Horror Movie Makeover: Titanic

A ship at sea. A floating fortress, created by the hubris of man, and thought to be indestructible. And yet, on its maiden voyage, this testament to modern technology would be dashed upon the rocks of fate, and wind up at the bottom of the icy North Atlantic, the bloated corpses of its hundreds of passengers littering the waves like so much flotsam and jetsam. True love would blossom on this voyage. But true love would not be enough to save them...

Jack Dawson was a shiftless drifter, and it was random fate that put him on the massive British ocean liner, and directly in the path of certain death itself. On board the Titanic, Jack would encounter Rose DeWitt-Bukater, a restless socialite who yearned for something more out of life--yet who could never have known that the road to the love of her life also led to the most horrific and infamous calamity of the 20th century.

What they also didn't count on was the presence of pure evil on board this vessel--an evil better known as Cal Hockley, Rose's psychotic fiance. A man who would rather see her dead than in the arms of another. As he watched the young romance blossom before his very eyes, hatred seethed within his very soul--a hatred punctuated by murderous scheming on a grand scale.

They said that the Titanic was unsinkable. But it wouldn't be the iceberg that proved them wrong. It would be the overwhelming momentum of man's animosity. Feeling the woman betrothed to him slipping away, the deranged Hockley struck a secret pact with the enigmatic Capt. Smith to see to it that the RMS Titanic never made it to the safe haven of New York harbor.

Who knows what deep-seated antipathy led Smith to agree to Hockley's plan and doom his crew and passengers to a watery grave? On his final run, perhaps the good captain wished to go out in dramatic fashion. Whatever the reason, history would fail to record Smith's nefarious complicity, perhaps because all who even suspected it would shortly have their lungs filled with icy seawater...

Flush with the excitement of newly discovered romance, Jack and Rose proceed blissfully down the path of young lovers, unaware of the cold and calculating plots being hatched. Spicer Lovejoy, Cal's brutal right-hand man, stalks the innocent couple below deck. And when he finally has Jack in his sights, he pounces with an explosion of animalistic violence. This, coupled with Cal's devious maneuverings, see to it that Jack is in the custody of authorities when the unthinkable plot unfolds.

The mighty ship sabotaged, its steering mechanisms hopeflessly ruined, the lookouts and helmsmen are helpless to do anything but point, scream and strain fruitlessly once a massive block of ice emerges from the impenetrable fog directly before the vessel. There, in the middle of the blackest expanse of ocean on the planet, above countless fathoms of liquid emptiness, the Titanic collides with the iceberg, its hull ripping open as the sheets of metal scream like cattle being slaughtered.

Intent on seeing his unfaithful fiance and her common paramour snuffed out utterly, Cal makes a hasty retreat, escaping on one of the pitifully few lifeboats the ship's arrogant creators thought to outfit her with. As the sociopathic Smith commits suicide by drowning, Jack and Rose cling to life aboard a structure slipping further and further into watery oblivion.

The ocean welling up around him, Jack offers up a life-saving makeshift raft to Rose, choosing the chivalrous route of remaining in the water as the hulking Titanic descends to the ocean floor. It is only then, as the screams of the dying rise up around him, that the doomed young man truly understands the feeling of being suspended in sub-freezing ocean waters--the sensation of icy daggers penetrating his flesh, the sickening numbness as the sea literally saps away the lifeforce of his body.

Although spared a similarly grisly end, Rose has to suffer through watching her lover's body slip away and sink into the inky abyss, never to be seen again. Thanks to his sacrifice, she would know a long life--yet ironically, without the one with whom she wanted to spend it.

And the man responsible for this vast atrocity? Cal Hockley? He eventually chose the coward's way out, hurling his body from the heights of his Manhattan offices at the outset of the stock market crash some 17 years later. And for the crimes he had committed in the service of his twisted ego, his soul traveled to a very different place from that to whence he had sent the soul of Jack Dawson...

Horror Movie Makeover: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

From the minds of Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna, the men who brought you such visions of terror as Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Return of the Living Dead III, comes this horrifying tale of science gone tragically wrong...

Wayne Szalinski is a man playing with the forces of nature, venturing to the border of man's given domain in an attempt to wield more power than the human race was ever meant to wield. Specifically, his feverish experiments are concerned with the manipulation of matter, with shrinking objects down from their original size into grotesque, miniaturized versions--a direct affront to the divine order.

