Remakes have been a significant part of Hollywood’s output since at least the 1930s, when many silent movies were filmed again as talkies. But it seems to me that the philosophy behind remakes has changed in recent years. It used to be that you remade less-than-memorable movies in hopes of coming up with something better. The Maltese Falcon is the perfect example; few people today realize that the Bogart classic was actually the third time Dashiell Hammett’s novel had been adapted for the screen. The two earlier versions have been largely forgotten, presumably for good reason.
Today, however, remakes mostly seem to be movies that audiences do remember, and even revere; cult classics seem to be particularly vulnerable. (My theory is that modern remakes are largely exercises in branding; Hollywood is updating familiar movies because audiences are already aware of the titles and basic premises, so there’s less of a challenge for the marketing department.)

Take, for example, the latest exercise in “why is this necessary”-ism: a remake of the John Carpenter-Kurt Russell favorite Escape from New York. Wow, what a brilliant idea, a real natural. After all, the last remake of a Carpenter film, The Fog, did so spectacularly well at the box office, didn’t it? (Yes, kids, that’s sarcasm you’re reading.) While we’re at it, why doesn’t somebody remake Carpenter’s best-known film, his big breakthrough and masterpiece, Halloween? Oh… never mind…

You know, I saw Kurt Russell on The Late, Late Show the other night. He was there to plug Grindhouse, naturally, but the host, Craig Ferguson, was far more interested in discussing the Escape remake. Kurt, classy guy that he is, said he had no issues with it and wished the new production well. I tend to agree with Craig, though; he said (in his amusing Scottish accent) that it was bullshite, that Kurt was Snake Plissken, that Snake was an icon, and that no one else could take over the role. And then for good measure, he repeated himself: it’s bullshite.

I would just add that somebody already did a remake of Escape from New York. It was called Escape from L.A. What’s that, you say? You don’t remember that one? Yeah, well, that pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

From a Time magazine review of the new Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez shlock-o-rama Grindhouse, here’s an observation that I found interesting:

You won’t find sex, or even the aura of sexuality, in films by the current generation of pop-referencing auteurs. They swarm all over the violence in 60s-70s grindhouse movies but are squeamish in showing the eroticism that once was crucial to the genre. The generation of “kids with beards,” as Billy Wilder called Francis Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Martin Scorsese, took their cues from a wide range of movie sources — Saturday-matinee serials, John Cassavetes improv dramas, European angst-athons — and if they got excessive, it was in kitsch and violence, not sex. Rodriguez got some puffs of grindhouse steam going in Sin City; but here, he and Tarantino are as puritanical as their predecessors. All bang-bang, no French kiss-kiss.

 

In both “features” of Grindhouse, the MISSING REEL card flashes as a sex scene has just begun. That’s a comment on the old days, but it also proves that when it comes to eroticism, of the true or even exploitation variety, these directors are such cowards. If they use sex at all, it is in the horror-film mode pioneered by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Show a woman in a shower, then kill her. The impulse is both prurient and puritanical; they provide a brief voyeuristic pleasure, then feel obliged to punish the women, and the audience, and themselves.

This reminds me of something I noticed when I worked at the multiplex back in college: the viewers who squawked with moral outrage and demanded refunds at the briefest glimpse of a feminine nipple were usually the same folks who enthusiastically turned out on opening night for the latest action or horror bloodbaths. One family of regular patrons stands out in my mind; the numb-skulled parents thought it was peachy keen to take their five kids — who, as I recall, ranged in age from teen down to toddler — to Total Recall three or four times, but were appalled that their precious younglings’ eyes were exposed to the sexual content in The Fabulous Baker Boys. Both films were rated R and, in my opinion, were inappropriate for kids regardless of their respective particulars, simply because they dealt with grown-up subject matter. (Well, Baker Boys did, anyway, but Total Recall definitely wasn’t made with families in mind, regardless of its subject.) But these folks thought that Michael Ironside getting his arms ripped off (“See you at the pahty, Ricktah!”) was fine family entertainment while Michelle Pfeiffer’s boobage was the very embodiment of evil.

I was thinking then that there was something out of whack with the cultural values being expressed through our entertainment, the dichotomy of “immoral” sexual content versus “perfectly acceptable” violence, and that was almost 20 years ago. The equation has only gotten more lopsided since then; our theater screens are awash in gore and sadism, but I honestly can’t recall the last time I saw any nudity in a film… what is it about Americans that we prefer fake bloodshed over cinematic nookie? And does that make anyone else out there uneasy, or is it just me?