Last week’s WDT begs the companion idea, “Bad MST3K Movies as Re-Done by Good Directors.”
“The Deadly Bees,” as directed by Billy Wilder, who was also a great script writer: It becomes a film noir with serious conflict between Mr. and Mrs. Hargrove, and Doris the bar maid/housemaid is a real love interest of Hargrove’s. Vicki comes to Seagull Island not to battle exhaustion but alcoholism, and Dr, Manfred is much more menacing. Tess the Dog is NOT voiced by a human. The Bowler-Hatted-Man has a bigger role that actually makes sense, somehow.
Um, Batwoman joins the Avengers? It could happen!
What’s yours?
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Boggy Creek II by John Boorman of DELIVERANCE fame.
Space Travelers a.k.a. Marooned, as directed by Ron Howard, would become ….. Apollo 13.
Have Robert Wise, who directed ‘The Haunting’ direct ‘Tormented’. Vi’s ghost is never seen but her presence is highly implied. Tom Stewart is slowly driven mad, unsure if it’s his guilty conscience or a real supernatural occurrence affecting him.
Monster A Go-Go is a hell of mess so I would love to see what Tim Burton can do. I bet he would leave the telephone ring dubbed by a human.
Mac and Me directed by Steven Spielberg. Oh wait. How about him doing The Day Time Ended… D’oh!
Space Mutiny directed by J.J Abrams. Instead of using old Battlestar Galactica footage, he could use some of the footage from that OTHER sci- Fi film he directed.
……….if I could just remember the name of that franchise……
If Future War had been directed by Wes Anderson, it would have been a Sunshine tab of a different color.
Time of the Apes directed by Franklin J. Schaffer who directed Planet of the Apes (1968)
Instead of just wandering through the desert at the end of the movie.
Godo stumbles across something quite shocking like the Great Pyramid of Giza of perhaps
even the Statue of Liberty.
Just imagine if Guillermo Del Toro directed Revenge of the Creature…
no i do not want to imagine.
I’d like to see Takeshi Kitano re-do “Prince of Space.” Let those weapons have at least SOME effect on the title character! Plus a big dance scene at the end. (check out “Zatoichi”)
Hamlet an animated film directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. But to keep it from being too grim turn everyone into African animals, and have Elton John do the music.
Pretty much any of the educational shorts redone by Lord and Miller (The Lego Movie, Into the Spider-verse). I would especially like to see hem do Mr. B Natural or A case of Spring Fever.
The Incredible Melting Man –
As done by Orson Wells and Richard Simmons. All the melting is done off camera, but skillfully implied by the use of shadows and oblique camera angles. In a surprise ending it turns out that the melting was actually done by Janus Blythe, the put-upon brunette who was actually “dancing to the oldies” and melting away the pounds! “COME ON, PEOPLE. GET UP AND MOOOOVE!!”
Monster A Go-Go by M. Night Shyamalan.
Or was there no monster? Watch it again and again to see if you can find all the clues.
Clint Eastwood directs “Mitchell.”
Set Director sets baby oil on Mitchell’s nightstand.
Clint: Get that baby oil of my lawn…err. I mean my set.
There’s a core of a good story in Manos, all it needs is someone who understands things like pacing, dialog, acting, cinematography, editing … . Unfortunately, I don’t know many good directors. One that I can think of who handled a story descends into deepening doom is Adrian Lyne, who directed Fatal Attraction. Family is having a nice weekend jaunt, car breaks down in front of a nice house, Torgo is a nice guy who everyone likes, draws them each into the cult, all with a little foreboding of what it’s going to be like when The Master finally shows up. That’s when things really go wrong. In the end, Torgo is dead, Michael takes the fall, and Margaret and Debbie end up end up in The Master’s harem. I can’t decide whether the dog should end up in the pot. After he has this version in the can, the studio suits made him tack on the happy ending, where Debbie shoots The Master in self defense, rescues Michael and Margaret, and the wives go to the abused women’s shelter.
Future War, by Andrei Tarkovsky. Same head-scratching mix of disparate plot points, only there’s a palpable hint that there’s an actual connection between them; actors with an ounce or two of gravitas capable of showing emotion, and certainly no live-action cartoon characters (i.e., the enormous room mates, Robert Z’Dar, the “plaid avengers” street gang, etc.); at least a third less dialogue; and now the film runs for four hours: you feel it, too, but at least leave the theater with a vague sense of being seriously challenged intellectually.