Caught up in the excitement of his discoveries, Dr. Szalinski, like so many other mad scientists before him, neglects to consider the dangerous ramifications of his creation. And so it happens that one day, while he is absent from his laboratory, his own children and their friends are accidentally exposed to his infernal device's piercing blue ray.

As a result, they are shrunk down to the size of insects, and in that instant, our everyday world becomes a hell on earth, with lethal threats waiting around every corner. Ignorant of the result of his tampering with nature, the doctor accidentally sweeps his own children into the garbage and puts them outside, forcing them to embark on a hellacious journey across the lawn and back into the house--a rather simple trip transformed into a death ride thanks to their father's crime against God.

Along the way, the four innocent children are subjected to horrors the likes of which normal-sized humans would never consider. A lawnmower becomes a colossal engine of vivisection; a sprinkler showers death from above upon them; and ordinary garden bugs become massive, demonic predators set on devouring their flesh. As hunger gnaws at their insides, they are forced to fight for their sustenance with towering, bloodthirsty ants.

Helpless to do anything about it as the realization dawns on him of what he's actually done, Dr. Szalinski, panic-stricken after the fact, attempts to find his lost children, with the aid of his wife and the other frantic parents. But despite their best efforts, it is actually the family dog that rescues the children from certain death, bringing them back into the house on its back like so many festering ticks.

Yet the danger is not over. In the most cruel twist of fate of all, the doctor nearly eats his own children after they plunge accidentally into his morning breakfast. Once again, it is the dog that save the children from being torn to pieces, and at last Dr. Szalinski discovers the children and siezes upon the opportunity to correct the grievous sin he has committed.

On that fateful afternoon, Dr. Szalinski is given the second chance so many of us in life never get, especially those whose transgressions are so egregious. It is only after finding a way to use his machine to return the children to their natural state, that Dr. Szalinski at last understands the price of venturing into matters forbidden to man...

Horror Movie Makeover: Amadeus

The balance of good and evil is an essential element of the world we live in. The struggle between God and Satan is central to this balance--for as much of an influence of beauty and good God has in our mortal realm, so it is the sworn duty of the Evil One to oppose him, to denigrate him, to tear down and degrade his finest creations.

In the 18th century, God brought into the world a perfect artistic mind--the musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His compositions would change the world, creating a direct conduit to the divine through human artistic creation. And so, it was entirely predictable that the forces of Hell would do everything in their power to destroy him...

The vessel chosen by Satan would be one Antonio Salieri, a mediocre court composer in Vienna who once adhered to the precepts of Christ and humbly did his best at creating music for the Emperor of Austria. But when the now-grown former child prodigy Mozart arrives in Vienna, something stirs in Salieri that provides just the opening the Devil requires. Consumed with unreasoning jealousy, and unable to comprehend how a God-fearing man like himself could be so utterly eclipsed by a childish and vulgar fop like Mozart, Salieri begins to be filled with unreasoning jealousy and contempt.

Plunged deeper into a pit of despair with every accolade heaped upon the young German composer, Salieri begins to know violent, bloody, homicidal thoughts. He rejects Christ utterly, casting the crucifix into the fire and accepting the forces of Darkness as his new guiding impetus. If he cannot be like Mozart, he reasons, then he must annihilate Mozart. If God would choose such a man to be his vessel, than Salieri would make it his life's work to spit in the face of God and ruin his perfect creation. Satan was bent on having the last laugh this time.

But in order to accomplish the murder of Mozart, more pieces of the puzzle are required. Ever the opportunist, vengeful Lucifer identifies Mozart's greatest weakess--namely, his need to please his overbearing, manipulative father, Leopold. Bringing about his sudden death, the Enemy of God returns his immortal spirit to the living world, to do his vile bidding in an alliance with Salieri.

Possessed by the ghost of Leopold Mozart, Salieri hatches a vicious plot to crush Mozart's sanity, and his life. Dressing in the same macabre costume once worn by Mozart's father at a masquerade ball, Salieri visits his archrival, demanding in anonymity that he write a mass for the dead. The room rank with the cruel presence of his father's unkind spirit, Mozart's realizes the true meaning of what's being asked of him.

