish and a series of schlocky deaths every few minutes
The infamous miscalculated Dino de Laurentiis remake of King Kong where the stop-motion is replaced by Rick Baker in an ape suit, while the fairytale romance is replaced by Jessica Lange as a flower child who cracks jokes
The second film from John Carpenter, a powerful and effective work about a handful of police and prisoners trapped in a police station at siege from an all-out assault by gang members outside
The original version of the Disney live-action comedy with mother Barbara Harris and a young Jodie Foster as her daughter who swap bodies for one day. The performances are hilarious and this is filled with witty deadpan gags
Interesting little film that has gained a small cult reputation, a True Crime work based on a series of unsolved killings conducted by a masked figure in a small Southern town in 1946. A solid, quasi-documentary-like depiction that adheres to the facts for the most part
A remake of the classic film noir psycho-thriller. Now the story is conducted in colour and with a name star cast but misses all the atmosphere the original had by a wide mile
Ira Levin’s original novel wherein the men of a town replace their wives with subservient android duplicates seems to have its satiric point blunted when it comes to the film adaptation
Disney live-action film with two psi-powered kids on the run. A popular hit that seems to have been mostly construed around a series of novelty effects set-pieces
Satiric hit produced by Roger Corman, a spoof of Rollerball, with David Carradine as a driver in a futuristic road race where points are won by running down pedestrians. Also featuring a young unknown Sylvester Stallone
Classic work of dystopian SF set in a future where an ultra-violent sport has been created to pacify the masses
The No 1 cult film of all time, more a phenomenon than a film, a demented glitter rock homage to mad science cinema and 50s sf films run through with celebration of a gender-bender joie de vivre
The film about a killer mutant baby that made the name of director Larry Cohen who developed a cult following. Cohen infuses it with rich imagery and dark sense of humour. Several sequels followed
An absolute horror classic, a film that has been conceived as a harrowing assault on one’s nerves. This has become a landmark genre classic and led to numerous sequels and copies but rarely any that matched the original
Many argue that this is the original slasher film – and it does the whole formula a good deal better than many of those that came along a few years later, having some wry characterisations and a sardonic sense of humour
This tv movie was the first English-language remake of the classic French thriller Les Diaboliques. It follows the original closely and still works effectively, although being shot in colour rather than black-and-white lacks the stark tension. Sam Waterston gives a performance of amazing cruelty as the husband
A thinking person’s disaster movie depicting Japan’s sinking into the ocean
A classic animated film. A delightful film about a young pig that seeks to change his fate and gets aid from a spider that can spell. A theatrical outing for Hanna-Barbera, creator of tv’s The Flintstones et al
Stodgy, bloated musical remake of the 1937 classic about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas. The film dies an ungainly death with a cast awkward in ill-fitting costumery
George Romero’s most underrated film, filled with disturbing images as the population of a town are driven crazy by a bio-weapon spill The first and also the best of a number films on the theme of outbreaks of mass insanity
Classic 1970s porn film about a spinster condemned to Hell who is sent back to the world to experience the lusts of the flesh. Made back at a time when the people involved seemed to care about making a good film as well
Fascinating Blaxploitation vampire film. In contrast to the more popular and cheesier Blacula, this is arty, oblique, almost an experimental film that manages to offer a unique take on the vampire film
A hit for novelist Michael Crichton who made his directorial debut here. Themes of machines going amok run throughout Crichton’s work and here he comes up with the ingenious idea of a Western simulation playground using androids that proceed to turn against the humans
Classic horror film that imagines a secret world of pagan rites existing into the modern day. As much a classic for its colourful creation of a folk culture as it is for an unforgettable ending
Called the Russian 2001. Andrei Tarkovsky makes one of the great SF films, a haunting ghost story set on a space station as an alien planet below drives the crew mad with recreated doppelgangers of their loved ones
Wes Craven’s first film, a savage shock to the system about a group of psychopaths that brutalise two girls. With this, Craven inaugurated the Backwoods Brutality film; this is still one of the best of the cycle
The second film version of I Am Legend, this rewrites the book’s vampires as mutants and abandons its mood of paranoia for a fantasy of hippie utopia and Charlton Heston in square-jawed action hero mode
Fine little tale of an introverted man who befriends a horde of rats and uses these to gain comeuppance. A hit that presaged a host of Animals Attack films throughout the 1970s.