What about Stanley Kubrick?
What about Stanley Kubrick? End up with entire websites dedicated to discussing every minute detail.
Well I’ve been outsmarted by the site…
Ahem,
Gee I dunno . . .
but taking it the other way I’d pay to watch Cecil B DeMille’s PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE
or Alfred Hitchcock’s
or John Ford’s . . .
Not to mention James Cameron’s THE CREEPING TERROR . . .
Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Manos: the Hands of Fate
Manos: The Hands of Fate. A Stanley Kubrick film.
Michael and the family show up at the house. The Master is in the habit of ritually humiliating Torgo, all while using some of the most shocking obscenity you’ve ever heard. The actor who plays Torgo is unable to otherwise express emotion, so to show how angry he is he rolls his eyes into the back of his head like a toddler having a tantrum. After about 30 minutes of this, Torgo snaps and shoots The Master. Then Margaret, Debbie, and The Wives go off onto an adventure that has pretty much nothing to do with the first part of the movie, while extravagantly recycling the cliches you’ve seen in other similar movies.
“Blood Waters Of Doctor Z”… directed by…
Rob Zombie.
Oh wait… you said a good director.
“Devil Fish”… directed by…
Steven Spielberg.
Oh wait, that would be “Jaws!”
Awwwww poopie.
And is played by Jack Lemmon! :)
(Seriously, Billy Wilder, and all you thought was great dramas? Well, that’s something, I guess…)
Have to admit, five Kubrick jokes were springing to mind, and none of them involved “A.I.”–This is why I fight for Pre-90’s Movie Literacy.
Torgo doing the Alex deLarge Kubrick-Crazy-Stare, OTOH, or the military scenes from “Attack of the the Eye Creatures” done Dr. Strangelove-style…
(And okay, with no Edit button, somebody already did the Torgo/Private Pyle joke, sheesh…But seriously, WATCH some more Kubrick besides Full Metal Jacket or the three scenes you remember from The Shining!
Like, y’know, whether “The Undead” would work better as a bitterly ironic Barry Lyndon period drama. With Sterling Hayden as Digger Smolken.)
Manos by Quentin Tarantino. Innocent vacationing family and desperate criminals on the run converge on the cult compound a la Dusk till Dawn sort of.
How about “Gamera” directed by Ishiro Honda?
There would be more of a focus on the Cold War conflict that resurrected the turtle. We’d see more shots of the human cost of Gamera’s rampage. Launching Gamera into space would be seen as a sad necessity, not a happy ending. And, we hope, Kenny would be portrayed as a sad & misunderstood kid, not as a psycho who needlessly endangers himself and others.
grrr…beaten to the punch by the Manos done by Tarentino….
but i was thinking of Manos in a Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction format.
we have Torgo do a V/O Narration while the movie highlights the misadventures of the cast.
“so THere I was TRYing to MAke the BEds, run BY The DRYcleANERS to PIck up the MASter’s cloak, DRop tHE daMN dog to THE f-ING Vet FOr hIS SPAYing aLL THe while I goTTA keEP STirring the SAuce for DINNer while the f-ing MASter lies ARound all DAY like a F-ING COMAtose Bill BUCKner!’
I likewise thought of either Tarantino or Scorsese doing ‘I accuse my Parents.’ but i’m not liking Jimmy’s odds.
and i’m guessing Kitty’s performances would involve just a tad bit of nudity…
OK, so maybe Michael Bay could remake “Parts: The Clonus Horror” and get Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson to star in it, and…
Whoops, never mind. You said a good director.
Let’s see, the monster would be pasty white, played by Johnny Depp, and the whole theme of the movie was how misunderstood he was by evil Max-Factor-lipsticked scientist Eva Green, because he was different!
Alan Arkin, of course, would play the good scientist. Music by Danny Elfman, in a whimsical imitation of 50’s weird-theremin themes.
The Skydivers directed by David Lynch, however, would be less successful: The first hour consisting of the characters standing around screaming for no reason, until the last half hour, where, instead of coffee, they grab a beer at the local roadhouse bar, where Chris Isaak performs on stage.
Yesterday I had “Beast of Yucca Flats” on a loop while I was going to bed and Tom made a really funny riff about directors and writers.
