…it might as well be one from the thirties. By way of Shock Till You Drop, HorrorSquad, the newest horror vehicle from Cinematical’s Scott Weinberg reports that Tobe Hooper, the man behind Poltergeist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is in talks to direct a remake of the classic zombie film White Zombie.

Given the tendency for horror fans to go absolutely batshit insane over remakes, this seems like a good decision. The movie is nearly eighty years old, and while it is the first zombie film in existence, most modern horror fans – that is, those who typically complain about remakes – have a tendency to overlook its cultural impact. As a result, a remake, especially by someone as established as Tobe Hooper, would be welcomed with open arms by me, and hopefully introduce Generation Y to the classics about which many have forgotten.

Does anyone remember the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead? The incessant whining of zombie purists notwithstanding, wasn’t it just a blast to watch? It put a clever spin on what I felt was the weakest of the three …of the Dead movies to date, and though not without its flaws, managed to keep me entertained in a way that made me forget the fact that the movie is one giant glaring plot hole. It also features the greatest musical montage to date, but that’s beside the point. It remains to this day one of my favorite horror movies, not because it’s a good movie in terms of its base components (though I did love Zach Snyder’s direction), but because like my other favorites, I can pop it in at any point and not be bored with watching it over and over again.

Unfortunately, all subsequent remakes of classic horror films haven’t fared as well among the fans, in terms of popularity or impact, and the end result has been a massive outcry among the horror community laboring against the dreaded remake. I too joined in on the fun, creating an online petition pleading for Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes to stop the desecration of classic horror films, though this was less altruistic than one might think, as I was simply trying to promote my newly created blog. Looking back on it and the sad nineteen signatures it has garnered over the past ten months, I have realized complaining about the remakes is a foolish endeavor. Not only do they keep the industry viable, they give it clout as a genuine money-maker at the box office, and, perhaps more importantly, they foster discussion.

Capt Howdy of the Horror-Movies.ca wrote an article some time ago decrying the horror community for their consistent remake bashing. In it he asks, “What gives us the right to disparage remakes?” A remake doesn’t lessen the quality of the original, and while they can never live up to the original in terms of impact, they are more often than not relatively entertaining and a great way to kill two hours. Despite my distaste for the Friday the 13^th remake for reasons that have less to do with the film than its does the mythology of Jason, I still enjoyed watching it, because come on, who doesn’t like seeing Jason slaughter people left and right? But I digress.

So do we have a right to mock these remakes? Of course we do, because we’re fans. It’s what we do, it’s what we’ll always do, and it’s what we’ll continue to do until the internet explodes. Our collective voice, be it positive or negative, gives the industry a level of viability it wouldn’t otherwise have. It has nothing to do with “selling out” or becoming too mainstream. I welcome more mainstream horror films, as I’m sick and tired of not being able to enjoy them in the theaters with other fans, no matter how terrible the movie is.

In the end, my biggest problem with remakes lies not in the “desecration of classic films” like I once touted, but instead in the lack of creativity and overall stagnation of the genre they represent. While I welcome horror movies of all kinds, I’d much rather see something original than a re-imagining or what have you of a film that’s already been done. Horror is the most diverse genre, and there is certainly no shortage of good ideas, so why dump millions of dollars in a remake when you can use the collective creativity of Hollywood writers and producers to create an original and engaging film that doesn’t rely on some other films popularity among horror fans to be successful?

Until then, I – and thousands others – will continue to bitch and moan until we have no voice left. ‘Cause we’re fans, and that’s what we do.

Before I begin my “review,” I just want to warn you: most of this might not make much sense unless you’re as big a dork as I am, or can manage to perform some sort of weird exegetical analysis on a character that once beat someone to death against a tree while they were in a sleeping bag.

My first foray into the world of Jason Voorhees began with Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. It holds a special place in my heart not just because it serves as one of my earliest horror memories, but because you totally get to see a half-naked chick in it, and when you’re eight years old this is akin to seeing God. One singular moment that I actually emulated with my brother occurs toward the end of the film, wherein Jason is approached by a group of thugs over a broken boom box. Instead of killing them he simply lifts his mask and they back off. Over time I saw all the other films, though part eight still remains my favorite…until Jason X came out.

Shut up, I’m allowed guilty pleasures.

Personal anecdote aside, I went into the massive re imagining of the first three Friday the 13th films with little to no expectations, an obvious consequence of Platinum Dunes’ dreadful prior attempts at remakes. By lowering them to a level that left room for only violence and boobs, there was absolutely no way I could be disappointed in the film itself. My primary motives for seeing it – aside from simply being a horror film – was to see how Jason was portrayed, as I have grown quite fond of the big guy in recent months, the end result of an article I wrote some months back concerning one man’s wanton disregard for the character and his origins.

