I am a horror fan.

In fact when I am not writing stupid humor or crass social commentary I am writing horror fiction, but I am not here to bore you with that - I am just pointing it out as a way of saying that this is my type of entertainment. One of the reasons I started doing hub pages is so that I could blog the type of content that would not fit in on my personal blog site - and I decided to start with the horror remakes that have been coming out since around 2003.

I do want to point out though that these are not new movies, not even close, but they are movies that maybe you overlooked and would be worth going back to see. I also want to point out that this hub is long as hell - I honestly did not realize how long it would turn out when I started - so sorry about that.

If you are a fan of horror you have probably seen them and I would love to hear other peoples comments on them - but if you are not a horror buff hopefully something I say here will make you want to give some of these a shot.

Just a note; I love horror for the stories and the characters and just the entire vibe but I am not a big gore fan - so if you are really a fan of the gore effects (or angry about the lack of) you may not agree with my opinion of these films.These are only some of the slasher remakes that have come out, I decided not to expand into other horror remakes like the outstanding Dawn of the dead because of length of the post.

The original 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' released in 1974 was a great movie, the ambiance was creepy as hell and the villains were genuinely scary. The killers were various degrees of batshit crazy and as the film progressed it gets hard to figure out which of them is the most jacked up. As a side note Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 really outdoes the original when it comes to the killers as it infuses them with a hell of alot of dark comedy, Bill Moseley in particular manages to be both sick and funny as hell. The one problem is they did not really develop the victims enough for me to much care if they lived.

The remake is outstanding, and is one of my favorite horror movies. During the movie you definitely get more of a sense of the world the Hewitt family is a part of, from their screwed up town, inbred grandson, and (my favorite) morbidly obese neighbor you get some sense of how they are able to exist without being caught.

They also did a much better job at developing the victims/protagonists as well as the villains. All of the victim characters have idiosyncrasies that make them feel more real and most of them are genuinely likable, in short you don't want to see them die. The family of killers is also a bit fleshed out and you get somewhat of a feel for their personalities, however to be fair they are not fully developed until the prequel.

By far the two most entertaining people are Jessica Biel and R. Lee Ermey. Jessica's character is genuinely likable and does not come off as a retarded horror movie victim - plus no one wears a wife-beater tank-top like she does. R Lee is a favorite actor of mine and he is funny as hell while managing to also be just stupid creepy. This is one of those movies that you can easily play as a 'what if' scenario in your mind.

My wife is less of a fan of 'slasher' horror than me and she ended up liking this movie nearly as much as I did.

Cliffs;

• Good suspense and story
• Good character development
• Strong horror vibe
  
• Good production values
  

My take - I recommend it for anyone.

I saw the original 'The Hills Have Eyes' when I was way too young and it made me not ever want to drive through the desert again. The story of a family breaking down in the desert and being attacked by a cannibal tribe would be hard to screw up and Wes Craven delivers a good movie.

The remake follows the same basic premise but with some fairly major detail differences. In the original the tribe of cannibals was deformed however I do not recall them really going into alot of detail as to why, however in the remake they are the descendants of the families that would not move out of the area when the US government did the atomic bomb tests in the Nevada desert. They are still deformed but they are also brutally strong, and actually one small weakness for me in this movie is that you do not get much of a feel for them and it is hard to think of them as humans - there is definitely a 'monster movie' vibe about them. The victims are well fleshed out and a few of them were likable so that you became somewhat invested in wanting them to live. I enjoyed the movie, but I don't set the bar all that high for horror.

Cliffs

• Good story basis
  
• killers are not well developed
• victims however get some character development
• there are some intense moments

My take - if you like horror movies it is worth seeing

There's not much I need to say about the original Halloween. I'm not sure there is any debate that it's one of the best horror movies ever made. Donald Pleasence in particular was outstanding in the role of Dr. Loomis, the psychiatrist dedicated to stopping Michael Myers.

The remake is one of the best I have seen.

I enjoyed Rob Zombie's other two horror movies (House of 1000 corpses and Devil's Rejects) but I wasn't sure he had it in him to do a decent remake of this particular movie. I shouldn't have doubted, it was an outstanding movie that manages to tell the same story but from a slightly different perspective so that it does not invalidate the original. There is alot more back-story and character development in this movie than the original. Malcolm McDowell takes over the role of Dr. Loomis and does a great job as would be expected. I am looking forward to Rob's remake of Halloween 2.

Cliffs;

• Strong Story
• Good acting spearheaded by Malcolm McDowell and William Forsythe
• Very good suspense and tension
• At least as good as the original without invalidating it

My Take - I strongly recommend it

Like the other originals above Friday the Thirteenth was a foundational horror movie for my generation. Probably the biggest concern for people I spoke to about this remake was the fact that in the original Friday the Thirteenth the killer was not Jason, instead his mother was running around getting revenge on camp councilors because she blamed the death of her son on the fact that all of them were too busy having sex to save him from drowning. Jason took over for his mother in part 2.

The remake does well at dealing with the fact that the iconic character doesn't even show up until part 2 of the series by just tacking on a prologue at the beginning of the movie that deals with the Mrs. Voorhees plot-line. That taken care of it moves into another situation that turned out to be back-story for the rest of the movie. Confused? Don't be- just keep in mind when a crapload of killing starts right after the prologue ends it does not mean that the movie is going to be an hour-thirty of Jason chasing one girl.

This movie had mixed reviews from the horror fans I have talked to, but honestly I liked it. I am not going to give it a huge ringing endorsement like I did 'Texas Chainsaw' or like I would 'Dawn of the Dead' but I enjoyed the movie. They do a decent job of fleshing out some of the victims and there are a couple I genuinely wanted to make it.

Cliffs

• Good movie - not fantastic but good
• Decent character development for some characters
• Has it's suspenseful moments

My take - I recommend it if you like horror at all, I enjoyed it.