The beast was getting ready to strangle a woman in the passenger seat of her car.
Tom: Kenneth Branagh’s, Mary Shelly’s, Bram Stoker’s, Wes Craven’s, Tim Burton’s, “Beast of Yucca Flats” a Francis Ford Coppola film. I got a laugh out of that.
Have any or all of the MST3K films redone by Nick Park of Wallace and Gromit fame. Just think what claymation could do.
I’ve long maintained that “The Leech Woman” is actually hiding a good story underneath all the overacting and need for a few script edits. Give it to Kathryn Bigelow and let’s see what happens!
And yet people bring up Taratino ;)
Okay, I’ve tried, but I can’t get the image out of my head–“Rocket Attack USA” done in the style of Wilder’s “One Two Three”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x2oNMmpWKE :)
Guillermo Del Toro’s Black Scorpion, basically the same premise but with better effects (though the original effects aren’t bad really) with Ron Perlman somewhere in the cast. Joe Johnston’s Commando Cody….er, just watch The Rocketeer instead.
Tarantino would probably have a blast redoing “The Girl In Gold Boots” … perhaps Selma Hayek in the title role???
“…Uh, no, Quentin, it just mentions in the title that she wears the boots, we don’t show them EVERY THIRD SHOT.”
Yes! The Creeping Terror, A Nick Park Film. It all takes place in the barnyard. Bitzer keeps trying to herd the sheep away from the terror (which looks and moves pretty much like it did the original film) but they’re too dumb and keep getting caught anyway. Has as much dialog as the original, too.
The Creeping Terror redone by John Carpenter, whose The Thing is scariest movie I’ve ever seen. No one knows what was in the spaceship, only that it is now on a killing rampage. We don’t see the monster till the end. Martin, Barney, et al., are in a race against time to find & destroy whatever it is before it kills again, only they have to do so without causing widespread panic. The dialogue is still minimalist, but there’s no narrator. Martin’s wife, Brett, has a more active role, and does more than just stand around holding his . . . hand and looking pretty. (Alas, they probably have to lose the mid-afternoon dance at the “town’s dance hall” and the “lover’s lane” that’s really just a forest clearing with random parked cars.) As for the monster . . . well, I don’t know what it would look like, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as silly as the lumbering carpet sample in the original!
The actual “Deadly Bees” has some good actors, Frank Finlay and Guy Dolman. To be honest, it is probably one of the least terrible movies they did. Not quite Russian Disney, but well enough above average for something featured on our cow-town puppet show. (Let’s not mistake this for being “good” in an absolute sense, but you know what I mean.)
Ron Howard directing Village of the Giants but not adult Ron Howard, Ron Howard at the age he was in the movie.
I think the title of this forum should be changed to “Weekly Discussion Thread.”
Let’s face it, we’re all having too much fun here to confine it to a measly two days, which is why many of us stretch it out.
I really enjoy all of the humor, insights, and ideas here… thanks everyone for making the week more fun.
OK, one more: “Devil Doll” directed by Richard Attenborough. A la 1978’s “Magic” with Anthony Hopkins and Ann Margrock, except that in the remake, The Great Vorelli gets attacked an eaten by a huge T-Rex from Jurassic Park!
Ooh, great idea. My scariest movie is Alien, so I’m looking for backers for The Beast of Yucca Flats by Ridley Scott. There’s Javorsky, and an atomic explosion, then people start dying horribly in the desert. The trail of bodies is heading toward a small town near the test site, where the residents’ responses range from bravado to panic, with everything getting more intense as the killer gets closer. One of the residents is secretly assisting Javorsky’s rampage, angling to guide the beast into scaring off the investors in a nearby planned development.
How about “The Screaming Skull” directed by J. A. Bayona, who directed “The Orphanage.” I honestly think that “Screaming Skull” was a halfways decent movie, given its limitations (mainly budget and a first-time director).
I always thought Clonus had a good story underneath and while The Island doesn’t really improve on it, it turns out someone else probably did–Mark Romanek, who directed “Never Let Me Go” in 2010. While ostensibly based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go, who knows where Ishiguro got his idea for a farm of clones waiting to be killed for parts?
Oh, and how about THE UNDEAD directed by Christopher Nolan. Seems to me that kind of plot would be right up his alley.