Before we delve into my mindless warbling, let’s begin with a plot summary as if a plot actually matters in a Friday the 13th movie. The film opens on June 13th, 1980. Adolescent Jason just witnessed the decapitation of his mother by a camp counselor (assumed but not explicitly shown in the original), and in a moment that serves as a set up for Jason’s motives, grabs the machete used to decapitate her and walks off. Fast forward thirty-three years later, and Jason is now a grown man bent on revenge. Five friends go camping and are dispatched one by one by Jason, save for Whitney, who we come to discover has been kidnapped, ostensibly because she resembles Jason’s mother. Six weeks later a group of slasher film archetypes are heading to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of drinking and debauchery. At a corner store they cross paths with Clay, who is out searching for his sister Whitney. One by one they’re dispatched, and hijinks ensue.

So was it a good film? Well, by film standards no, of course not, don’t be stupid. It was, however, endlessly entertaining and easily Platinum Dunes’ best outing. It was dark and gritty, and despite the obvious lack of the Manfredini score, was not ruined by a clichéd hard rock soundtrack that has come to typify films of this ilk. The cast was relatively typical of the slasher genre, though thankfully most served as mere Jason fodder; their acting was merely a half-assed method of propelling the non-story. While I understand the conventional plot is expected to keep the film in line with its predecessors, it’s hardly necessary to do it so egregiously. For reasons I still can’t quite discern, big-budget Hollywood horror films feel it’s necessary to eschew a decent or involved plot in favor of endless violence and nudity; I’m aware it’s a fuckin’ Friday the 13th film, but an attempt to break the mold would be nice and unexpected, and a means through which Platinum Dunes can regain some credibility. The manner in which they approached this film conjures up images of their remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in which we’re treated to a plethora of gratuitous violence, something that was conspicuously absent in the first film. The Jason of old was far more subdued than this newer, more exciting Jason.

As for the deaths, well, they were fairly interesting, though given the scope and intent of the film, nowhere near as gruesome as I had hoped they’d be. The decision to make Jason a champion archer was ridiculous, a fact given credence through a series of archery trophies featured only in an instant. Let it be known that a deformed hydrocephalic child with one good eye can achieve notoriety as an archer, despite medical advice and established character mythology. His method of executing one poor woman by hanging her upside down in a sleeping bag over a fire was a clever twist on a classic kill. On the more humorous side was a machete in the throat followed by an absolutely hysterical look down at it, as if to acknowledge it is the only way it can have an effect.

Now the pretentious garbage no one will read.

The Jason of F132K9 is an amalgamation of damn near every portrayal of the character since part two, though young Jason makes a brief, almost unnecessary and slightly ridiculous appearance at the very beginning of the film. His face throughout is the mangled and deformed Jason found in the first four installations while his dress and overall physical enormity is more characteristic of his latter portrayals when he eclipses merely being a really difficult-to-kill human being and becomes, for all intents and purposes, a zombie. In an interview with Suicide Girls Form and Fuller stated they drew inspiration from only the first three films to craft their new Jason, but to have done that would mean scaling back in intensity what eventually became their final product.

As such, aspects of the Jason of the first few films appear only very sporadically, the most notable being Jason’s burlap sack mask; otherwise we’re treated to a Jason that’s a calculated, emotional, and above all overwhelmingly aware killing machine. In parts two and three Jason was almost secondary in nature, making an appearance only to kill; here he and his motives are the forefront. We’re shown his new home in the form of some entirely unnecessary and ludicrous underground layer, and by extension are privy to a Jason with the sort of depth designed solely to appeal to a mass audience thirsty for outrageous kills.

Jason is an emotional character, and I think Form and Fuller’s desire to separate that from their vision of Jason, due in no small part to their desire to eliminate most of the background concerning his mother, was a mistake. The ending of the reboot, intending to mirror the ending of part two which was dependent on Jason’s love for his mother, was ruined by the absolute lack of believability in its execution. No reason is given for Jason’s abduction of Whitney at first, and her method of tricking Jason is given little to no credence, save for a brief passing mention toward the beginning that is neither true to the mythology nor credible. Jason was shown to be far more intelligent than one would expect him to be, so fooling him by displaying a locket with an old picture of his mother should have done nothing. In part two the character of Ginny actually attempts to emulate his mother’s appearance, first by putting on her old sweater then by actually comparing her hair to the desiccated head’s. Their desire to make Jason an unstoppable killing machine with the expected intelligence of someone who is not a deformed and mentally challenged monster indeed worked, but as a result the “magic” of the character, at least how I see it, ended up becoming one of his victims.

