Down with Horror Remakes!

It's official: Hollywood has run out of ideas when it comes to horror films. How do I know this? Last weekend a remake of "Nightmare on Elm Street" came out. What's worse, it was the number one movie at the box office. Great, now Hollywood will keep releasing these pale imitations of classic films because they know it will make money. In all fairness, I have not seen the new "Nightmare." I decided that with no Robert Englund it just wasn't worth the money. For me he is and always will be Freddy.

All my opinions about the new "Nightmare" aside, what concerns me more is the sheer volume of remakes appearing at my local multiplex. It seems the horror genre just happens to spawn more remakes than other genres. In the last several years we have had remakes of the following: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Halloween," "Friday the 13th," "The Hills Have Eyes," "Last House on the Left," "Dawn of the Dead," and back in the 1990s there was the disgrace that was the shot-by shot remake of "Psycho." Enough already! Come up with something original and leave the classics alone.

I know what you're thinking; I'm a neurotic purist. I don't deny that. It doesn't just bother me that these classics are being re-made for a new generation of film-goers. It bothers me that these movies are re-made without the imagination or intelligence of the originals (the exception is "Friday the 13th" because it was a bad movie to start with... but I digress).

The worst offender for my money is the remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The original had a gritty documentary-style look to it, it kind of reminded me of "Legend of Boggy Creek" and "The Blair Witch Project" (all three being sort of pseudo-documentaries). It was grizzly, but inventive. It also had lots of imagination, and I thought it was neat to see a horror film shot in the harsh daylight. The re-make just tripled the gore-factor, non-existent acting, and really no characters to care about or real story to tell. Roger Ebert was right when he compared it to a carnival geek show. It was as if the director was daring me to stomach it. Now I am not opposed to violence as evidenced by the fact that I love horror movies. If there is reason for the blood and guts then by all means, bring it on! But don't throw it out there just for shock factor. Back it up with a decent script and good acting. "Scream" was gory as can be, but it had a clever script to go with it. The same can be said of the original "Nightmare on Elm Street."

It should also be noted that while the original "Halloween" from 1978 is considered the movie that invented slasher movies, the blood in it is minimal. Lots of people get killed, but most of it is off-camera. The movie relies more on suspenseful scares than all and out gore. Too this day that movie makes me shiver because of its sheer imagination and ability to scare me with realistic situations.

And another thing: QUIT MAKING THE STUPID "SAW" SEQUELS!" The first one was kind of affective, but the second one went purely for gory scares (exhibit A: the female character who gets shoved into the pool of dirty needles). The first movie should have been called "Saw: a Shameless Knock-off of David Fincher's 'Se7en.''

Thankfully there was one glimmer of hope last year: "Paranormal Activity." I slept with the lights on afterwords, something I never do. The filmmakers didn't even need gratuitous violence to do it.