Geek Syndicate Issue 6 | Page 14

Geek Syndicate
Image © Empire Pictures, 1985

sported some big names of the time like Warren Oates & Peter Fonda. The storyline has been remade (e.g. 2010’s Hard Ride to Hell with Miguel Ferrer), but deserves kinder treatment • The Car – a 1970’s James Brolin vehicle (no pun intended!) that gave us the be-deviled car before Carpenter’s classic Christine • Lifeforce – this eighties Brit-flick saw interstellar vampires invade & suck the life out of London (a bit like Thatcherism really!) • Creepshow – in truth, an absolutely classic, in which Romero gave us a very good acting-Stephen King, but it is dated and a revamp with updated stories would go down well. But keep the comic-book motif! • House – another little 80’s gem, which probably shouldn’t have worked at the time, and yet was so entertaining – cast selection would be so important to making this work again • Shocker – Wes Craven gave us Mitch Pileggi’s very nasty Horace Pinker and a great heavy rock soundtrack. Not repeating the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot errors is crucial to this not bombing • Prophecy – David Cronenberg’s tale of a wood treatment plant dumping mercury in rivers producing

deformed babies (of all species, human & otherwise) was brilliant. The 1979 movie with Talia Shire, Robert Foxworth and Armand Assante was utter tripe! • Scanners – for its time (1981), the effects were ground-breaking, and Cronenberg writing & direction were par excellence, but the acting of the some of the key leads was notably atrocious. And the less said about the nineties sequels the better… • Nightbreed – when you see Hellraiser, it’s hard to believe that one could get Clive Barker material wrong; when you see the makeup and the special effects for Nightbreed, it’s even harder. But the 1990 direction and look & feel for this story (based on the book Cabal) was all wrong… and the casting was awful. The trailer had set such a high expectation from which the end product fell - Hollywood take note • Poltergeist – yeah, we like to be controversial! But as brilliant as this was, and as iconic an image of the little girl sat in front of the TV static (“They’re Here!”), there’s plenty of room for improvement… it was 1982 after all! • The Howling - we haven’t had a really, really good werewolf film in a long time, probably since An

American Werewolf in London (Nicholson’s Wolf and del Toro’s The Wolfman were both awful) ; this 1981 tale of a werewolf colony living in secret is due an update • Ghoulies – okay, so we had to throw one joker in! But if you’re not going to update Gremlins (and your shouldn’t), there is a place for a CGI reboot of their nastier, very black-humoured demonic cousins • Re-Animator – although Jeff Combs came back in 2003 for a sentimental fanpleasing sequel, it’s time to give this 1985 a 21st century make-over. Well, we’ve thrown a lot of contentious stuff out there… we’d love to hear your opinions!

The Dixon Boys

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