12 Great Directors Who Helmed Terrible Movie Remakes

Why didn't somebody stop Gus Van Sant as soon as he mentioned that he was planning on remaking Psycho, arguably the greatest horror movie ever made?

It was a dumb idea from the off, and yet the arthouse filmmaker - fresh off of the huge success of Good Will Hunting - was enthusiastically handed the keys to Hitchcock's legacy. Presumably the reason Psycho wasn't remade until almost forty years after its first release stemmed from the fact that there was nobody crazy enough to do it - Van Sant, for some reason, was willing to try.

In recent years, Van Sant has explained his reasoning for remaking Psycho as something resembling "experimental." He wanted to know whether rendering a incredibly iconic film as a shot-for-shot remake would result in a picture of equal brilliance. The answer, of course, was a resounding "no, Gus, definitely not."

Still, there is something intriguing about the project, colossal failure as it was; fundamentally, a film made up of the same general components and form should have at least resulted in a moderately effective horror movie, right? And yet it didn't work at all.

Maybe the bit with Vince Vaughn furiously masturbating during the shower scene had something to do with that.