10 Classic Horror Movie Flops That Deserve A Modern Remake
Static Media
Remakes are pretty common in the horror genre, but not necessarily popular and not always good. Studios that own classic intellectual properties like “A Nightmare on Elm Street” or “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” obviously want to monetize them, but longtime fans have a hard time getting past anyone besides Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger or Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface. It’s a problem at least as old as Universal’s classics — Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were not the only actors to play Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster, respectively, but they are the names and faces that everyone remembers and loves from the Universal Monsters movies.
So why remake the hits? Why not remake flops instead? Sure, some of those flops may have intense fan bases, but imagine how many more people would love them if the concept were done better the second time around? A clever notion that maybe wasn’t executed as well as it could have been the first time is much better fodder for a remake than an essentially perfect slasher movie like “Halloween.”
That’s why we’ve assembled a list of 10 classic horror flops that deserve a modern remake, and it’s full of inspired ideas that were spoiled by studio interference, incongruous tonal shifts, poor marketing, and even a sudden death. In all cases, we see the potential there for somebody to try again. After all, sometimes the remakes are even better.
The Monster Squad
Tri-Star Pictures
If every ’80s kid who’s seen Fred Dekker’s “The Monster Squad” had done so in theaters, it would have been a hit. Over time, video, and cable, we’ve gotten to a place where you can now say “Wolfman’s got nards!” to pretty much anyone over 40, and they’ll know what you mean. Promoted as a monstrous take on “Ghostbusters,” it disappointed filmgoers at the time who may have been hoping for something on the same level, and instead they got a movie about a bunch of kids fighting the Universal monsters while making genitalia jokes. On the other hand, it scored one major casting coup — Tom Noonan as Frankenstein’s monster — and it nearly got Liam Neeson as Dracula.
The problem is the same one that would face “Van Helsing” years later: It’s awkward to try to find a logical narrative that incorporates multiple different monsters working for Dracula, unless the approach is one of all-out camp like “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.” Perhaps a better approach for a remake would be a streaming series — as a movie remake remains officially dead — in which a new group of kids, possibly with at least one legacy member of the original crew, faces a different individual monster each week. Thanks to the Internet, children today have access to more knowledge and folklore than ever, and would certainly think they can outsmart a traditional monster. Forcing them to put that knowledge into practice could lead to some fun set-ups.
The Stuff
New World Pictures
If the parasitic cordyceps fungus in “The Last of Us” were a delicious, low-calorie dessert, it would be “The Stuff.” Bubbling up from underground, this tasty, highly addictive, yogurt-like dessert turns its devotees into zombiefied hosts, allowing the white paste to reproduce, burst out of the body, and find more.
The late Larry Cohen’s 1985 horror-comedy was a pointedly grotesque satire of ’80s diet culture, but New World Pictures, who distributed, were expected more of a frightening gorefest and (mis)marketed it that way. Even on its own terms, it’s not entirely successful — what begins as a creepy parable turns into a largely formulaic military-versus-aliens battle by the end. However, it is a great premise, and the success with both audiences and critics of “The Substance” in 2024 shows there are ways to execute a concept like this which succeeds as both satire and gross-out body horror. Plus, of course, there’s “The Last of Us.”
As the jingle in the movie tells us, “One lick is never enough… of The Stuff!” With diet culture changing forms into injectable medications rather than prepackaged diet foods these days, “The Stuff” in a modern remake could look a lot more like Ozempic. Scott Bloom, the child actor who starred in the original, is now a producer with Argonaut Pictures, and it could get the wheels in motion (if they aren’t already).
Lifeforce
TriStar Pictures
Everyone who’s seen Tobe Hooper’s “Lifeforce” remembers one thing about it: naked vampire lady walking! If they remember more than one thing, it’s that Patrick Stewart was in it too, getting his first on-screen kiss. A movie about vampires from outer space has the potential to be more memorable than that. Indeed, it’s loosely based on Colin Wilson’s novel “The Space Vampires,” a title that sells the concept a bit more blatantly; Wilson himself was not pleased with the film. His story featured more Lovecraftian energy vampires and was set in the future, while Hooper’s hewed closer to traditional lore. Hooper made the movie as part of a three-picture deal with Cannon, and the other two, “Invaders From Mars” and “the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,” remain more beloved cult classics, while “Lifeforce” was a semi-miss.