His guilt at disappointing his dead father driving him relentlessly, Mozart hurls himself into the composition of the Requiem Mass. Haunted constantly by his father's disapproving ghost, the composer slips further and further into financial ruin, drug addiction, and woefully poor health. Slowly but surely, Salieri's Satanic scheme saps away the life force of God's brilliant and beautiful creation.

At long last, confined to his death bed, Mozart is visited by none other than Salieri, who sees to it that the final nails are driven into the coffin, pushing his rival into the grave, while also completing the dreaded mass of death. Satan's hateful plan completed, the fearsome music created on that night becomes Mozart's own death mass, played before his bloated corpse is dumped in an open, unmarked grave to decay and be eaten away with lime.

Reveling in his apparent triumph, Salieri believes he has won the day. However, doing the Devil's bidding always has its price. In the case of Salieri, that price is the loss of his mind as a result of the gnawing guilt of the evil he has committed. Driven to madness, the once humble, religious man is twisted into an aged mockery of his former self, living out the rest of his life caged up like an animal with the cast-off horrors of the so-called Enlightenment Era. God's vessel has been destroyed. And in the end, so has Satan's.

Horror Movie Makeover: The Lion King

The setting is the dank, foreboding jungle of darkest Africa. Out on the plains, the law of kill or be killed is the order of business--a grim circle of life in which death is never that far away. Ruling over his kingdom is wise King Mufasa. But lurking in the background, plotting and planning, dreaming bloodthirsty dreams of domination, is his evil disfigured brother, Scar. Long has he waited for his chance to rule. And he will not be denied.

Into this tense political landscape is born Simba, the king's innocent son, who by right of birth becomes next in line to the throne. What the blameless cub cannot know, however, is that his birth would be the final straw to break the back of Scar's simmering patience. Now his ghastly scheme of murder and upheaval would be put into place, and the kingdom would never be the same.

With the aid of his vile army of rabid hyenas, Scar brutally slaughters his brother Mufasa, dropping him into a herd of rampaging wildebeests that smashes his once mighty body beneath its collective feet. A young Simba witnesses the murder, and is left with the broken corpse of his father, convinced by Scar's malicious manipulations that he is in fact to blame.

Simba flees the kingdom in terror, taking refuge in the outlying regions of the jungle, beyond the relative safety of the plains. In his absence, Scar assumes the throne, and promptly rains upon the population a dark, chaotic age of horrors, in which his hyena forces flood the plains with their malevolent influence, and life for the lion tribe is made a living hell.

Meanwhile, the prince in exile succumbs to the allure of a life of ease. He befriends the strange and grotesque creatures of the jungle, who persuade him to abandon responsibility and join them in a seductive life of malaise, ruled by the arcane motto, "Hakuna Matata". It is only once the maturing Simba discovers what has happened to his father's kingdom, thanks to the ghost of Mufasa returned from beyond the grave, that he is able to finally break the curse of those words and return to the plains to attempt to face the evil and set things right.

Accompanied by those jungle creatures who have elected to help, a grown Simba at last confronts his murderous uncle. And in the face of the unstoppable fury of his righteous rage, Scar and his hyena forces are wiped from the plains in a bloody massacre of epic proportions.

The grass of the plains dyed red with the blood of his enemies, Simba takes the throne by force, vowing to continue the just rule of his father and eventually producing an heir of his own. The circle of life goes on, linked--as it must always be--with the inevitability of death which hangs ominously over the jungle like an ever-present cloud.

Horror Movie Makeover: The Odd Couple

Oscar Madison was a man with the world at his fingertips. Newly freed from a failed and miserable marriage, he was a born-again bachelor enjoying his new-found freedom and open to all the possibilities life now had to offer. But what he didn't count on was that he would cross paths with someone he thought was a friend, who would invade his life and turn the two of them into the oddest couple imaginable...

That supposed friend was one Felix Ungar, an introverted and repressed loner who had managed to destroy his own marriage through his relentlessly obsessive and compulsive behavior. Driven to the brink of insanity, the unstable Ungar makes a manipulatively half-hearted attempt to commit suicide as a way to illicit sympathy from his friends. And when that happens, Oscar is there, the perfect prey to walk right into the trap.