Strong and powerful formative entry in the Backwoods Brutality genre where Dustin Hoffman and wife Susan George stir up locals in a small Cornwall town and are forced to mount a brutal siege after he shelters a man hunted by a lynch mob
Very slight Disney live-action comedy with Kurt Russell as a tv network mailboy with a chimpanzee that can predict which tv shows are going to be hits
A Roald Dahl children’s film that has become a cult classic, set in a deliriously nonsensical world with Gene Wilder give a sinisterly threatening performance in the title role
Underrated work of Southern Gothic with Clint Eastwood as a wounded soldier sheltered at a Confederate girl’s school during the Civil War where he succeeds in manipulating the sexual tensions of the teachers and schoolgirls to his advantage
Robert Wise’s standout adaptation of Michael Crichton’s first novel about scientists trying to contain a virus brought back from space. This does a very faithful job of capturing Crichton’s fascination with the science
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s splatter films about a stage magician who cuts up women on stage and real life. The film makes mind boggling plays between reality and illusion
Overlooked psycho-thriller from Robert Fuest, director of the Dr Phibes films, about a girl whose friend goes missing while on a cycling tour through France. Fuest does an great job in making the French countryside into something sinister
One of a spate of Disney live-action comedies that was successful enough that it spawned two sequels. A young Kurt Russell is a college student who gets the contents of a computer accidentally transferred into his head
One among the spate of 1960s psycho films with Stella Stevens dealing with her brother and sister, one of whom is a killer
Classic film and one of Roman Polanski’s finest works, the comically paranoid story of a housewife who increasingly comes to believe that the child she is pregnant with was fathered by The Devil
The film that created the modern zombie genre, that took a creature from voodoo and reinvented at a something stumbling and wanting only to devour flesh. George Romero creates a horror film that shoots out all cozy, established convention
The film that started it all. This takes what could have been a jokey premise and delivers it in bold, exciting stokes. What elevates the film is Rod Serling’s script. filled with embittered soliloquies that become a biting commentary on the human condition, before the film reaches one of the great cinematic twist endings
British comedy made with an acerbic bite featuring Dudley Moore as a hapless loser who makes a pact with Peter Cook’s Devil to win the love of his life but has the wording of each wish contorted around on him
The Disney animated version of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli tales, the one that everybody remembers, a lively affair with talking and singing animals
South Korean copy of the Japanese Godzilla films and a painfully cheap effort on all counts
Pearl White was the original serial heroine in The Perils of Pauline. During the 1960s Batman craze, the serial was revived as this campy comedy
This gets the nonsensical absurdity of the original Doctor Dolittle stories far more than the Eddie Murphy version. On the other hand, this was the era of Mary Poppins and this is made as a lumbering musical
Larry Buchanan was a director whose output rivalled Edward D. Wood Jr in quality. This film about an expedition into the bayous encountering a mad scientist creating human-crocodile hybrids registers fairly poorly on most counts
Larry Buchanan must count as one of the all-time bad movie directors and in this ultra-cheap alien invader film, in itself a remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), he is true to form
One of the better of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s cheap splatter films, set in a Confederate town that exists in a timewarp and slaughters all outsiders
Standout thriller with Kim Stanley as a medium who fakes a child kidnapping with husband Richard Attelborough to prove her powers
Work of incredibly stark tension set amidst post-Cuban Missile Crisis nuclear anxieties with the US trying to recall a bomber that has been accidentally dispatched to drop an atomic bomb on Moscow
Stark black-and-white thriller from John Frankenheimer about a military coup in the US. Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling delivers a superb script
The oddest collaborations of its era – between Hammer Films and William Castle renowned for his sensationalist gimmicks, who conduct a remake of James Whale’s droll horror comedy. Alas, Castle only turns out a broad farce
The second film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, a psycho-thriller made for Roger Corman where Coppola shows the glimmerings of style that made him a major director a decade later
Jerry Lewis is either a low him or hate him figure; whatever the case, one should give this, his best film, a chance … It is Lewis offering his own comedic spin on the Jekyll/Hyde story, which contains a great performance on his part as he swings between a socially inept nerd and smooth lounge singer
This has the notoriety of being the very first ever splatter film and served to turn director Herschell Gordon Lewis into a cult figure. Shoddy and unpolished, you have to admit it goes for broke
This is the finest haunted house film of all. In Robert Wise’s hands, the ghosts are unseen and only ever psychological and suggested – the results are terrifying. Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
John Frankenheimer film. concerning a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin, Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
Third of the German thrillers of the 1960s featuring the criminal mastermind Dr Mabuse, a remake of the 1933 film where Mabuse continues his criminal schemes via mind control despite being confined to an asylum
Hammer Films’ attempt to update the classic story went astray – the Paris opera becomes a dreary English repertory house and Terence Fisher misses the tale’s grandeur
Classic film that has gained a cult reputation, this creates a superbly eerie and haunted atmosphere as a woman moves to a new town and finds herself surrounded by mysterious figures
Fourth film version of The Hands of Orlac about a pianist who receives hand transplants from a murderer and believes they are possessing him. Compared to the first two versions, this is dull and prosaic
Psycho-thriller featuring a mad Bette Davis torturing her sister Joan Crawford. This held considerable shock at the time for seeing two former glamorous Hollywood stars beyond their glory days and going nuts. The film’s success inspired a whole fad of imitators
Classic psycho-thriller with Robert Mitchum (who was never better) as an ex-con determined to take revenge against lawyer Gregory Peck. Stark and superbly sustained psychological suspense
One of the inspired delights from Disney’s live-action era, a hit that became the template for their subsequent live-action films. The scenes with flying vehicles and basketball teams are entirely charming.