Rather than remake Hooper’s film, a studio today might want to consider re-adapting Wilson’s novel. Though it begins by using classic vampire imagery with bats and castles, the reveal that they come from a higher race of energy beings amps things up a level, and the fact that they possess the body of the UK Prime Minister dovetails nicely into our current skepticism of leaders. Regardless, there’s one thing that can’t change: naked vampire lady walking scene, or the fans riot!
Dust Devil
PolyGram Video
Following his well-liked debut feature film “Hardware” in 1990, South African director Richard Stanley dug up a screenplay he’d written at age 16 to make “Dust Devil,” his follow-up. “Hardware” had been made to prove he could do a commercial film; “Dust Devil” was supposed to be his vindication that the weirder scripts previously rejected by distributors were worth making. Things didn’t quite work out that way.
Inspired by the true story of a mysterious, never-caught South African serial killer, Stanley reimagined him as a hallucinogenic, supernatural force, played by “RoboCop 3” star Robert John Burke. Yet the director didn’t conceive of it strictly as a horror movie, but also a bit of a Western, a giallo, and even a topical history film. None of which really came through when his 120-minute workprint was shaved down to 85 minutes by the producers, among them the notorious Harvey “Scissorhands” Weinstein. Like many horror movies to pass through the now-disgraced mogul’s hands, it’s a film that starts off well, then gets completely incomprehensible by a slashed-to-bits ending.
Stanley’s director’s cut ultimately came to DVD, giving it artistic justice but not financial success. The original concept, and perhaps the real serial killer story, remain ripe for re-adaptation. In the years since, however, Stanley has faced abuse allegations by his ex-girlfriend and collaborator — since dismissed by a French court — so the question of whether anyone else wants to touch his creation at the moment remains an open one.
Shocker
Universal Pictures
By 1989, director Wes Craven’s most famous character, Freddy Krueger, had gone from being a terrifying bogeyman to a pop culture icon, one whom movie fans were now rooting for rather than against. He hoped with “Shocker” to create a new maniac who actually would scare audiences in the manner Freddy once had. Horace Pinker, played by future “X-Files” star Mitch Pileggi, was a serial killer executed in the electric chair who promptly returns from the dead as pure electrical energy. The result was not one of Craven’s best movies.
“Shocker” made a not-terrible $16.5 million at the time, though it failed to spawn a franchise or turn Horace Pinker into a new horror icon. Craven, and his young star Peter Berg, who plays Pinker’s secret son Jonathan, long wanted a chance to remake it, citing drastic cuts by the MPAA and special effects that were rushed and ruined after the visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown. Now a director of realistic action-thrillers, albeit with plenty of love for the good old ultraviolence, Berg might have an interesting take on the material were he to decide to take it on today. With Berg’s frequent muse Mark Wahlberg recently shaving his head to play a villain for “Flight Risk,” we might even have the perfect choice for a new Pinker right there.
Q: The Winged Serpent
United Film Distribution Company
For ’80s horror fans, “Q” might have been the first they ever heard of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec serpent deity who has become a semi-regular fixture in genre cinema and TV ever since. In it, a distinctive stop-motion monster snacks on skyscraper denizens while its high priest conducts ritual murders. Only a strung-out crook (Michael Moriarty) can lead the cops (fronted by David Carradine and Richard Roundtree) to the secret nest in the Chrysler building. A reverse-“King Kong” finale sees the monster flying around a distinctive building top as stationary gunners on the roof shoot it to death.
A rare combination of retro throwback monster movie and modern horror-comedy, it was a mix that didn’t hit with audiences at first, but gained appreciation on video over time. It grossed approximately $255,000 in limited theatrical release, on a $1.2 million budget.
This second Larry Cohen film to make our list was another concept before its time. With Mexican culture more integrated into the zeitgeist than ever before, now would be the perfect time for someone like Robert Rodriguez to produce a new take on a killer Quetzalcoatl, making good on the sequel tease that never went anywhere at the end of the 1982 film. Moriarty, now in his 80s, could come back and make it a legacy sequel.
The Keep
Paramount
Before his acclaimed TV runs on “Miami Vice” and “Crime Story,” and years prior to becoming the acclaimed director of “Heat” and “The Insider,” Michael Mann made a movie about Nazis unleashing a demon in an abandoned castle. Even back then, working in the horror genre, his penchant for long run-times was baked into his technique, with an initial director’s cut running three and half hours. Even today that might be a tough sell for Mann; back then, it would have been unheard of for a genre guy. Paramount chopped it down to about an hour and a half and released it without a fully finished sound mix, leaving much of the dialogue barely audible. It didn’t help matters that the visual effects supervisor died two weeks into post-production. Today, “The Keep” is nonetheless a cult favorite.