In the end, we weren’t watching a Friday the 13th movie, we were watching your average slasher flick with Jason as the killer; Jason is so much more than a mask and a machete, yet gone is the mythology that makes the character what I feel more interesting that just a brutal killer. Of course, with time comes change, and to reject that change on the basis of preserving the character’s incredibly subtle history is just silly. My attempts at discerning a difference between the two Jason’s might seem tenuous, but they most certainly are not without merit. Jason is an iconic figure in the horror industry, yet his background and indeed the psychology of the character itself deserve a deeper look.

Bloody Disgusting and various other horror media outlets have reported that Alex “Where’d My Career Go” Winters, Ted’s time-traveling companion in the Bill and Ted series has been tapped to direct the remake of the 1987 classic horror film The Gate.

I have no idea what the Hell Alex Winters has been up to, and I know nothing of his directing skill, but I can only hope he’s a horror fan. I LOVED The Gate when I was younger (I think I was nine when I first saw it), and it’s a prime example of how good PG-13 horror can actually be. Additionally, the remake will apparently be in 3D, a gimmick I’m quickly growing sick of and is entirely unnecessary.

As a side note, the director of the original, the awesomely named Tibor Takács, has been pretty busy as of late, showcasing his predilection for direct-to-television “horror” films involving giant animals of some sort. One of his more recent films was Ice Spiders, which merely serves as a vehicle to keep Vanessa Williams’ career alive.

Spiders! Made of ice! Suck on THAT, David Arquette and Doug E. Doug!

This gets double billing due to its uncharacteristic approach. I’m fairly certain no one will agree with my assessment, but hey, different strokes for different folks. It’s also short, so, uh, deal with it

I’ve been sitting on a review for the “re-imagining” of My Bloody Valentine for awhile, the result of a mix of writer’s block and a desire to watch other films that haven’t been reviewed by everyone and their mother. Despite being half written and focusing for whatever reason I can’t discern on the unlikely success of Paul Blart: Mall Cop and its trumping of MBV3D at the box office, I have decided to rework it to focus on what I felt was a heavily detrimental aspect to my overall enjoyment of the film.

No, it’s not the absolutely ludicrous faux-love story or the done-to-death ending that did little to make me not wretch in abject disgust. This was just par for the course on what has started off as a dismal year for mainstream horror films, beginning with David Goyer’s The Unborn and no doubt sure to include the remake of A Tale of Two Sisters and the forthcoming and highly anticipated Friday the 13th. Of course, this could just be a slow start and I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but that would be wishful thinking. But I digress.

It was the 3-D.

Most everyone who has reviewed the film has made the claim that the 3-D was spectacular, and the very definition of what good three-dimensional film viewing should be; it was the sole reason to see the film (which I agree with) and set the standard for how 3-D should be, at least in a horror film (I disagree). While the 3-D was indeed a real treat and a good distraction from actual content of the film, it was severely underutilized. Now, it started strong. Believe me, early on in the film I thought that if the trend of mutilated hospital staff, eyeballs flying into the audience, and body upon body being stacked like Lincoln Logs continued throughout the duration of the film, I was going to be a happy camper.

Sadly, it did not. Given the weak story, soap opera-esque acting, and the ridiculously cliché dialogue (curse you Todd Farmer!), one would expect – or hope – the wonderfully morbid levels of violence and bodily dismemberment to continue with a steady pace throughout the film, thus making full use of the RealD™ technology. Instead we’re treated to an excellent first fifteen minutes, followed by three dimensional representations of people talking and bickering and only a small smattering of deaths in between.

Maybe I’m asking for too much here, but when I go see a remake of a slasher film done entirely in 3-D, I expect so much fucking blood spraying into the audience I actually get wet. The full use of the technology came only when something, usually a body part or weapon of some sort, went flying at the viewer, and this was done all too sporadically to make the three dimensional aspect enjoyable.

In the end, the 3-D was simply a distraction and not enough to compensate for everything else that was wrong with the film. I’m not going to lie; the scenes where it was used in a way to actually make me forget I paid twelve dollars to see the film were excellent. I have a habit of laughing uncontrollably when people die in gruesome deaths on screen, and I belted out a few good ones. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough for me.

