Hollywood remakes of 80s horror movies defined the early 2000s alongside ‘Torture Porn‘ and J-horror. Many of these remakes pillaged from the VHS shelves of the slasher subgenre. Terror Train, Prom Night, When a Stranger Calls, and The Stepfather all received forgettable retreads. Not surprisingly, John Carpenter’s illustrious filmography has seen a handful of remakes […]
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In the 1980s and 1990, Hollywood took a fancy to remaking European classics – the horror movie remake wouldn’t begin in earnest until the turn of the century. More often than not, these remakes missed what made these movies classics in the first place. One of the most common flaws of American updates of Euro-thrillers […]
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For the last decade, Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions have dominated horror. Like Universal Studios and Hammer Films before it, Blumhouse movies have defined the genre. But when you pump out movies at the rate Blumhouse does, you’re bound to get the odd misfire. Sooner or later, Get Out and Happy Death Day begets […]
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If you were a certain age in the 1990’s, you remember Deep Blue Sea. Released in the summer of 1999, the Renny Harlin-directed shark thriller was a modest box office hit earning just over $73 million on a $60 million budget. Its premise of genetic experiments creating intelligent killer sharks made for delightfully silly B-movie […]
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Amidst the wave of remakes in the 2000’s, Hollywood occasionally ventured outside horror. Spike Lee re-visited controversial Korean revenge-thriller Old Boy in 2013. And Martin Scorsese himself re-worked Hong Kong pot-boiler Infernal Affairs into his 2006 crime thriller, The Departed. Yet one of the more ambitious remakes in recent memory was Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. […]
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Legendary director and producer William Castle was the master of gimmicks. Most of his work was cheesy, low budget B-films. But Castle filmed and marketed his productions with a childlike enthusiasm. As a result, Castle’s movies have retained much of their charms in spite of the passing years. One of Castle’s best movies was The […]
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