The Remakening: Movies That Should Be Remade

The Last Unicorn, 1982
A beloved favorite of fantasy junkies and swoopy romanti-girls since its release, this poignant and deceptively hard-edged and tragic story of the only unicorn that remains on earth, and her journey to find out what happened to the others could be made into a truly spectacular live-action, CGI-laden effects extravaganza with very little change (if any) needed to the script or story. Just imagine: everyone’s favorite inept magician Schmendrick (maybe played by John Krazinksi?), freaky witch Mommy Fortuna (I can see Imelda Staunton getting her screechy camp on and having a lot of fun), and my hero the irrepressible Molly Grue (is Holly Hunter too obvious?) come to real life. . . plus a sleek, glowing, computer-generated unicorn floating through the forest in her search for the spiky, scary, computer-generated Red Bull? I’d be at the first screening with a box of tissues all ready. Just please don’t cast Evan Rachel Wood as Amalthea. Or Taylor Swift for that matter. Plus, it’d get some more money to writer Peter S. Beagle, who has been screwed over long enough and deserves to be a bajillionaire on the level of Steven King.
—Jemiah Jefferson

“I’m Jan-Michael Vincent,
and this is my vehicle.”

Damnation Alley, 1977
This is a classic Jan-Michael Vincent vehicle. Rubber cockroaches and scorpions battle Jan-Michael and George Peppard for control of an atomic wasteland! It should be remade as a testament of love.
—Jeannette Kelly

The Monitors, 1969
Back in the pre-DVD, pre-YouTube era, the most interesting movie experiences came at two in the morning, when you’d turn the dial (yes, the actual physical dial connected to the set), adjust the tinfoil antenna and end up on some snowy channel, possibly broadcasting from Cleveland or Mexico City or Mars, in the middle of some crazy-looking film with Santa Claus and Merlin the magician battling Satan, or giant bunny rabbits with fake blood on their teeth trying to eat DeForest Kelley.

It was thus that I discovered The Monitors. A late night, probably a few too many Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers, and suddenly I see a world where sinister looking aliens in black topcoats and John Steed bowler hats have taken over the earth—complete with their own savvy media campaign including pitch-perfect ’60s radio jingles, TV commercials, billboards, the works. The entire world is enslaved in The Monitors’ eerily calm tyrannical yoke! Only the brave fighters of the underground resistance movement, SCRAG, have what it takes to save us from their malevolent menace.

If it all sounds a little like V (and a half million other bad sci-fi stories), that’s because I am leaving out the most important plot twist: The Monitors aren’t enslaving anybody at all. They have no ulterior motive, no evil plot, no cookbook with a thousand and one ways of fricasseeing the human race. They genuinely just want to help us out. They’re baffled by war, racism, pollution, disease, crime, all our hotheaded human passions, and their only goal is to gently guide us to a better, more enlightened way of living before we extinguish ourselves. They want nothing in return—they don’t even want gratitude. In fact, their passionless stoicism is one of the things the resistance movement hates the most. SCRAG sets out to destroy the Monitors and restore our unalienable right to hate, rob, cheat, and murder each other en masse.

The Monitors was produced in Chicago by the Second City comedy troupe, and is packed with Second City alums and cameos from a vast array of comedians, musicians, and publicity-hungry United States Senators. It’s great fun for those of us who love weird cult movies, and I highly recommend it, but it suffers mightily from its micro-budget and its schizophrenic tone. At times it’s agonizingly arch and capital-Z-zany (I’m lookin’ at you, Larry Storch); at other times it’s asking serious questions about whether the human race can ever rein in its self-destructive love of conflict (or, conversely, if a benevolent, parental-guardian “dictatorship” is still tyranny), and once in a while it hits that sweet spot where its humor and its message are in perfect Monitor-style harmony.

A sharply written script, a director with a deft touch for satire, and a contemporary cast could do wonders with the story, which is drawn from Keith Laumer’s 1966 novel of the same name. In these maddening times when angry mobs take to the street to defend to the death their right to get sick and die untreated in septic poverty at the whim of gigantic malevolent insurance companies; when senior citizens protest the evils of “socialism” with signs bought using their Social Security checks; when candidates cheerfully run for office on the platform of destroying the government; a remake of The Monitors could not be more urgently needed.
—Cait Brennan

The famous “Peeping Torgo” scene from
Manos: The Hands Of Fate

Manos: The Hands Of Fate, 1966
I seriously think Rob Zombie should remake this. I’d like to make a strong argument, but I think the idea is so awesome/horrible that it might catch on anyway.
—Adam McIntyre

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