The unsuspecting Madison invites Ungar to move in with him. Little does he know that his carefree bachelor life is about to come to an abrupt end. For Felix's need to control knows no bounds. And Oscar's casual, spontaneous way of living sets him over the edge again, bringing out out the same side of him that caused his wife to flee and nearly drove him to suicide.

Taking on almost the role of an obsessive wife, Felix begins to slowly wrap himself around every aspect of Oscar's life. Just as Madison begins to realize the grave error he has made, he also realizes that it is too late. Before long, Felix has become inescapable, draining Oscar's life of all its vitality, sucking it into his bottomless vortex of madness as he attempts to impose his uncompromising sense of order.

Simple things like trips to the coffee shop, bowling, and poker night, things that bachelor roommates should easily be able to enjoy, become nothing short of nightmares, with Felix's deranged and self-sabotaging behavior smacking Oscar in the face at every turn. Even Oscar's long-time friends begin to back away from Felix's disturbing behavior, giving Felix more and more free reign to dominate Oscar's life.

"We're all out of cornflakes. F.U." writes Felix in a particular sinister note left on Oscar's pillow one morning. Does the F.U. merely stand for "Felix Ungar"? There's no way to know for sure.

The final move in their intricate psychological game occurs when Oscar makes the foolish attempt to mend fences with Felix by inviting the Pigeon sisters to their apartment for what he assumes will be a night of bachelorly carousal. But it's clear that he is still unaware of the depths to which Ungar's sickness runs.

Making sure that Madison is occupied, Felix twists the evening to his own personal agenda, manipulating the sisters into pitying him, abandoning any chance of amorous activities in favor of some kind of demented, parent-child dynamic. Enraged at this last betrayal, Oscar at last comes to his senses and demands that Felix exit his apartment, and his life.

And yet once again proving to be too much of a match for Madison's naivete, Ungar manages to once again overpower his former roommate with overwhelming guilt. Wracked with regret over what he has done to the supposedly alone Felix, Oscar tracks him down and begs him to come back. It is only then that he discovers the truth, and the final endgame in this fractured odyssey: Felix Ungar has moved in with the unsuspecting Pidgeon sisters. And his obsession is about to be born anew...

Horror Movie Makeover: Forrest Gump

Some men are the orchestrators of great evil. Others draw the evil unto themselves through their actions. And then, there is that unfortunate third category of individuals to whom a dread and foreboding destiny clings like a wet, rank overcoat, forever condemning them to a life trapped somewhere between the lines.

Such a third-category man was Forrest Gump, whose existence remained interwoven with the fabric of his very reality throughout the course of his life, try as he might to escape the all-encompassing doom written for him in the book of fate. Born to a mother of loose moral character, whose only communication with the boy came via cryptic and arcane cliches, young Forrest had his mind molded in hardship and the constant struggle against poverty. Life, she had informed him, was like a box of chocolates--filled with uncertainty, and the promise of eventual decay through over-consumption.

Having attained maturity, Gump finds escape the only way he can, choosing the visceral terrors of the jungles of Vietnam over the backwoods nightmare of rural Alabama. Warring with the Viet-Cong, he gets a swift lesson in the barbarities of martial conflict, ultimately punctuated by the vicious slaughter of Bubba, the one true friend he had. On that day, Forrest Gump swears a dark oath to avenge his comrade's demise, and to carry out his ultimate plan.

And yet, the forces of destiny that have ensnared Gump's life from the very beginning seek to overwhelm him at every turn, carrying him across time and space, through scenarios over which he seemingly has no control. Like a chameleon, he is continually built up and broken, his feeble psyche taxed to its capacity by his surreal brushes with the giants of his generation, and the precarious spectator's seat he fills at the very crossroads of history.

His brutally maimed former superior officer, himself a victim of the terrors of those teeming jungles, crosses paths with Forrest at an opportune moment, and the two join forces for a time in an attempt to seize the reigns of life from the unfeeling forces which have swept them away on a tide of ambiguity.

But like most men doomed to walk this Earth, Gump is fixated on the woman he loves but cannot have. Perhaps the cruelest trick played upon him by the eldritch forces governing his existence has been her ultimate elusiveness, and yet Gump hangs all hopes of sanity on the attainment of Jenny, nonetheless.

