Movies That Didn't Need to Be Remade

Well, Aphrodite wanted to see the remake of Conan the Barbarian. She's seen the first one more times than I can count (having caught it every day for a couple of weeks at a dollar theater back in Austin when it first came out) and the leading man appeared to be sufficiently hunky to make it worthwhile. The Bug was in agreement on this latter component, so we decided to allow her to see her first 'R-Rated' movie.

Since a quick look at the box office returns made it clear that this would be the last weekend that we'd be able to catch it, we saw it at the over-priced theater in the mall. It was the only place that was showing the movie in 2D and none of us have any interest in wearing silly glasses. The one good thing about the mall 26-plex was that it was also showing Spy Kids 4, in 2D, at the same time, which allowed Little Buddy to catch a movie, too. Tragically, he got the better end of the deal.

To say that it was dreadful is unfair. It was worse than that. Not only was the original far better, but even Conan the Destroyer, which was a wretched piece of crap, was better. You've seen the plot before. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was pretty much the same plot, done better. The dialogue was written by someone with a tin ear. The heavies had bombastic lines, the good guys popped out with strangely disconnected bits, and the leads seem to have picked up scripts for different movies.

Most of the acting was genuinely dreadful. Stephen Lang did a nice job as the villain, at least until the very end, when the plot completely came apart, and the actor who played Conan as a child was a much better actor than the adult version, which may explain why he had so few lines. It certainly wouldn't have looked good if Conan had been articulate and charismatic as a boy, only to lapse into grunting sullenness as a man.

None of the characters were more than a cardboard cutout and the movie completely lacked the humor and joie de vivre that made the first movie worth watching. I managed to hold it together through the movie, but burst out into loud laughter during the credits, simply because of the pompousness of it all.

One bright point was that Rachel Nichols was definitely prettier than Sandahl Bergman and a better actress. The downside was that, as Aphrodite pointed out, she went from being a monk of a peaceful order to a killing machine with very few qualms and with remarkable efficiency.

Standing in the lobby before the movie, I noticed the posters for several additional movies that didn't need to be remade:

The Three Musketeers — IMDB lists twenty-four live-action movie versions, dating back as far as 1903 and coming from countries as diverse as Argentina and Iran. For anyone born in the latter half of the last century, the definitive version was done in 1973. The cast included Oliver Reed, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Raquel Welch, Michael York, Geraldine Chaplin, Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning, Spike Milligan, and (in the only role that I've ever liked him in) Charlton Heston. What does the new version have to offer? M'lady is Milla Jovovich, which is an inspired choice, although I don't see her as deliciously evil as Faye Dunaway. Buckingham, who is definitely not a lead, is played by Orlando Bloom, which should attract the sighing female audience. D'Artagan is the kid who played Percy Jackson, and is no Michael York, in any way. You've never heard of any of the actors playing Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The one casting that seems truly promising is Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu.

Fright Night — I never saw the original, but really, is there that much of a need to revisit yet another low-budget horror movie?

Footloose — The world survived for 3.87 billion years before the arrival of the first version of Footloose. Couldn't we have waited as long for the remake?

The Thing — There was a trailer for The Thing. This movie holds a special spot in my heart, as the John Carpenter/Kurt Russell version came out in 1982, which was the year that I spent in Antarctica. We had a copy of the movie down there and watched it repeatedly. It gets the feel of one of the small bases pretty well. Frankly, it's a decent flick and I don't see why it needs to be remade. Without putting too fine of a point on things, I would definitely have preferred to have spent the year with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, rather than with Kurt Russell, but that's just me.

A couple that we didn't see this time, but I've seen trailers or teasers for:

The Mechanic — The original movie was fine. Not art, but fine. The pacing was good, the plot was decent. Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent both did a nice job, and it featured a Questar telescope. What could be better?

