Hmm. I'd have to say the Robert Mitchum "The Big Sleep," a modern-day remake which totally sucks, unlike his earlier "Farewell, My Lovely" remake, which is actually the best version.

Worst remake of all time? Really? Worse than Keanu Reeves in "The Day The Earth Stood Still"?

"Breathless" with Richard Gere. Why? Why?

Well, for sheer pointlessness, how about that shot for shot color remake of "Psycho"?

Every version of King Kong that isn't RKO 1932.

Coppola's awful "Dracula."

I gotta agree with Gummo. Coppola's Dracula is 10,000 times worse than Rocky II.

Wow, I thought only me and my buddy Jerry thought the Coppola Dracula was awful.

Since I tend to avoid remakes, that would probably count as the worst one I've ever seen.

"Cat People" (1982)- I HATED that movie.

The original "Cat People" which was made, I believe, in 1941 by the great Val Lewton is one of my all-time favorite movies.

The 1983 remake was just stupid. I'm old-fashioned, I suppose, because I like things left to my imagination.

If you want to count sequels - every "Rocky" after the first two and every "Rambo" after "First Blood."

I didn't like "Satan Met a Lady" and I pretty much love everything Bette Davis is in.

While Herzog's remake of Murnau's “Nosferatu” was gorgeous, creepy, repulsive, and an homage to the original, what completely spoiled it for me was the ending. Herzog robbed the story of it’s moral center—Ellen’s self-sacrifice to save her husband and community from Orlok. Maybe it was supposed to be arty and nihilist, but it just seemed like a schlocky tacked-on Hollywood horror movie ending to me--all it lacked was a question mark at the final frame.

Your assertion that Satan Met a Lady didn't influence the later version of The Maltese Falcon shows that you didn't watch closely. I did a study (and essay) of the three films and you'd be surprised what plot points and dialogue came from SMAL. I cannot say it's a good film (my thinking is that it was trying to catch the wave off The Thin Man - the first successful Hammett adaptation, and tried to make comedy out of something that couldn't be), but your reading is shallow and smartass. Oh, wait! That's exactly what you're good at. BTW, Marie Wilson steals the movie as the daffiest Effie ever. Bette Davis is awful, and Warren William did a lot better comedy/drama in the Lone Wolf films.

Leo DiCaprio singlehandedly destroyed 1998's "The Man in the Iron Mask." It's Dumas as read by Jeff Spicoli.

BTW, Warren William didn't play drunk in Satan Met A Lady, either (were you thinking of his Perry Mason roles? - in #2 and 3 of the series, he played a heavy-drinking Mason), and his character (heavily rewritten as it was) was actually somewhat more faithful to Hammett's vision of Spade than Bogart. Hell, so was Ricardo Cortez's Spade. In the book, Spade cared for Spade and nobody else - that makes him difficult to cast as a hero (which is partly why the Cortez version fails, his triumphant meeting with Ruth Wonderley in the jail was gratuitous and mean, no matter the tacked-on coda). The reason the Huston version of The Maltese Falcon works is the casting and that most of Spade's negative qualities were erased (especially his compulsive, relentless womanizing, which was pointed up in both earlier versions).

1976 KING KONG -

SWEPT AWAY with simels favorite , MADONNA !!

Anon:

I didn't say Williams played the role drunk; I said he seemed LIKE he was drunk. And if you really think SMAL was a big influence on Huston's version, I can only assume you've never read the novel.

Let me rephrase that for clarity.

I didn't say Williams played Spade as if Spade was drunk. I said Williams played Spade as if HE was drunk.

I have to disagree with Sid Sherman about the Mitchum remake of The Big Sleep; I actually like it. But I'm definitely NOT a fan of the Bogart/Bacall version, mostly because it isn't true to the book. The Mitchum version actually is, and Sara Miles as Charlotte Sternwood is to die for. If you want a hideous film version of Chandler, look no further than the Robert Altman butchering of The Long Goodbye. Altman takes Chandler's finest work (which means one of the finest American novels of the 20th century), and boogers up the plot and especially the ending so bad that Roger Corman would have been ashamed. And Elliot Gould is woefully miscast as Marlowe. Don't know if it's a remake, though.

How about the horribly overacted Cape Fear, a remake of the Charles Laughton classic Night of the Hunter?

I didn't say it was a big influence. You read more into what I wrote than was there. Scenes and dialogue that were never used in the first Maltese Falcon film and were used in the second (the beefing up of Wilmer/Kenny's part was one major change, and bits of dialogue, some of which I very hazily remember may have come from the book) ended up in the third. Wilmer was a spectral figure in the Cortez version, but became much more visible (however changed) in the William version. You have to remember that the book was used as a base for something quite different (a detective comedy which the book wasn't), and it fascinated me why certain bits of dialogue and situations in the second film popped up in the later Falcon. You'd be amazed by it, because you said they dumped it all. I beg to differ.

