6 “Original” Films You Didn’t Realise Were Actually Remakes

5. Swimfan

20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox

Things wrong with modern movies # 34, 762: teensploitation rip-offs of popular hits. Swimfan is slickly-made and technically well-crafted, but it€™s all in the service of a Bugsy Malone version of Fatal Attraction, whose target audience was born the year Adrian Lynne€™s movie came out.

In keeping with the original, The Blonde is cunning-but-psychotic, The Brunette is wholesome-but-bland and The Hunky Guy gets caught up in a number of unintentionally hilarious situations. When Ben (Jesse Bradford) meets new girl Madison (Erika Christensen), who can€™t swim, he offers to teach her and you know what happens when two people are wet and nearly naked. Needless to say, it ain€™t Baptist business.

Quicker than you can say €œteenage bunny boiler€, Madison starts stalking him, sending him naked pictures of herself and trying to run his girlfriend off the road. Our hero deals with this in a very peculiar manner: by dressing up as Madison€™s comatose ex-boyfriend (don€™t ask), he gets her to confess to being a teenage psycho on camera.

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.'