Red Dawn — For those of you who might have been busy in 1984 (or not around for some reason), the original Red Dawn had a group of teenagers fighting a Soviet invasion of the United States. This invasion took place across Canada and into the Dakotas, because an invasion across thousands of miles of endless, empty steppes worked so well for Napoleon and Hitler. Uhhhh. When we saw it, back then, two rows in front of us were a cluster of idiots in camo gear. Someone must have seen them come in, because during the trailers, the lights came on and the manager demanded to see whether they were carrying guns. Which they were. Toy guns. The manager collected the hardware anyway and told them they could collect it after the movie. Needless to say, these guys got seriously into the movie, with one excitedly shouting, "This could really happen!" as the adults were rounded up. The new version has North Koreans invading. A million starving North Korean soldiers coming ashore in shipping containers would make for an interesting opening scene, but my suspicion is that they wouldn't last an hour in the Long Beach dock area before someone had mugged them and stolen all of their weapons.

I'll run through some of the past remakes in a later posting.

Stranded in Iowa

Stranded in Iowa
Stranded in Iowa
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I can't keep my thoughts out of sight
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I need to feel the stars slip by at night
I'm stranded all night, stranded all right
                                                                      — Manfred Mann

Nate Silver has a great posting on why the Ames Straw Poll and the Iowa caucuses matter. What's interesting is not that neither is a particularly good predictor of who will be the Republican nominee (nice double negative there), but exactly what purpose they really serve for the Republicans. While Iowa itself is a remarkably moderate state, being about as purple as they get, the Republican caucus attendees are amongst the most conservative voters in the country. As a result, the Iowa caucus tends to identify which candidate(s) have the blessing of the psychotic right. Depending upon the year, this may or may not be a good indicator of who will be selected as the nominee.

The weekend's poll landed in favor of Michelle Bachmann, with Ron Paul following closely behind. This makes a lot of sense, given Silver's hypothesis. On the other hand, Pawlenty had no traction whatsoever, which also indicates that there are few moderates who attend these things. I'm pleased to see that Gingrich and Santorum both polled badly. Santorum's campaign headquarters in Iowa is located two blocks from my office and I'm afraid that it will take years to for the stench to fade.

On the Democratic side, the Iowa caucus does a much better job at predicting the nominee. Last time around, I registered as a Democrat for the first time ever, just so that I could attend a caucus (after almost fifteen years in Iowa, I figured that it was time to see what all the fuss was about). Having watched and taken part in the process, I can say that the Democrats seem to have a much more pragmatic approach to the whole affair. While each candidate's representative got to make a brief appeal to the caucus, most of the discussion focused upon who was most likely to win in November. Beating out the differences between Edwards and Richardson was much less important than identifying who could win.

It's just about time to stop listening to the news again. The year before a presidential election is remarkably crazy in Iowa. You can't throw a brick without hitting a potential president. Our suburb of Des Moines had Rick Santorum marching in the Fourth of July parade, glad-handing everyone he could. I was about to shout that he had been a loser in Pennsylvania too, when The Boss fired her elbow into my side and diverted my attention to trying to remember how to breathe. The state fair has more candidates than cattle and the cattle at least display some signs of civility.

White Fang and the Hunter (1975)

Cast

• Robert Wood
• Pedro Sanchez
• Malisa Longo
• Massimo De Cecco
• Robert Hundar

Inventory

• Three dog teams
• An Indian woman
• A branding iron
• An HO-gauge railroad
• Incriminating papers
• A bucking broncho
• A suitcase full of neckties
• One wedding brawl

Summary

A grizzled backwoods coot takes a shot at a rabbit with a Henry rifle and causes an avalanche which buries a less grizzled, but even more mangy trapper. Fortunately, the trapper has a wolf (german shepard) that is clearly the brains of this outfit. The wolf makes like Lassie and brings the shooter back, where they dig out the trapper. The trio heads to town, only to find it a corrupt dump where everything is owned by someone named Ferguson.

When we meet Ferguson, he's doing a Snidely Whiplash act, pressuring a widow to sell her farm to him. When she objects, he points out that he's always been fond of her. For example, he had offered to marry her the day after her husband died. For some reason, she remains unmoved by the offer and even suggests that it might have been Ferguson would sped her ex-husband to his heavenly rewards.

