Guest Blog! Wayne Teague on the reVamp of the Horror flick

Re-make, re-boot, or re-imagine?

Looking towards the next few months of cinema releases you may notice one or five horror flicks about to descend on your local multiplex.

Now hands up in back who knew that Friday The 13th is a remake. About half of you? Last House on the Left? My Bloody Valentine 3-D? Anyone? Anyone beside the man at the back with the Sideshow Bob hair and World of Warcraft T-Shirt? Exactly as I thought. Now get yourself on IMDB, key in any of the above titles and you'll see at least one hundred and one people getting their knickers in a twist. Why? Well fanboys out there don’t like anybody touching the Sacred Cows of Horror.

They assume because they know these films of old (well late 70’s early 80’s) then everyone should, and they should revere them as they do.

Now I'm a horror film junkie, but would never expect anyone else out there to know that Last House on the Left was Wes Craven's first film, that the producer of Last House on the Left went on to direct the original Friday the 13th, or that My Bloody Valentine had 9 minutes of gore cut by the MPAA.

By the same token I recognise that these films, whilst classics to horror buffs, mean nothing to mainstream cinema viewers. So why not remake them a bit flashier with a prettier cast so the kids watching these flicks can go back to the originals and delve back into the murkier depths of the horror genre?

I welcome a good remake (see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes reboots) and detest bad ones (Prom Night, April Fools Day….urgh).

Horror films run in cycles, be it Haunted house/Slasher/J-Horror/torture porn, and when their time is up (normally by about the 5th sequel for the first successful film of that cycle) we move onto the next - normally a retread of one that has gone before.

So right now we are entering the third slasher cycle, the first being the mid 70’s to early 80’s, the second from Scream in 1996 to Scream 3 in 2000, and now we have the "slasher reboot" cycle. I do hope that these new retreads will stay true to the originals whilst introducing the characters to a wider audience. FT13th, the most successful original of this new remake cycle, deserves the reboot after a succession of more nonsensical sequels culminating in the truly dire Freddy Vs Jason.

Hopefully the new Jason will scare the Bejesus out of a whole new generation of kids (PHs. for the fans online bemoaning the fact that Jason runs in the new film, check out FT13th parts 2-4 and I think you’ll find he occasionally moved at a sprightly pace in those) So for all the haters out there, wait till you’ve seen the remakes before getting the (Re)boot in, and remember these films aren’t for you, there for the new kids on the block who’ve never heard of Jason or Michael or The Miner or Crosby or Krug & Co. For any horror fans out there check out www.bloodydisgusting.com and www.arrorwinthehead.com for all your horror fix needs.

(c) 2009 Wayne Teague