Which begs the question: Why would Dimension Films give Rob Zombie ВЈ8.5 million to waste on a remake? What is the point of taking a film regarded as a seminal classic and, as it's now called, re-imaging it?
A phrase that gives copy-cat directors an instant get-out clause. You can almost hear the studio press officers: "It was never intended as a carbon copy, it was a re-imaging based on the earlier work." Just six people turned up to watch Saturday's afternoon screening of Halloween at the Vue Cinema, Ocean Terminal.
Perhaps everyone else already knew what we were about to discover. In this charmless effort, blood and gore, dark unrelenting shadows, and a clumsy, predictable and downright crass script replaced the taut suspense and minimalist dialogue of its namesake. One thing's for certain, if, as reported last week, cinema attendances are finally on the rise, it's not because of films like this.
And what Hollywood's never-ending obsession with the past says about creative nature of today's film industry certainly doesn't inspire confidence that the current trend will continue. Carpenter, on the other hand, is no doubt getting used to seeing his early work tackled by a new generation of directors and can at least take satisfaction from the fact that none have yet bettered his originals. Assault on Precinct 13, which he shot in 1976, was remade 29 years later as a vehicle for Ethan Hawke.
It failed to capture the raw suspense of its predecessor. Rupert Wainwright's 2005 remake of The Fog was a poor two-star imitation of Carpenter's 1979 release. That said, actors too love to step into others' shoes, and if Carpenter is the director young film-makers aspire to ape, then veteran actor Michael Caine must puzzle over what it is that attracts actors to roles he made his own before many of them were born.
It started in 2000 when Hollywood zoomed in on Caine's 1971 gangster flick Get Carter, casting Sylvester Stallone as an unlikely Jack Carter and, as if to add insult to injury, Caine as Cliff Brumby, a role played in the original by Bryan Mosley, alias Coronation Street green-grocer Alf Roberts. It wasn't well received. Three years later, The Italian Job, a hit for Caine in 1969, was also reinvented for 21st century audiences with one-time pop star Mark Wahlberg as Charlie Croker.
If the casting of Stallone and Wahlberg in the roles made famous by Caine should have started alarm bells ringing, cinema-goers might have been forgiven for taking a more optimistic view of the next Caine remake which in 2004 saw Jude Law become Alfie, a role Caine was Oscar-nominated for in 1967 - Law wasn't. Indeed, it's hard to name one remake that has improved upon the work that inspired it - although I admit a sneaking fondness for 2004 The Stepford Wives which saw a raft of stars outshine the cast of the 1975 Nanette Newman version. With few exceptions, remakes are little more than the cinematic equivalent of vanity publishing and, rather than fund them, you'd think studios might learn from past experience.
Filmed in the early days of cinema, the black and white King Kong is still by far the most atmospheric. Dino De Laurentiis may have replaced the Empire State Building with the Twin Towers in 1975, and Peter Jackson may have had state-of-the-art special effects 19 years later, but give me the 1933 movie anytime. Foreign language films are especially easy targets for lazy Hollywood studios searching out a ready-made hit.
Ugo Tognazzi and the late Michel Serrault were untouchable as the camp nightclub owners in the French 1978 comedy La Cage Aux Folles, but that didn't stop Robin Williams and Nathan Lane having a go in the pitiful 1996 remake, The Birdcage. At least they had the decency to change the name. In the same year, even Kathy Bates, still riding high on the success of Misery, couldn't save Diabolique, a Yankified take on the Fifties film noir masterpiece, Les Diabolique.
There's just no escaping the remake it seems, even for Carpenter and Caine. Coming soon we have director Len Wiseman's remake of Carpenter's cult sci-fi movie Escape from New York to look forward to. Then there's Sleuth, in which Caine will swap roles.
Caine played Milo Tindle, the owner of a chain of hair salons, having an affair with the wife of Andrew Wyke, a wealthy writer, played by Laurence Olivier, in 1972. In the coming re-imaging, Caine as Wyke is betrayed by - yes, you've guessed it - Jude Law as Tindle. Attempting to make amends for his Alfie perhaps.
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