I read The Maltese Falcon. About 30 years ago. Pardon me for not remembering a lot of details (watching the films over and over can erase book details as you well know), but there was one thing I did remember - Spade isn't likable in a way that other notable detectives Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer (I also read Chandler and McDonald back then) were. He's really a mercenary bastard. And the book's ending is never used. The spirit of the book as I remember it is in the first film only, and its problems are the same ones Huston faced (along with the limitations of early sound), but that Huston solved.

Dieterle was presented with a different film to shoot altogether that was only loosely based on the book (notice in the credits that the book it's based on is never named). William's character was high-spirited (in the nonalcoholic sense) to try to make an amusing character out of what was basically a sonofabitch. It was only partially successful, and the changing of Cairo into a polite Englishman was a bad mistake of the script. Changing Gutman into a woman was likely a concession to the code to make the Gutman/Wilmer relationship palatable to the censors. Huston had to be far more clever in dealing with that problem. Bette Davis' character is problematic in that she doesn't really put much into that character except in spots where she's got the upper hand. I don't think she was trying, and not being a trouper never goes over well with me.

If you think William was drunk during the shoot, then he was drunk rather often in comedy, as that performance fits into his comedy style. I assumed you had watched Warren William in comedy (The Dark Horse, any Perry Mason but the first, a few of the Lone Wolf series - I haven't seen them all, Go West Young Man, etc.).

Be mindful I didn't say it was a good film. It's mediocre, mildly entertaining, but no more. Of course, Warren William himself may have been the film's harshest critic in the film itself when he said toward the end, "Honey, it blows!".

Maybe I'm missing something, but Spade's character in the Huston film is hardly likeable. He's a SOB, actually, albeit a magnetic one.

In any case, SMAL isn't just mediocre -- it's painfully unwatchable.

And this statement "BTW, Marie Wilson steals the movie as the daffiest Effie ever" is a bit, shall we say overstated, given that there's only three Effies (four, if you count The Black Bird, and that's Lee Patrick again.) In any case, Wilson (who I like in theory) is embarassing, like everything else in the film.

Remake of the Hitcher was bad, but the original was pretty trashy too..

I've said this elsewhere but the remake of Diabolique with Sharon Stone is truly awful.
And I know some people love it but I hated the Steve Martin remake of Pennies From Heaven.

I dread the re-make of The Exorcist that I know will happen someday.

Oh, and whoever greenlit the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still should burn in teh fires of Heck.

heh. I actually liked The Three Musketeers.

"The In-Laws" ... what were they thinking?

A - If you and I wish to disagree, fine, whatever, you have your opinion. Nitpick all you like. I expected a little more debate and less argument by assertion. Better film blogs have debates this all the time. You find out why someone thinks the way they do and sometimes can even learn something. Argument by assertion doesn't do anything at all.

B - Marie Wilson isn't embarrassing. She's supposed to be silly and plays it to the hilt - the dumb blonde type before it existed. Blondes in the '30s were supposed to be sexy, golddigging, desirable, etc. BTW, she's pretty funny in other movies I've seen, too.

C - Since you consider yourself an oracle above having a decent debate, you don't need me here. Ciao.

Anon: If my preference for keeping my replies less than longwinded strikes you as meaning I am averse to debate, I apologize.

In any case, for what it's worth, as a rule I try not to engage in the comments section precisely because I would like it to be mostly a forum for other people's opinion. I already get to pontificate as much as I want.

But since you referred to me as "shallow and smartass", a description I don't disagree with, BTW, I thought I probably should say something, however brief.
:-)

Oh good, no one took mine. Sabrina. The original was charming and one of my favorite movies. The remake sucked.

Not easy to channel Audrey Hepburn I guess. Or reinvent her roles.

Phew! Somebody ...

a) is in a bad mood
b) is jealous
c) has no sense of humor
or
d) doesn't know how to use email.

Anyway, "The Scarlet Pimpernel" should not have been remade. You cannot improve on Leslie Howard.

In the running has to be the gimmicky (yet wooden!) late 90s remake of the fine, fine early 60s The Haunting.

but i like it when you pontifimicate, you shallow *******!

i guess my answer has to be star wars - which is a mishmash of several of kurosawa's movies. i say it "has to be" because when i saw it in the movie theatre (i was seven) i fell asleep.

OK, I think I have all of you beat.

The Worst. Ever. Remake. Of. All. Time.

"300"

The original, "The 300 Spartans", with Richard Egan as Leonidas, was actually very moving. It was so moving that Frank Miller and whoever did that awful, homophobic piece of crap cartoon thing.

I'm glad "300" exists just for the Rifftrax commentary.

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) and The Browning Version (1994) - Compared to the versions of the early '50s these are like faded Impressionist prints on a waiting room wall, and horrible examples of "democratization" at work, where everyone has their reasons but no one has wit or style.

I am stunned that no one has mentioned the worst remake I personally have ever seen, and it even ties in with steve's lead in: the execrable Brendan Fraser/Elizabeth Whatsherface Bedazzled. A gross insult to one of the greatest films of all time. Cook smirked because he was Satan: Hurley just smirks. Moore was a befuddled but well-intentioned soul; Fraser comes off as well, dumb. And far too attractive for the role.

Feh.