October 17th, 2003. A very important date in horror movie history. That was the day of a resurgence. The rebirth of the remake of the horror movie. New Line Cinema took a small $9.5 million dollar gamble on a remake of the 1974 movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It paid off big...$107,071,655 big, and set in motion a series of movie studios trying to secure the remake rights to every and any 1960-1980's horror movie that they could get their buttery little digits on.
This is mostly bad news, it probably put alot of quality screenplays on the shelf. It made men like Michael Bay even richer...he could sit on a beach drinking non-alcohol strawberry margaritas while someone in LA uses his name to promote the next schlocky remake. It put men like Robert Englund on the backburner, as he would sit on the sidelines while Freddy vs Jason 2 was scrapped, and a new Fred Krueger was created for a remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Some good came out of the remake craze though...The Hills Have Eyes, My Bloody Valentine, and House of Wax to name a few.
So if Sarcazmo was a studio chief, and had some petty cash to spend.... like say under $25 million each, heres 7 random movies he would greenlight, and the reasons for doing so. Please note, these arent in any order, their just 7 RANDOM movies I would try to remake.
7. Dolls. 1987. Straight to VHS in 1987, straight to # 3 at the box office in 2013, with a 69% drop in week 2, but its all about the opening weekend anyway. Any day now there is going to be a revival of killer doll/puppet/stuffed animal/ventriloquist movies. In my dream studio, I would beat everyone to the toy aisle and greenlight this below average killer doll flick.
Dolls is about a group of people stranded in a mansion, they soon take fire from a slew of killer dolls. Said dolls are possessed by spirits of dead evil doers. You could make this really creepy...have some really intricate dolls do some serious killing. It could be made cheap, you just need a fancy mansion with tons of detailed doll decor. In a twist at the end, the house itself is actually a dollhouse, the victims are stuck in a giant dollhouse...brilliant.
6. Terror Train. 1980. Lets get one thing straight, Sarcazmo is flat out obsessed with Halloween. So ANY movie that involves Halloween will peak Caz's interest. Terror Train is about 200 or so college kids on Halloween, on a train, in costumes, partying like its 1989. One of them is a killer. A killer who wears the costumes of the people he/she kills. Surprise twist I didnt see coming in the end, but I wasn't the "twist master" yet. This would be an easy, quick, and fun movie to make. Just add 200 extras, some elaborate costumes, and a bunch of sets that look like train cars. The only real money you need is to hire a quality lead actress, as Jamie Lee Curtis was the star in the original. So throw $2 million at some Bplus level talent, get some cool costumes and you're good to go. Huge opening weekend here... like $18 to $35 million, then the drop off, then the unrated 2 disk "green-ray" with alternate endings. I got this studio thing down pat. 
5. Stripped to Kill. 1987. A detective goes undercover to investigate a murderer who kills strippers. No one makes good T and A flicks anymore. The last good one was Hostel 1 or 2 I believe. I would make this my first epic straight to Blu-ray production. I would have TONS of hot girls, I mean the hottest I could get. Hooters, Hawaiian Tropic, Playboy, etc. They would be naked alot. I would have loads of backstage tension between the strippers. Also gotta have lots of what goes on backstage..the business side. You cant just have a killer killing every 10 minutes... make it fun, give the strippers personality...show them complaining about tips, fighting over songs etc. Then make the killer vicious, Christian Bale in American Psycho vicious. His whole deal could be he wanted to be a woman, so he takes his rage out on born beautiful women. 
4. Demons. 1985. Demons running wild on opening night in a movie theater...do you really need anything else? This is an easy production. Give me a theater, some victims, some scary demon makeup, and a couple of guns. I would set the movie in a fairly populated town that has the worlds only gimmick theater. A theater where the movies are made to interact with the film goers. What happens on screen, happens in the aisles. Electric shocks on chairs, blood sprayed into the crowd during a death scene, stuff falling from the ceiling, actors in costumes, etc. So when the actual demons start running amok, the moviegoers think its part of the act. The key here is to really make the theater fun, the popcorn, the ushers, etc. It would be a big theater too, one theater could be 3-d...the demons could attack multiple theaters. You could even have a movie screening with an A-list star doing a Q and A segment, then all of a sudden the demons attack. You could get name actors playing themselves.
3. Clownhouse. 1989. Clownhouse was a little seen low budget horror movie directed by Victor Salva. Who is Victor Salva? He is a horror movie director. What did Victor Salva do to a 12 year old boy during the filming of this movie???...oral copulation while he videotaped it. He served 15 months and was back making Disney movies in no time (Powder). Clownhouse should still be remade and remade scary. Creepy clowns chasing kids thru the woods would inspire many a nightmare.
2. The Monster Squad. 1987. A group of kids battle 4 famous monsters and some vampire women in this 82 minute 1987 horror film. Huge following, wasn't available on dvd for the longest time. This would be the most difficult movie to remake because how do you do it? Do you go camp with dumb monsters, or do you have violent scary monsters. Who's your target audience.....10 year olds? I would probably have a bunch of 12 to 16 year olds who worship Dungeons and Dragons, watch horror movies, play games, surf the web, etc. Not picked on at school, but not popular. Picking on kids at school doesn't happen that way anymore, so I wouldn't have them getting beat up...they'd be outsiders though. You could have vampires and a were-wolf, but a mummy and swamp thing would be hard to pull off. Having kids with guns would be very taboo in todays world....it sucks that the world got so violent.