After leaving town, our trio is set upon by a pack of wolves who leave the coot and the wolf, who we learn is named White Fang, wounded. Fortunately, they find their way to the aforementioned farm.

As expected, the trapper, who we learn is named Daniel, proves to be an expert shot, brawler, and horseman. The coot also turns out to be a horseman as well, for he is able to ride out on a tan horse and ride in on a white one. When Daniel pursues the coot, he learns from Ferguson that the farm's importance is that it's blocking the path of the railroad.

An eyeblink later, both Daniel and the coot are back at the farm, just in time for an army of Ferguson's men to assault. Fortunately, the hoodlums have the standard level of incompetence and are only able to shoot a puppy, while being all but massacred themselves.

This entire attack is conducted in a static-fiiled grey fog. I don't think it was actually filmed that way, but all of the contrast was bleached out of whatever was used to master the DVD. The daylight scenes, which take place in a winter wonderland, are almost the exact opposite, with nothing but contrast. In fact, virtually all of the movie's action takes place in murky gloom. The screenshot at the top was about the clearest shot in the movie and it required considerable work in Photoshop to render into something worth posting.

In the end, Ferguson is shot (indirectly) by White Fang. I know that this is a spoiler, but I don't think that I can truly capture the spirit of the movie without mentioning this little detail.

The closing credits do include the following, in English:

The producers thank for its collaboration

"THE CASA PRESENZANO"

Breeders of the Samoiedo Belonging to Isabella del Balzo

author of the book "The Samoiedo and other Nordic Races"

published by Ed. Olimpia

The General Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Rome

The Legion Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Como

and The Members of their Dog Training Units

All capitalization and punctuation is as found in the original.

Ignazio Spalla, who played the old coot, Dollar, spent most of his career acting under the name Pedro Sanchez, including this movie. Somehow, this doesn't sound like much of an improvement.

Dialogue

"Leave us alone. You too, although you are his mother. Johnny and I must talk. Talk as men do talk."

Story

It's almost impossible to tell how much of this was intended to be slapstick and how much was supposed to be a serious movie. The Jack London estate has a good case for a defamation suit.

Music

The main theme has a seventies feel about it. I can't decide whether it belongs to a cop drama or to a porn movie.

Acting

Malisa Longo is incredibly beautiful. She might even be able to act, although this movie doesn't give her much room to show it. Massimo De Cecco, who played Johnny, was not much of a child actor. Whoever dubbed his lines was even worse. Actually, all of the dubbing is really, really bad. As in, you could get a bunch of friends together and do a better job, even after having spent the evening getting drunk.

For what it's worth, the "wolf-dog", White Fang, was played by Habbash. He clearly was the best actor in the movie. The credits also note the "participation of Robert Hundar", who played Ferguson. Apparently, he did it just to be cooperative.

Spam

I, like most people these days, have multiple e-mail addresses. There is my work address, my public address, my private address, and a couple of odd accounts that I use for specific purposes (like my gmail account, which pretty much exists to make my Android equipment easier to use). There's a reason for this, of course. Mail to my private address tends to be from family and friends, while my public account is filled with receipts, ads, job offers, and the occasional Nigerian 411 scam.

The quality of spam filtering varies on these accounts. My work e-mail is protected by a psychotic series of filters that includes the best heuristics and black-listing that money can buy. My Yahoo account has Yahoo working to filter it and my private e-mail has something like SpamAssassin installed at my service provider. What makes this interesting are the occasional inappropriate messages that make it through.

At work, the few that make it through have two general characteristics: they are addressed to one of the large mailing lists and they are genuine, first-class spam. The content is either highly inappropriate or accompanied by an attachment that absolutely screams "I'm a virus!" The stuff that leaks through Yahoo is generally pretty boring. For the most part, they're someone who has figured out a way to camouflage Viagra and Cialis well enough to sneak past the Bayesean filters, or ads for financial companies.

My private e-mail's spam falls into a few key categories that are worth mentioning (in increasing order of offensiveness):

1) Offers for business seminars and management training. These make me think that one of my friends or family has been hacked at some point and his or her contact list has been sold.

