YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST HORROR MOVIE —

Some goose bumps never go away. The very first horror flick I ever saw was a lurid stinker about werewolves named The Howling. It is a terrible movie. But don’t tell that to my twelve-year old self. That little guy revered it. My memory of The Howling is vivid. That silly boob-and-blood B-movie bit me. I remember bubbling skin, bared fangs, and naked women. The latter was a revelation. In The Howling, there’s a vampy lady werewolf who takes it all off. Watching that scene was like watching a preview of my own adolescence. Here was the reason I would, very soon, go through my own transformation from hairless cub to hirsute wolf.

WHY DOC BROWN IS THE REAL VILLAIN OF BACK TO THE FUTURE.

1. He’s A Terrorist

2. He’s An Old Man Whose Best Friend Is A Teenage Boy

3. He Unnecessarily Puts His Dog’s Life At Risk

4. He’s a Selfish Coward

5. He’s a Thief

6. He Destroyed The Space Time Continuum

7. He’s a Big, Fat Liar Who Plays God

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HOW TO DIE IN A HORROR MOVIE: Ending it all is easy when your life is lousy with machete-wielding maniacs.

DO DRUGS

Horror movies have done more to police morality than the Bible, the Koran and Gary Busey combined. Ignore them all and huff crystalline amphetajuana until your eyes walk off the job. Someone with a large cleaver or axe will find you. For Example: Halloween, Sleepaway Camp 2

BE A MINORITY

If you’re an African-American, you were probably marked for death the moment you returned to the haunted hotel. One way to stop being chased by malevolent forces beyond your control is to be born some kind of minority. Horror movies don’t really discriminate. If you’re a minority and pining for the sweet release of death, just stand behind the jock or the computer geek and wait your turn. It’ll all be over soon. For Example: Gremlins, The Shining, Ghost Ship, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

GET NAKED

You’ll probably want to be dead and stinking long before you can even meet the insufferable cheerleader character. Go on, treat yourself to a nice, long shower. Work up a lather with a fruit-infused shampoo and exfoliate with a loofa. Relax. Mute killers lurvvve bathtime. For Example: Psycho, Jack Frost, Sorority Row, Friday the 13th Part 4

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Exclusive Images From Apocalypse Now

The movie remake has been a mainstay in Hollywood for over a century, so you message board malcontents — you princes of protestation — you may dispense with your childhood-charged invectives against the practice. The fact is, remakes are often warranted, are occasionally better than the original, and are seldom as bad as billed.

But when a studio dumps a beloved film for its younger, more stylish update, it suffers the built-in “you’re not my real dad” reluctance of jilted moviegoers from the start. Before it can even get to know its audience, a remake is deemed a villain. So why should it even try?

The cliche of the crappy movie remake is as tired as those used to make it. But if you’re looking for a culprit, you can forget about casting, special effects or the untouchability of the source material — many great originals were lacking in some or all of those categories. The problems with most remakes are more fundamental than that.

So, why do remakes fail? They either…

1. Miss the point. Whatever social, political or psychological moral underpinned the original is discarded like a Starburst wrapper in pre-production.
2. Take too many/not enough liberties. Staying fascistically faithful to an original is no better than straying cynically from it.
3. Get the timing wrong. Often, remakes appear as if they could have been released at any time, doing little to make the original relevant in a new context.
4. Go the easy route. Instead of a thoughtful script that advances a compelling plot, filmmakers rely on special effects, increased gore or Tom Cruise.

Or they do all of those things. But some movies deserve better than that.

These movies deserve better than that: 10 Remakes that Deserve a Remake