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The word remake in most people's opinion holds many of the same connotations as the word blasphemy. America is well know for re-creating European box-office successes for a more commercially viable product. Take for example Les Visiteurs - The Visitors, or Spoorloos - The Vanishing, it would seem that Hollywood would prefer that these movies featured their own stars, using their own dialect and let's not forget the American flag before the closing credits ...
Remaking a film raises an important question ...WHY!!? Especially when a classic such as Hitchcock's Psycho is remade, and shot for shot same as the original? No surprise then that it was a huge flop, as was the remake of Rear Window. It can be argued that remaking a film is like a new interpretation of a play, which is perfectly acceptable, isn't it? Well only if the play sucked ass to begin with.
B-movie remakes have had many success stories, unusually enough. Such remakes as The Fly and The Thing gained huge commercial interest. So could it be argued that a lesser known film is a better choice for remake? Take for instance the latest Matt Damon flick, The Bourne Identity, a remake of a made for TV film, not that you would notice. Remakes could be said to update a films context and themes for a modern audience which face modernist anxieties such themes as HIV, Global Warming or Cloning.
The idea of a movie remake commonly comes with a frown to a majority of cinema buffs as it often betrays the heritage of the original, ignoring thoughtful debates and overloading with special effects in it's place. However ...a chunk of sci-fi films from the 1950s were remade and there is a definite divided opinion on the value of these remakes. Some would say that it discredits the original, and others; that a new interpretation offers more room for showing off new and improved production techniques like special effects and texts that address modern issues, that were not viable at the time of the original.Each decade tends to reflect the collective angst of the period in it's films, the 50s mainly concerned with nuclear experiments, fordism and the looming threat of communist attack.
Here are a few of the 1950s movies that have been reproduced over the last few decades.
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