2) Gonzo messages. These are the ones with random words or the occasional line from a book or movie. I've dissected these forensically and there is nothing contained within them that would make sending or receiving them useful to anyone.

3) Knock-off/Replica goods. These are offers to sell me knock-offs or replicas of Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and other brand names. They make no effort to pretend to sell the real stuff.

4) Romantic offers. These are the offers to hook me up with the girl or guy of my dreams. The ones that pretend to be from old flames are more offensive, primarily since the implication is that I have somehow forgotten a past dalliance that should now be renewed. Trust me, any romantic adventures that I've forgotten are best left that way.

5) Pharmaceutical offers. These come in spurts. (Boy, that line sounds a lot worse in retrospect.) For some reason, I'll receive a batch of offers for some or all of the drugs that are commonly offered this way, then months will go by before the next batch gets through.

6) Educational offers. The amount of spam dedicated to telling me that a college degree could improve my career opportunities is amazing. I wish that I had known how easy it is to get a degree before I spent all those years in classrooms.

7)  And, without a doubt, the least effective spam in the world (drum roll, please): The bottomless barrage of broadsides bemoaning my basic behavior in bed. The propaganda poking put-downs at the performance of my personal package. Yes, I'm referring to the "Male Enhancement" ads. Why and how these pour through the spam filter is a mystery to me, but boy howdy, do I get them. Herbal supplements that guarantee results that would make a stallion blush, sure-fire techniques for satisfying my mate (the gender non-specificity is a nice touch), and those promising to make me perform like a teenager (which I presume means stammering in front of women and having an acne breakout before each date).

What inspired this posting was an e-mail that slipped through the Yahoo filters this morning from the sender "Sacred Hair Growth". I had to open it to see what it could possibly be. The answer were the two words "Canadian pornstars". This is so transcendently gonzo that it's almost zen-like. It certainly inspired me to wonder if there were scenes of lumberjacks showing up to discover slumber parties going on.

This line of thinking caused me to remember back a few years to 2005. I had the same e-mail address for twelve years. Not only that, but it had been published in several computer books that I had co-authored and had certainly been scattered to the four winds on several newgroups and forums. As a result, I got spam like you wouldn't believe. Since my ISP made no effort to block it, I was getting 150-200 unwanted messages a day. This led me to set up my own filtering system, using SpamAssassin and a few other tools. The thing about rolling your own is that it requires constant maintenance to keep black- and white-lists updated, as well as the tuning of the Bayesean filters.

In practice, scanning through the logs let me discover the concept of the fetish of the month. For whatever reason, pornographic spam has a tendency to focus on different subjects, rotating on a fairly regular basis. I wondered, but never enough to try to find out, whether this was based upon looking for the most common key words in Google searches, or if it was more or less random. Nevertheless, I discovered a great deal about the rather interesting interests of my fellow netizens.

I watched as various ethnic groups and nationalities had their moment in the sun, only to fade when the next group came along. I saw ads aimed at those with an interest in latex, vinyl, leather, and rubber. There were an amazing number of ads for amateur wives, where amateur was misspelled in more ways than you would imagine possible. These inspired the question, "Are there professional wives?", but I digress. Various age groups were promoted, usually falling into the categories of teens, young, older, and mature. This naturally inspired subjects like "Mature Russian Amateur Teen Wives", which topped off the great Russian explosion of 2003.

Throughout all of this, I remained uncurious enough not to pursue any of the topics offered. At least until the great balloon fetish burst into my inbox. One week, almost like magic, much of the spam suddenly focused upon balloons. Not one or two e-mails,  but literally hundreds of messages, all purporting to deliver the finest in balloon erotica.

Now, I have never lived what I would call a sheltered life, but this was new to me. It boggled the mind to imagine what could possibly be a turn-on about balloons. As more and more of these messages poured in, the inevitable happened and I cracked. I Googled "balloon fetish" and opened a few of the sites.

So what is a balloon fetish, you might ask? I'll tell you. These sites consisted of pictures of women and balloons. The women tended to be young, late teens or early twenties. For the most part they were dressed, albeit sometimes in bikinis or nightwear. The balloons were the kind of party balloons that you've blown up before. And the women were playing with the balloons.

