Top 10: Remakes That You Probably Never Knew Were Remakes

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We’re proud of the variety and depth of the Media Services collection. In the interest of bringing you some highlights and deep cuts from our shelves, we’ll be posting unusual and interesting Top 10 lists of some of our favorite DVDs.

Last July, pop culture website Den of Geek estimated that at time time, there were 57 movie remakes in production. That seems excessive. So many of these movies are simply attempting to cash in on name-brand familiarity. Even the best remakes seldom escape the shadows of the originals.

But every once in a while, we get a movie or television show so great or memorable that we completely forget where it came from. For your viewing pleasure, we offer Top 10 Remakes That You Probably Never Knew Were Remakes.

These two versions of 3:10 to Yuma, both moderately successful on their release, are based on a short story by the late writer Elmore Leonard. It’s one of the few pulp paperback stories to be adapted multiple times.

Without the jokes, Airplane! would still be a corny, ridiculous movie. It comes as little surprise that its script is taken almost directly from the 1957 disaster film Zero Hour! Almost every detail is identical, down to a cameo from a popular basketball player and the search for a pilot who didn’t each fish.

  • Ben-Hur (1959) (HU DVD 3857) – remake of Ben-Hur (1925) (HU DVD 3857)

Though many associate Ben-Hur most strongly with its chariot race scenes, the story more substantially is about a prince’s life intersecting with Jesus’s. The silent, black-and-white version from 1925 emphasizes this in its title, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

Yes, even the master Scorsese himself borrows from time to time. Infernal Affairs follows roughly the same story as The Departed, swapping Boston for Hong Kong and the mob for the triads. Fascinatingly, Infernal Affairs received two sequels, but we doubt Scorsese would come back for another round.

The connections between MP Francis Urquhart and Rep. Frank Underwood were more widely discussed before Kevin Spacey turned in his iconic performance as the ultimate barbecue-loving backstabber. Even with Underwood clearly in command, both versions offer a unique take on the corrupting power of politics.

The 1957 novel I Am Legend is one of the foundational texts of the post-apocalypse and zombie genres, so it makes sense that studios would periodically revisit it for inspiration. These two versions, one starring Will Smith and one starring Charlton Heston, wildly deviate from the book in different ways and have surprisingly little in common.

  • Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) (HU DVD 4911) – remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) (HU DVD 3120)

If it weren’t for Kevin McCarthy’s panicked, climactic screams at the end of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, we would probably believe that the Donald Sutherland-starred film from 1978 was the original movie. In fact, many critics consider the update to be among the best film remakes ever produced.

In a battle of celebrity royalty, Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack are a close match with George Clooney’s band of handsome collaborators. But compared to Sinatra’s original heist story, Clooney’s suaveness and Steven Soderbergh’s dynamic directing put the Ocean’s remake in another class of filmmaking.

The original Scarface is one of the defining old-timey gangster films; the remake is one of the defining celebrations of 1980s excess. The rise-and-fall arc of the Scarface story was perfectly suited to transitioning from one decade to the other.

Critics wondered whether the Coen brothers’ story of Marshal Rooster Cogburn would be eclipsed by an earlier rendition featuring John Wayne in one of his last major roles. Based on the acclaim, we feel that Jeff Bridges’s version came away quite well.

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