1. House. 1986. House 1 and 2 are forgotten big time. One of the few franchises, along with The Evil Dead series, to mix horror and comedy successfully. House is about an author who moves into a house to begin writing a novel, he soon realizes its plagued by ghosts and monsters. Robert Downey Jr would be perfect for the lead here. You just need a huge old house, and some great effects.
So if Sarcazmo was a studio chief, and had some petty cash to spend.... like say under $25 million each, heres 7 random movies he would greenlight, and the reasons for doing so. Please note, these arent in any order, their just 7 RANDOM movies I would try to remake.
7. Dolls. 1987. Straight to VHS in 1987, straight to # 3 at the box office in 2013, with a 69% drop in week 2, but its all about the opening weekend anyway. Any day now there is going to be a revival of killer doll/puppet/stuffed animal/ventriloquist movies. In my dream studio, I would beat everyone to the toy aisle and greenlight this below average killer doll flick.Dolls is about a group of people stranded in a mansion, they soon take fire from a slew of killer dolls. Said dolls are possessed by spirits of dead evil doers. You could make this really creepy...have some really intricate dolls do some serious killing. It could be made cheap, you just need a fancy mansion with tons of detailed doll decor. In a twist at the end, the house itself is actually a dollhouse, the victims are stuck in a giant dollhouse...brilliant.
6. Terror Train. 1980. Lets get one thing straight, Sarcazmo is flat out obsessed with Halloween. So ANY movie that involves Halloween will peak Caz's interest. Terror Train is about 200 or so college kids on Halloween, on a train, in costumes, partying like its 1989. One of them is a killer. A killer who wears the costumes of the people he/she kills. Surprise twist I didnt see coming in the end, but I wasn't the "twist master" yet. This would be an easy, quick, and fun movie to make. Just add 200 extras, some elaborate costumes, and a bunch of sets that look like train cars. The only real money you need is to hire a quality lead actress, as Jamie Lee Curtis was the star in the original. So throw $2 million at some Bplus level talent, get some cool costumes and you're good to go. Huge opening weekend here... like $18 to $35 million, then the drop off, then the unrated 2 disk "green-ray" with alternate endings. I got this studio thing down pat. 
5. Stripped to Kill. 1987. A detective goes undercover to investigate a murderer who kills strippers. No one makes good T and A flicks anymore. The last good one was Hostel 1 or 2 I believe. I would make this my first epic straight to Blu-ray production. I would have TONS of hot girls, I mean the hottest I could get. Hooters, Hawaiian Tropic, Playboy, etc. They would be naked alot. I would have loads of backstage tension between the strippers. Also gotta have lots of what goes on backstage..the business side. You cant just have a killer killing every 10 minutes... make it fun, give the strippers personality...show them complaining about tips, fighting over songs etc. Then make the killer vicious, Christian Bale in American Psycho vicious. His whole deal could be he wanted to be a woman, so he takes his rage out on born beautiful women. 
4. Demons. 1985. Demons running wild on opening night in a movie theater...do you really need anything else? This is an easy production. Give me a theater, some victims, some scary demon makeup, and a couple of guns. I would set the movie in a fairly populated town that has the worlds only gimmick theater. A theater where the movies are made to interact with the film goers. What happens on screen, happens in the aisles. Electric shocks on chairs, blood sprayed into the crowd during a death scene, stuff falling from the ceiling, actors in costumes, etc. So when the actual demons start running amok, the moviegoers think its part of the act. The key here is to really make the theater fun, the popcorn, the ushers, etc. It would be a big theater too, one theater could be 3-d...the demons could attack multiple theaters. You could even have a movie screening with an A-list star doing a Q and A segment, then all of a sudden the demons attack. You could get name actors playing themselves.
3. Clownhouse. 1989. Clownhouse was a little seen low budget horror movie directed by Victor Salva. Who is Victor Salva? He is a horror movie director. What did Victor Salva do to a 12 year old boy during the filming of this movie???...oral copulation while he videotaped it. He served 15 months and was back making Disney movies in no time (Powder). Clownhouse should still be remade and remade scary. Creepy clowns chasing kids thru the woods would inspire many a nightmare. 
2. The Monster Squad. 1987. A group of kids battle 4 famous monsters and some vampire women in this 82 minute 1987 horror film. Huge following, wasn't available on dvd for the longest time. This would be the most difficult movie to remake because how do you do it? Do you go camp with dumb monsters, or do you have violent scary monsters. Who's your target audience.....10 year olds? I would probably have a bunch of 12 to 16 year olds who worship Dungeons and Dragons, watch horror movies, play games, surf the web, etc. Not picked on at school, but not popular. Picking on kids at school doesn't happen that way anymore, so I wouldn't have them getting beat up...they'd be outsiders though. You could have vampires and a were-wolf, but a mummy and swamp thing would be hard to pull off. Having kids with guns would be very taboo in todays world....it sucks that the world got so violent. 
1. House. 1986. House 1 and 2 are forgotten big time. One of the few franchises, along with The Evil Dead series, to mix horror and comedy successfully. House is about an author who moves into a house to begin writing a novel, he soon realizes its plagued by ghosts and monsters. Robert Downey Jr would be perfect for the lead here. You just need a huge old house, and some great effects. 
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