And when she comes within his grasp, only to shun him once again, Gump is plunged into a pit of vengeful, paranoid fury, which leads him to flee maniacally across the country on foot, a near-mythic and feral figure desperately trying to escape the inescapable. Eventually, filled with dread at the hopelessness of his plight, he returns home to face the demons head-on.

Gump believes those demons to be at last decisively banished when he finally reunites with Jenny. But little does he realize that Jenny has already been exposed to a rare and deadly virus poised to grip the planet in a plague-like epidemic. And she is stolen from him, just as he was beginning to get to know the boy he had unknowingly fathered with her.

Forrest is left along to raise the boy--a child, who, day by day comes to resemble his father more and more. Is the curse really dead, or has it just migrated to a new generation? Run, Forrest, run--but remember, there are some things in this life a man can never get away from...

Horror Movie Makeover: The Godfather

Horror Movie Makeover: The Godfather

Tonight, I'm kicking off a brand new gimmick here in the VoH, so buckle in and prepare yourselves. Even though we all love horror films more than life itself, for most of us, there are actually other kinds of movies we occasionally enjoy, as well. I know, hard to imagine, but true. Well, what if some of our favorite non-horror films were "re-imagined" to fit into our favorite genre?

That's the goal of "Horror Movie Makeover". And we begin with what may be the best goddam movie ever made, Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 masterpiece, The Godfather.

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In New York's criminal underworld, the name of Corleone is spoken not just with respect, but with abject terror. Rumors persisted of Don Vito's rise to power, and how he had overthrown the ancient Sicilian cult known as La Mano Nero to attain the leverage he currently held in the realm of organized crime.

Athough Don Vito was motivated by love of his family, and the desire to beat the American pezza novante at their own game, it was inevitable that some remnant of the malicious entity behind La Mano Nero would live on, and poison both his life and the lives of those around him.

In Sicilian folklore, the Godfather was an ancient revered figure whose abilities bordered on the supernatural, and so it was that at the wedding of his daughter Connie, Vito Corleone, the Godfather, sat granting the dark wishes of his supplicants, all the while trying desperately to prevent the evil of La Mano Nero from consuming him utterly.

Though held firmly in the grip of the evil forces that have aided him in his quest for ultimate power, Don Corleone takes one solitary stand--he will not take part in the burgeoning drug trade that threatens to take over the organized crime business and transform the seamy underbellies of America's urban centers into cesspools of human degradation. Daring to deny the business offer of the mysterious figure known only as "The Turk", Corleone draws the wrath of the very entity which has placed him where he is.

One by one, the malevolent Turk and his minions cause the streets to run red with the gore of Corleone family members. The don's most trusted button man, Luca Brasi is first, and then the don himself is nearly butchered. When the don's first-born son Santino assumes control of the family, it soon becomes evident that he lacks his father's keen ability to resist the forces of evil and bend them to his will. Santino becomes possessed by the darkness, reveling in the violent power that he now wields.

With New York's gangland brimming in blood, it falls to the one man Don Vito never intended to have anything to do with his family's arcane bargain--his youngest son Michael, a student and soldier who had been sheltered from the evil secret that had made the Corleones so powerful. Siezed with a thirst for revenge, the once pure soul embraces his latent bloodlust, exacting a brutal vengeance on the Turk and his minions, and then fleeing to the native island of his forefathers, where he is drawn ever further into the web of ancient Sicilian lore.

Meanwhile as Santino struggles futilely to harness the power to his will, he too falls victim to the bloody curse, meeting his end in a hail of fire that shreds the very flesh from his bones. It is now Michael, firmly in the grasp of the bloodlust that has warped his soul after witnessing the obliteration of his Sicilian bride, who must return to the U.S. and claim the demonic birthright that was never meant to be his.

Don Vito is helpless to do anything but look on in horror as the boy he raised in the ways of the light transforms into a far more bloodthirsty, yet grim and calculating don than he ever was. It is a sinister, keen intellect that guides Michael's actions once his father finally passes on, as he visits upon his enemies the very same evils they sought to visit upon him and his family.

When the dust is cleared, the ancient Sicilian malevolence that has claimed the legacy of the Corleone family has found its greatest host yet--a once innocent soul corrupted into a cold-hearted killer, possessed by dark forces that made him an offer he couldn't refuse.