The last really good animated film made during Walt Disney’s lifetime and for the next couple of decades. Filled with cuddly anthropomorphism and charmed delights
Dull remake of the classic Arabian Nights film that casts Steve Reeves and tries to make it into a Hercules peplum adventure
One of the films from gimmick master William Castle, a more routine ghost story that eventually opts for a mundane ending and was sold with the gimmick of Ghost Viewer glasses. Later remade as Thir13en Ghosts
This adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel was one of the best films from 1950s SF producer/director George Pal. The time travel is depicted with considerable wondrousness and standout effects for the era
Classic adaptation of the John Wyndham novel about the women in a sleepy English village being impregnated and producing emotionless alien children with vast psychic powers. This translates the paranoia of US alien invasion films with considerable effectiveness
The original, Roger Corman’s zero budget film about a killer plant is an hilarious black comedy that has become a cult favourite and remains his most well remembered film
One of the defining classics of the genre, enormously influential, muchly imitated and parodied and possibly the most over-analysed film ever. Alfred Hitchcock expertly creates a creepy psycho-thriller in which he delights in lulling us and undermining expectation
The third film and least version of the classic horror story about a pianist who receives hands transplanted from a murderer and is driven mad believing they are possessing him
The second remake of the still superior silent Old Dark House classic. The original had incredibly vivid visuals but despite the addition of sound and Vincent Price, this version feels creaky and dated
A typical 1950s B monster movie. The first half creates an entertainingly torrid drama in the bayous, although when they eventually turn up the giant leeches never get to do much
The first of Disney’s live-action comedies, a comic variant on the werewolf story with Tommy Kirk turning into a dog. Mildly amusing but later efforts would do this type of comedy better
The first major film confronting nuclear war full on with the world’s last survivors gathered in Australia. Slightly ponderous today but nevertheless full of potent imagery
This has become legendary as the Worst Film Ever Made. Maybe it is but the audience that celebrates its technical gaffes, the purple prose and bizarre bheind-the-scenes stories has contrarily made it one of cultish fascination
A quirky low-budget black comedy from cult B movie director Roger Corman with Dick Miller as a wannabe who suddenly receives artistic acclaim when he exhibits dead bodies in plaster as works of art
One of the key films from William Castle, the P.T. Barnum of the horror genre. Castle always approached horror like a carnival barker. Castle does not have much style but the luridness of his shocks proves entertaining
Roger Corman cheapie clearly influenced by The Fly in which a woman becomes a creature after using a beauty product derived from wasp venom
Roger Corman film that sets out to exploit the teenage themed fad of the late 1950s, offering up a caveman drama that comes with a surprise SF twist
Defying the sensationalistic title, this is actually a fairly reasonable entry in the 1950s alien body snatchers fad in which wives discover their husbands have been taken over by aliens come to Earth to repopulate their species
1950s bad movie classic with Allison Hayes as a wife made into a giant by a passing UFO who rampages through town after her philandering husband. Painfully bad effects make for show that frequently slides into the laughable
A remake of the classic bad movie Cat-Women of the Moon in which explorers to the Moon encounter an all-women society. Things do not improve in the bad movie stakes here
Film about a monstrous blob that devours everything in its path. This has become a 1950s B movie classic more through its chessiness value, not to mention theme of teenage rebellion, than necessarily being a great film
A teleporter accident causes a scientist to swap head and arm with a fly. This requires you to suspend believability but is otherwise one of the classic monster movies of the era. Several sequels and a remake followed.
One of the classic B-budget films directed by the legendary Roger Corman back in his heyday. Concerning a mysterious alien vampire, this comes with all the quirks and dry humour of Corman’s films of this era
One of the greatest of all 1950s SF films in which average man Grant Williams begins to shrink in size. A film that is as much an effects tour-de-force as it is an existential allegory about a man in an alien universe
One of the spate of teen monster movies of the 1950s, this is a B movie that at least has the benefit of not taking itself too seriously and the creation of some memorable alien creatures
The original evil child film featuring an unforgettable performance from Patty McCormack (who received an Academy Award nomination along with most of the cast). Dated somewhat today but still holds a real charge
One of the early directorial films from Roger Corman, a surprisingly vigorous and well written variant on the alien body snatcher film featuring one of the memorable alien creations of the era
A strange mix of 1950s hypnotic regression fad and AIP B monster movie elements that has undeniable mood and verve
The finest film to come out of 1950s SF cinema, concerning an invasion of pods that replicate people but for their emotions. The sense of paranoia and psychological tension is unsurpassed
Classic French psycho-thriller that is gripping in its psychological games before reaching an unforgettable twist ending. It has been twice remade and its plot much imitated by others but never bettered
Absolutely extraordinary directorial debut from actor Charles Laughton who transforms the story of an evil preacher (Robert Mitchum) pursuing two children into something approaching a stylised Expressionist fairytale
The very first Godzilla film. Essentially a copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, it has incredibly stark effect despite the primitiveness of the effects. In it you can see Japanese nation struggling to expiate the pain of the Atomic Bomb.
The film that launched Vincent Price as a horror icon where he plays a mad waxworks curator who covers murdered bodies in wax. A remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum shot in the original 1950s 3D fad.