This week’s episode guide got me to thinking about the movies that I think could have been good with a better budget/actor/script. “Leech Woman” has an interesting premise, but it’s pretty much squashed by all the mediocrity around it.
So that brings me to my suggestion: What movie could conceivably be remade into a competent film (“The Island”/Parts: The Clonus Horror” excluded, of course).
My pick would be “City Limits.” It’s got all the ingredients: post-apocalyptic setting, motorcycle gangs who are into comic books, shadowy government conspiracy. It could work!
What’s your pick?
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I’ve always thought of Phase 4 as a very ambitous if spectacular failure. Could be reworked better maybe.
I’m watching The Deadly Mantis now, and it’s not half bad really. Padded out and the relationship stuff is stupid, but it delivers on the Deadly Mantis. I think a remake in the right hands could be an Eight Legged Freaks kind of fun monster mash with one Godzilla size mantis or a whole mess of human sized ones. Maybe both a la Cloverfield (without the shaky cam schtick hopefully).
If “Parts” is off limits, there are many others off limits as well, such as the aforementioned “Devil Doll”, “Bloodlust” and “Space Travelers”, as well as “Time of the Apes” (which I may just have missed). So I, like some others, say “Parts” is top of the heap, along with “Devil Doll” (good premise with bad pacing) and “Time Chasers”(really just need better actors). Season 8 seemed to have a lot of promising movies gone wrong, now that I think about it.
The core problem with making Devil Doll into a real movie is — besides the fact that there has never been a ventriloquist dummy on-screen that wasn’t a homicidal maniac possessed demon entity except when it was interacting with Edgar Bergen, and the premise is a bit threadbare by now — that the plot requires Journalist Man to be investigating the way the Evil Ventriloquist gets the illusion of life out of Hugo. And his editor, his co-workers, his girlfriend I guess, never think to say to him: he’s an entertainer. The dummy is supposed to act strangely lifelike. If it seems more real than usual it’s because the ventriloquist is good at his job, and there’s no story here.
Devil Doll just ignores that and allows Journalist Man to carry on investigating “Good Puppeteering Work” as though that would ever be a story for his newspaper until he can stumble upon the homicidal maniac possessed demon entity stuff. You need to give the journalist a logical reason to keep investigating Evil Ventriloquist, and if Evil Ventriloquist isn’t stupidly dropping hints about “This is just like that time I murdered my old assistant” then he hasn’t got anything to investigate.
You have to love a conversation that starts with “if you omitted the stock footage of babboons.”
mando3b #149 – Yeeeeaaaaah, but even the idea department may be lacking because so many MSTied movies were
ripped off frombased on other, better shows.Pod People = E.T.
Mitchell = The Rockford Files
Angels’ Revenge = Charlie’s Angels
Super Dragon & Death Ray & Operation 007 = James Bond
On the flipside, what “better” movies were based on MSTied movies?
Top Gun = Starfighters
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off = I Accuse My Parents
Sixth Sense = Tormented
It’s fun!
it’s alive! killer baby….what!!
MST3K did a lot of movies that I would consider kind of mainstream higher class B-movies. The Crawling Eye, Black Scorpion, Teenage Werewolf, Space Children, Revenge of the Creature. There was skill involved in all of these and I kinda don’t think they’re bad. It was funny though because they’d do that stuff and next week they’d be doing a totally amateurish Bill Rebane production that is about as un-Hollywood as you can get. Anyway if they movie actually has some redeeming qualities it can be remade.
Diabolik could definitely be a hit if they made a new one because the character’s pretty cool. The original I don’t think is bad it’s just cheezy in a couple of spots.
All those Russo-Finish fantasy films could be given the Disney treatment and be hits, although I’d hate for that to happen.
Somebody mentioned Moon Zero Two without the 60’s stuff? The 60’s fashion and art direction were the best things about it. The plot is pretty boring but flamboyant costumes and sets kind of distract you.
Red Zone Cuba is one of my favorite episodes because the movie is unpredictable and like nothing else you have seen before. It has some horribly dark and bizarre stuff and if they remade that I would want David Lynch or maybe the Coen brothers to direct. I could imagine it getting positive reviews if it was remade competently which is why I think Red Zone Cuba is a lot better than stuff like Manos, Eye Creatures, and Giant Spider Invasion.
Diabolik could be said to have already been remade as Lupin III.
During the intro of District 9 I couldn’t help think “You must leave the Bronx.”
@ 155: “Ferris Bueller” based upon “I Accuse My Parents”? Man, you are OUT THERE!!!
But I like it.
For my pick; I go way WAY back to Mst3k’s humble beginnings on KTMA.
My pick is ‘Humanoid Woman’; a Chzeklosovakian Sandy Frank epic. Strangely enough; it’s more interesting than I expected it to be; particularlly since this was the guy shelling out as much Japanese tofu nuggets of film.
So why this film? Well beleive it or not; I watch this film more times than any other KTMA episode of Mst3k; cause the plot from my perspective, is actually pretty neat.
PLOT: A cloning laboratory in space has one surviving clone. She spends time with a human family and learns what it means to be human; and what the prejudices of being human can be as well. She then regains her memory and stows away on a ship with her adoptive humans to her home planet; only to go to another more polluted planet. There she and the Earth people are wrapped up in a planetary government conspiracy where; with the use of her telepathic powers, they somehow defy the odds. She finds a new place here, and the humans who grew fond of her reluctantly leave her behind.
To me; this film has a captivating surreal charm. If it was remade, I’d prefer it to be remade outside the US; preferably from the country it was made in. It might also be the overly mellow soundtrack too; but I think this filom has hints of genious in it. Sci-fi, fantasy, and poignant messages all wrapped into one.
My pick for a movie to be remade into a good movie: Humanoid Woman.
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