When we hear the word “remake” it more than likely brings to mind the seemingly endless parade of unoriginal Hollywood cash-ins that have plagued theaters over the past decade or so.  In an attempt to steer audiences away from this perception, filmmakers and movie studios have begun using terms like “reboot” or “re-imagining” to describe these works, but ultimately there is not much difference. Before they became a trend, remakes would come along every once in a while, but would add a new dimension to the stories depicted in the originals. Often times these projects would give a director the opportunity to inject his or her own style to an existing idea and also showcase advancements in special effects, etc. Two such examples would be John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986).

Sometimes these adaptations were more subtle about being “remakes” and would slightly alter their titles, or in some instances change the titles completely. In this article we will take a look at five films which are either remakes, or loosely based on someone else’s story which had been already made into a movie.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Wes Craven’s classic 1972 shocker tells the story of two teenage girls brutalized and murdered by a group of violent criminals who have recently escaped from prison. The gang is headed up by “Krug Stillo” (played by David Hess) and also consists of “Weasel” (Fred Lincoln), “Sadie” (Jeramie Rain), and Krug’s heroin-addicted son “Junior”, who Krug is able to keep under control with a steady supply of “yum-yums”. When the parents of Mari, one of the slain girls, learn of her fate they decide to take matters into their own hands.

What audiences probably didn’t realize at the time of its release is that The Last House on the Left was a modernized retelling of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960) which starred Max von Sydow. The stories of both are similar but Bergman’s film took place in 14th century Sweden.  Of course, The Last House on the Left itself was remade in 2009.

The Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Director Quentin Tarantino spent nearly a decade working on the script for The Inglourious Basterds (2009), so you know this movie isn’t going to be the typical Hollywood remake. Very loosely based on Enzo G. Castellari’s 1978 film, The Inglorious Bastards (notice the slight variation in the spelling), the only real commonality shared by the two films is that both are set in Western Europe during World War II. The 2009 version clearly stands on its own, telling the fictional story of a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, as well as the story of a young woman seeking revenge on the German soldiers who murdered her family when she was a child in France.

Since Tarantino is known to be a fan of Italian cinema, it is no surprise that there are references scattered throughout The Inglourious Basterds which demonstrate his fondness for the films that came out of Italy in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. For example, the character of Hugo Stiglitz was named after the Mexican actor who starred in Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980). Other names mentioned in Tarantino’s film are Italian director Antonio Margheriti (Cannibal Apocalypse, The Last Hunter) and “Girolami” which is the birth surname of Enzo G. Castellari, director of the original “Bastards“. Castellari also appears in the remake for a brief cameo.

While the original is certainly an enjoyable spaghetti action/war picture featuring fun performances by the likes of Bo Svenson and Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, Tarantino’s 2009 re-envisioning has enough of its own ideas to perhaps one day be regarded as a classic in its own right.

Beyond the Darkness (1979) aka Buio Omega

Sleazemaster Joe D’Amato’s exploitation sickie Beyond the Darkness is perhaps one of the most notorious horror films produced in Italy in the late 1970s. Packed with blood, gore, torture, and a hint of necrophilia, the film centers around a taxidermist named Frank (Kieran Canter) who has inherited a sizeable fortune from his deceased parents, including a large mansion where he resides with his housekeeper Iris (Franca Stoppi). After the love of his life Anna (Cinzia Monreale) succumbs to an unspecified illness, Frank exhumes her body and brings it home where he begins the embalming process. Along the way Frank picks up an unfortunate hitchhiker who he is forced to kill after she stumbles upon him working on his dead girlfriend.  As Frank appears to creep closer to insanity, the bodies begin to pile up. Meanwhile, Iris helps him dispose of his victims by way of dismemberment, acid bath, and burning alive in an in-house crematory, with the hope of becoming his wife so that can she can share his fortune.

While Beyond the Darkness is certainly worthy of its notoriety, its inspiration actually came from another Italian thriller called The Third Eye. Released in 1966 and starring Franco Nero as the lead, The Third Eye contains many plot points later adapted by D’Amato in Beyond the Darkness. The basic story is very similar, in which Nero plays a man named Mino Alberti (also a taxidermist) who descends into madness after the death of his fiancée. In this case, the woman Mino is to marry dies in a car crash rather than from an illness as with Anna in Beyond the Darkness. Like Frank, Mino also lures women into his manor where he keeps his dead fiancée’s stuffed corpse, proceeds to court them, and then murders them. The maid, Marta, witnesses his crimes and begins to help Mino dispose of the bodies.  Marta (like Iris) also tries to convince Mino to marry her so that she can become mistress of the house.

While the two films share many similarities with regard to storyline, there are some details involving the motivations for the maid’s actions, as well as the element of an overbearing mother which did not quite carry over into Beyond the Darkness. In fact, The Third Eye itself appears to draw its inspiration heavily from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The Wizard of Oz may be the furthest thing from a horror movie (actually those flying monkeys are pretty damn creepy), but it is worth a mention here because many people don’t realize that the 1939 classic, starring Judy Garland and directed by Victor Fleming, was actually the third film adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Everyone should be familiar with the story of a farm girl named Dorothy who is whisked away with her dog Toto to the Land of Oz after a cyclone touches down at her home in Kansas. Despite its troubled production, the 1939 film went on to become one of the most celebrated children’s movies of all time.

The earliest known film version of Baum’s story is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910), a silent short running under 15 minutes which was directed by Otis Turner. The second is a feature-length silent film entitled Wizard of Oz. Released in 1925 and directed by Larry Semon, this version of the classic story clocks in at 85 minutes and stars Oliver Hardy as “The Tin Man”. There were also three other silent “Oz” films directed by J. Farrell MacDonald in 1914 including The Patchwork Girl of Oz, His Majesty The Scarecrow of Oz, and The Magic Cloak of Oz.

You can check out the silent “Oz” films on YouTube.

Faceless (1987)

Spanish director Jess Franco’s 1987 horror film Faceless has a more glossy and polished look than most of his prior output, but still contains a generous helping of the gore and sleaze that made him famous. The story centers around a plastic surgeon named Flamand (Helmut Berger) whose sister is attacked and disfigured by an assailant who throws acid in her face. Obsessed with restoring his sister’s beauty, Dr. Flamand resorts to kidnapping young women with the hope of performing the perfect face transplant. Soon after a model named Barbara (Caroline Munro) goes missing in France, her father (Telly Savalas) hires a private detective (Chris Mitchum) to locate her. Once on the trail, Detective Morgan is led to the site of Dr. Flamand’s terrible experiments and must race against time in order to rescue Barbara before it’s too late. Faceless is a pretty decent horror flick somewhat hampered by an overly poppy main title theme which sounds an awful lot like Wham!.

Franco’s film is a remake of the 1960 French thriller Eyes Without a Face, directed by Georges Franju. In this earlier version of the story, a surgeon named Dr. Genessier struggles to reconstruct his daughter’s face after she is disfigured in an accident. Genessier is assisted by Louise (Alida Valli of Suspiria) who helps him procure his donors, similar to Brigitte Lahaie’s character in Faceless. While the two films share a similar narrative, the tone and style are very different and both can be appreciated based on their own merits.

There is no doubt that recent years have seen an oversaturation of remakes in the film industry. However, it is worth noting when old stories are retold with a unique sense of style and direction. We can look back and see that the most successful re-imaginings are the ones that stand on their own years after being produced. These films are able to tell a familiar story from a fresh perspective and ultimately draw audiences back to the original ideas on which they are based.