10 Remakes Of Classic '80s Movies That Bombed Terribly

The movies Ghostbusters needs to beat.

The Thing
Universal Pictures

One of the greatest tricks Hollywood ever pulled was convincing audiences to watch remakes of 80s movies that weren’t great to start with. The very idea of someone wanting to reboot Footloose, Annie and Fame is horrifying, and the fact that those movies broke even at the box office is surely some sign of impending social collapse.

Whatever your personal opinion, Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters is already off to a good start – it’s not a musical, there are no cute orphans and it’s actually based on a decent movie. If it succeeds, its box office haul could be bigger than the reboots of Clash Of The Titans ($493 million) or The Karate Kid ($359 million).

Outside of those successes, though, there aren’t too many blockbusters being made from 80s hits. Miami Vice struggled to break even, The A Team “underperformed” and the less said about the remakes of Day Of The Dead and April Fools’ Day (which went straight to video) the better.

Much more common are the movies that didn’t make a plug nickel and sank without trace, leaving viewers and executives alike trying to understand what had gone wrong. Here are 10 movies that left Hollywood’s books awash with red ink.

10. The Hitcher

The Thing
Platinum Dunes

The Original: Rutger Hauer gets one of his best roles as John Ryder, a motiveless psychopath who hitches his way across the United States, killing those drivers foolish enough to offer a lift to a stranger. After being dumped in the rain by C Thomas Howell, Hauer frames him for murder, kills anyone who tries to help him and (best of all) puts a severed finger in among his portion of fries. Released during the 80s slasher craze, The Hitcher was a breath of fresh air.

The Remake: Produced “In Association With Michael Bay”, this remake removes every let up in the action, which works spectacularly well if the intention was to suck all the life out of the story. With no proper build-up, no suspense and nobody worth rooting for, we’re all of a sudden adrift in a movie with plenty of running around and stuff blowing up, and very uninteresting it is too.

A critical and commercial flop, the movie made only $24 million worldwide.

Contributor

Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'