Technically, “The Keep” has been remade already, as a graphic novel by Heavy Metal’s Magma Comix. Writer F. Paul Wilson, who penned the original novel, did the script for this 2006 adaptation himself, feeling that it was what the movie should have been. Much like with Disney’s “The Black Cauldron,” however, an additional incentive to remake “The Keep” is the franchise potential — it’s part of a cycle of seven books collectively known as The Adversary Cycle, which in turn spun off an additional series of novels featuring supernatural fixer Repairman Jack. That seems like valuable IP, and with Greg Nicotero set to direct an official remake, there are possibilities aplenty.
The Tingler
Columbia Pictures
“The Tingler,” about a centipede-like creature powered by fear but vulnerable to screams, is a movie better known for its major promotional gimmick, dubbed “Percepto,” than any aspect of the actual filmmaking. Director William Castle, know for his publicity stunts and unique effects, wired some seats in certain movie theaters with small motors, and for a scene in which the monster gets loose in a theater as part of the story, random viewers would feel a buzzing in their butts as if the tingler were attacking them directly.
The movie deserves better — as subsequent screenings on “Svengoolie” and similar outlets have shown, it’s a supremely weird film, inspired by screenwriter Robb White’s experimentation with (then-legal) LSD, and an encounter (independently) with a giant centipede. It’s the first major movie to depict anybody dropping acid, and Vincent Price sells the hell out of not only the obviously rubber monster, but his character’s bitter, sarcastic marriage as well.
Large centipedes remain terrifying and legitimately dangerous, so the notion of one that wraps itself around one’s spine feels like a potent hook on which to rejuvenate the property. Maybe tie it in to the topical headlines of states that are attempting to legalize hallucinogens. There’s no replacing Vincent Price, nor should anyone try to, but Jeffrey Combs would be a fantastic successor.
The Horror Show
MGM/UA
“The Horror Show” was technically made as “House III,” but it turned out to be so different from the previous installments that United Artists released it in the U.S. as its own thing. Where the first two “House” movies were horror-comedies heavy on creature effects (and in each case featuring a different actor from “Cheers” as comic relief), “The Horror Show” took a darker tone, focusing in the ghost of a single executed serial killer named Max Jenke, who terrorizes the home of Detective Lucas McCarthy, the man that caught him in the first place. Not unlike Horace Pinker in “Shocker,” Jenke had made a deal with the devil prior to his electrocution.
It isn’t so much the plot and the formula that stand out, however, as the fact that Jenke is played by Brion James and McCarthy by Lance Henriksen, two of the great “I know that face!” character actors of the ’80s, now both rightfully acclaimed (though James has since passed). Jenke does some interesting shape-shifting in a way that makes this a little different from standard cop versus crook stuff; a nifty gimmick that might not work in the hands of lesser performers. To put it in today’s terms, imagine an update with, say, William Fichtner being stalked by the ghost of Burn Gorman. The legalities of it being sort-of a “House” sequel might tie up remake rights, but what the hell — why not make a more official “House” update as well?
Nightbreed
20th Century Studios
A horror-fantasy directed by Clive Barker from his novel “Cabal,” costarring David Cronenberg, and featuring concept art by “Star Wars” visualizer Ralph McQuarrie sounds like something that ought to be a hit, right? It wasn’t, but that’s not due to a lack of creativity. A young man named Boone (Craig Sheffer) dreams of a home for monsters called Midian and sees psychiatrist Dr. Decker (Cronenberg) for it. Unbeknownst to him, however, Decker is a serial killer framing Boone, and Midian is real. When Boone later comes back to life after being shot, he realizes he is a monster who belongs in Midian and must save it from humans who wish to destroy it.
Once again, studio editing made the movie’s ending incomprehensible. Morgan Creek Productions were hoping for a more typical scary horror movie; Barker gave them a metaphor for gay men scaring the straights, fleeing small towns to the city, and finding their tribe. While most of the confusion has been cleared up in a director’s cut assembled by Scream Factory, the box-office damage was done. Additionally, visual effects of the time were way behind what Barker wanted to do with the monsters, so they’re mostly created by (admittedly original and awesome) makeup. With digital enhancements, however, his imagination could truly go wild. Michael Dougherty has been attached to a possible TV version for four years now. Meanwhile, “Cabal” remains on bookshelves everywhere, waiting for another adaptation in a world that better appreciates Barker’s queer metaphors.
