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This DVD topic was inspired by two friends of mine. One who likes "themes" in general and threw horror out there as a possibility and another who is absolutely dreading Rob Zombie's unnecessary remake of John Carpenter's horror classic Halloween which opens in theaters tomorrow. I'm not a big horror fan but I like all three of these remakes far more than I expected to. 

THE FLY (1986)
The 1958 horror film got an update with Jeff Goldblum as the scientist who gets too much insect in his DNA during a teleportation experiment gone awry. If you haven't seen this you simply must because David Cronenberg movies, rife with body horror and subversive antics, are always worth watching and discussing ...and recovering from.

PSYCHO (1998)
Gus Van Sant used his newfound Oscar clout (Good Will Hunting) to get the remake of Hitchcock's immortal Psycho (1960) off the ground. He had virtual tomatoes tossed his way because of it. This remake is still a subject of scorn nine years later. More fascinating than Van Sant's attempted "recreation", using Hitchcock's film as a storyboard essentially, is the critical and audience response. Remakes of classics aren't often greeted with enthusiasm but neither are they the subject of such outright scorn and free flowing hate. Ignore the reviews. It's fascinating to see a modern director grapple in a very real way with an old school master rather than just lazily stealing the basic plot and concept. It's also fascinating to watch both movies and see how different they are even using the same script and shots. You can't recreate the past but this exercize is a smashing experiment in form and futility.

DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)
George Romero's horror classic from 1978 took some speed for its 2004 reincarnation. I first caught the film's visceral opening sequence muted on a television screen in the background of a party that I didn't really want to be at. I was amazed at how fully I was absorbed in it without the typical benefit of score, sound effects, or dialogue. I rarely see horror movies in the theater (being such a wuss) so the film was new to me. I rented it the very next week to see if it was as strongly executed as it looked to be on mute and in my peripheral vision. It was. I know that Zach Snyder, the film's debuting director, won a lot of fans for his stylized violent follow up (300) but I think this is a stronger film in nearly every way. Both films are nihilistic in temperament but the debut is the only one that stings... I remember its individual sequences from two plus years back with far greater clarity than anything that happened in 300 which I saw just months ago.