Since the inception of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, or near
enough to the beginning for it to count as the beginning, I have been a large
proponent of retelling stories in a new fashion. Most stories end up being a retelling of
something already covered in a movie or book previously. The effort and originality at this point in
time mainly comes from changing the story up in a way that makes it feel new
again. If an unoriginal story can be
told in an original way, the person behind making it so deserves recognition
and praise. It takes courage and talent
to pull it off in a successful way.
More recently, a trend in updating stories has begun that is
not a simple modernization of old material, or a change of setting. This trend changes large elements of the original
story to create something almost wholly new.
Something is added into the story to make it more rambunctious, more
kinetic, more frenetic. Action is
infused into a story that does not necessarily involve action, and this action
revolves around the concept of monsters.
That’s right, many writers in the movie industry are trying to find ways
in which to bring classic stories into the limelight again by tossing some
monsters into them.
The first of these films that comes to mind is Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter which is based on the book by Seth Grahame-Smith. It tells a story about Abraham Lincoln’s
secret life as a vampire hunter, which was still going on while he was
president. I haven’t read the book or
seen the movie so I can’t go into too much detail on what happens in the new
version of Lincoln’s life. I can tell
you for a fact that in reality, Abraham Lincoln was not actually killing
vampires while campaigning for presidency or while he was president. That’s because vampires do not exist. What I can do for you is go into some sort of
detail about a movie that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter inspired.
The Asylum is a movie company that always jumps on the
chance to make money off of what seems like a big ticket property. When the movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire
Hunter was nearing its release, The Asylum released a movie on home video
titled Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies. It
retold Abraham Lincoln’s secret monster-hunting life, except this time it had
zombies instead of vampires. It ended up
being one of the better Asylum movies that I have seen. But it wasn’t exactly true to the life of
Abraham Lincoln. There were characters
in the movie such as a child Theodore Roosevelt who surely never met Abraham
Lincoln while hiding from zombies. The
closest that those two ever came to meeting was Teddy Roosevelt watching
Lincoln’s funeral procession. Of course,
a movie about a zombie-hunting president is not about the historical
accuracy. It is about the fun, and boy,
this movie was fun to watch. It’s been a
while since I saw it, but I had a good time with it.
Another movie I had a good time with that uses this same
monster addition to an old tale is this week’s Sunday “Bad” Movie, Jesus Christ
Vampire Hunter. Released in the year 2001,
the movie takes the popular biblical figure and places him in present day
Canada. It does not really tell the same
story as the Bible; instead, the movie shows Jesus Christ saving the lesbians
of Ottawa from the vampires that are out to kill them. That’s right.
You read that correctly. Jesus
Christ takes down some lesbian-hating vampires.
He uses his martial arts skills to do it, and gets help from a motorcycle
riding Mary Magnum and a wrestler named Santos.
The movie is a mixture of martial arts, music, and farce. It also takes a very old tale and puts a fun
new spin on it.
Finally, we come to a movie that takes a story that
originally had monsters and only amped up the action to make a dark children’s
tale into an all-out action film. The
movie that I’m talking about in this case is Hansel and Gretel: Witch
Hunters. The original Hansel and Gretel
story is about two children who end up lost in the woods and almost eaten by a
witch. In this re-imagining of the childhood
classic, the two siblings become hunters who want to take down every witch that
they discover. They have guns and other
weapons to help them in their quest. It
is an amped up version of the classic tale made for the short attention span of
today’s audiences. It’s more energetic
to keep people interested in what is happening on screen.
There is also another Hansel and Gretel movie released by
The Asylum with the subtitle Warriors of Witchcraft. I haven’t seen the movie and it is not as big
a name as some of these other movies so the most I am going to touch on it is
to say that it exists. I cannot go into
detail about it because having not seen it leaves me at a loss of what the
movie actually is.
Each of these movies has one thing in common. They tried to freshen up an old tale, whether
historical or fictional, by adding action and/or monsters. Sometimes this melding worked and sometimes
it didn’t. But it always made for an
interesting watch. Seeing a new
interpretation of a story that has been told numerous times throughout the
history of literature and film is always interesting. Even if the movie turns out to be bad, the
fact that the idea was attempted is interesting in itself.
The concept of adding monsters into classic stories or
historical events is one that excites me.
It gives a new way to tell a tale that has been told many times
before. I am a big fan of finding new
ways to tell stories and think that a lot of originality in this day and age
comes from the ability to do that. Each
of the movies that I wrote about in this post found a way to retell a
well-known story in a new way, with monsters.
Some were more successful than others, but that’s how movies work. And it’s the magic of movies that keeps me
going.
There are some notes I have to give here:
- Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter was suggested for the Sunday "Bad" Movies by @filmslikedreams.
- In my post for Rise of the Zombies, I wrote about The Asylum and the “rules” to their movies. In my post for Snakes on a Train, I wrote about my history with watching movies from The Asylum.
- I wrote about retelling stories in different settings and how that shows originality in my post for Jonah: A Veggietales Movie.
- My post for April Fools was about stories being repeated in different films.
- I watched a Hansel and Gretel movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that was titled Hansel and Gretel Get Baked. It was one of four Hansel and Gretel movies released in 2013.
- Can you think of any other movies that take an old story and add monsters to make it more interesting? Discuss them in the comments.
- If you have any suggestions for future movies to be included in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, feel free to suggest them below. Or you can contact me on Twitter to give me movie ideas.
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