No, really. They were throwing the balloons into the air, or holding them in front of themselves. At times, the women would be popping the balloons, usually by sitting or stepping on them. That's it. Almost without exception, these sites wouldn't have warranted a PG-13 rating, let alone an adult-only.

In a strange way, I found this gratifying. Not the balloons, mind you; a typical shampoo commercial is more pornographic. No, the satisfying part was discovering that there are people out there (I presume mostly men) whose idea of a good time is watching someone pop balloons.

Come on, admit it. Doesn't knowing that make you feel a little bit more normal, too?

The Price of Power (1969)

Cast

• Giuliano Gemma
• Warren Vanders
• Maria Cuadra
• Rai Saunders
• Fernando Rey
• Antonio Casas
• Benito Stefanelli
• Van Johnson

Inventory

• A suicidal hanging
• Four beers
• A philosophical doctor
• The worst beard in the history of movies
• A press conference
• A flashback
• A head butt
• Two gunfights in the dark
• Russian Roulette
• An IED

Summary

Our story begins in Dallas, Texas. Judging from the portrait of Lincoln and the American flag being thrown on a bonfire, it's after the Civil War and not everyone is happy. Within the first five minutes, we learn that the President is on his way to visit Dallas and there is a plot to kill him, led by the sheriff. When the plot is told to a local rancher, it becomes necessary for him to meet his end at a poker party. Apparently having a poker shoved through your torso causes you to fold.

We soon meet the President, who looks and sounds like Hedy Lamarr in Blazing Saddles. This movie doesn't seem to be particularly concerned with history, as the President is clearly neither Andrew Johnson or U.S. Grant. Also, to the best of my recollection, there was never a first lady named Lucretia.

Update

I stand corrected. James Garfield's wife was named Lucretia. Garfield was also a great proponent of African-American rights and education, as depicted in the movie. Since Garfield was also assassinated, although in nothing resembling the manner depicted in the film, I feel obliged to retract my comment about the filmmakers' concerns with history. I will point out that they could have saved me the embarrassment of writing this update had they simply pasted a beard on Van Johnson's face. Without it, he looks much more like Chester Arthur, minus the mustache. As an aside, not that it would have made any difference to my guessing who the president was supposed to be, Maria Caudra is much prettier than Lucretia Garfield.

Fortunately for the republic, the rancher's son, who fought for the Union, and a black man are on the case. After surviving an ambush, the son disrupts the unrepentant renegades' attempt to blow up what has to be the most magnificent railroad bridge in the country, a soaring steel masterpiece.

It turns out that the plotters are racist tea baggers who've bought and paid for the Vice President. Soon there are snipers in the book depository (sorry, on the overpass — no, really, that's what they call it) and the President is shot in the neck. He falls into the arms of the first lady, who cries, "Help me! Won't someone help me?"

Later, a newspaperman says that no one person could have fired twice in less than ten seconds. and there is even a Warren Commission-like medical report that confirms the lone gunman theory, including the angle of the shot. Naturally, a single doctor who repudiates it.

The allegory is laid on thick and fast. The only thing that I have to say in favor of the bad guys is that they have a seemingly inexhaustable supply of incompetents that can be thrown into any gunfight

Dialogue

"Some people dream of things and ask 'why?' I dream of things and ask 'why not?'"

Story

I really wanted to hate this movie after the first half-hour, but I have to admit that it grew on me as it went on. There were enough threads and twists to keep things moving. I certainly wouldn't claim that the characters were well developed, but at least there was a healthy variety of stock roles.

It's actually a fairly imaginative spin on the Kennedy assassination in an entirely different drama. I'd complain about the dialogue, but it's no worse that Oliver Stone's version in that regard.

Music

A decent original soundtrack, with significant incidental music. There is a song and dance number in the middle which is out of place, but not awful.

Acting

All of the voices are overdubbed. Everyone who did the dubbing appears to have been well sedated. With a few exceptions, most of the actors do a reasonably good job of acting. It's a shame that the voice work is so flat.