By now everyone knows of the forthcoming Friday the 13th remake. Its production is blogged over at Bloody-Disgusting by producer Brad Fuller, and early screen tests have revealed that it’s actually supposed to be pretty good. Whilst browsing the myriad of horror feeds I have, I stumbled across this gem concerning the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street by Platinum Dunes, courtesy of Dread Central by way of Shock Till You Drop:

“It’s like what we’re doing to Friday the 13th,” says (Brad) Fuller. “It’s not Freddy cracking jokes. We want to make a horrifying movie. The concept is so scary, don’t fall asleep or you’ll die. This guy gets you when you’re most vulnerable, in your sleep. We love that. That’s the basis of the movie. It’ll be most similar to the first one but in terms of kills and dreams we’ll borrow from the entire series.”

Sounds totally original, like you’re hyping a movie I and the rest of the world hasn’t seen yet.

And finally, in a move that’s sure to draw the ire from damn near everyone:

When asked if Englund will be back, “Fuller and Form say they’re seeking someone new to don the hat and red ‘n green sweater, but they’re hopeful Englund will be back for a part in the film.”

I used to harbor an extreme hatred for remakes, especially those made by Platinum Dunes, but I have since realized how completely ridiculous that is. Instead, I’ve realized that their remakes have potential, and can indeed be good films, but it’s almost as if they sabotage them before they’re even made. The aforementioned quote stating their intention to NOT use Robert Englund in the film as Freddy is a prime example, a metaphorical slap to the face of all the fans of the original who grew up with wise-cracking Freddy and his hideous sweater. If he’s willing to play the role, why not let him? Just because it’s a remake doesn’t mean it has to be completely different.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: fuck remakes.

Rumors of an Oldboy remake have been floating around for awhile, with the closest thing coming in the form of an unauthorized Bollywood film called Zinda, though this is not billed as a remake and is really nothing more than plagarism to the nth degree. However, Bloody-Disgusting, HorrorNews, and a host of other sites have reported that uber-Jew Steven Spielberg is in talks to direct the remake starring none other than Scientology fanboy Will Smith.

Will Smith as Oh Daesu? The only response this shall elicit from me is a hearty “LOL.” And uncontrollable vomiting, nausea, and further disbelief in the existence of a kind and loving God.

Now, I don’t think Will Smith is a bad actor (or a good actor), but I think casting him in this role is about as bad as casting Rob Schneider in anything. One forum member over at Bloody-Disgusting said that the obvious choice is Gary Oldman, and I agree. Oldman is without a doubt one of the most versatile actors around today, and to disgrace Chanwook Park’s film with a terrible remake starring the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is tantamount to filmmaker blasphemy and worthy of public stoning.

For those who have seen the film, it is brilliant in ways that can only be seen to believed. Based, albeit rather loosely, on the manga of the same name, Oldboy tells the story of Oh Daesu who, after being imprisoned for fifteen years by unseen captors, he must put the pieces of his own past together and discover the who and why of his capitivity. It has received countless accolades and maintains a relatively respectable spot on theIMDB top 250 list. It’s incredibly perverse in its ways of detailing the struggles one man will go through to get his revenge on those who imprisoned him. It culminates in one of the greatest twist endings I have ever seen, and upon viewing it, you’ll know exactly why this Hollywood remake is a huge mistake.

Upon hearing the news that Michael Bay and his production company, Platinum Dunes, are in talks to remake the classic horror film Rosemary’s Baby, I nearly shit myself with anger. I was consumed with even more rage when I heard that Jessica Alba and Lindsay fucking Lohan were names flying around to play the part of Rosemary. Hearing this, I immediately had nightmare’s of Verne Troyer being cast as the baby, who in this cinematic equivalent of an abortion will probably be shown propelling from a wrecked vagina and bite the head off the doctor.

Now, I probably shouldn’t jump to conclusions, and this might seem unfair to the writers and directors of these films, but Michael Bay and his roving band of movie marauders have a horrid past when it comes to producing horror films, and I suspect nothing but the same from all future projects. For too long classic horror films have been desecrated, causing a blight on the industry as a whole and serving as an insult to the intelligence of devoted horror fans, writers, and directors worldwide, and this shit has to stop. Good horror films are being pushed to the deepest, darkest recesses of horror movie websites and magazines in favor of an overload of unnecessary coverage for big-budget Hollywood monstrosities, and I’m sick of it.

While I’m aware this will never stop, I feel it is my duty as a horror fan to create the following petition to get the word out and hopefully shake things up. If you are a fan of truly good horror films, sign this petition in an effort to make Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes leave these classics alone and stop the embarrassment that is the horror movie remake.

Thank you.

Click here to sign the petition!

[digg=http://digg.com/movies/Petition_to_Stop_Michael_Bay_and_His_Horrible_Horror_Remakes]

Apparently Sam Raimi announced at Comic Con that Evil Dead 4 is “in the wheelhouse.”

I wonder if this is going to coincide with his remake of Evil Dead, which just…just makes me angry.