Movies you never knew were remakes

In recent times we’ve heard that a seemingly endless number of classic films will get the remake treatment - from ‘Dirty Dancing’ to ‘Point Break’ to ‘Beetlejuice’.
 
Many critical fans reckon this a sign Hollywood has finally run out of ideas, but actually the trend for imitation has been going on for decades, with some greatest movies of all time actually remakes.

But what are they?

The Wizard of Oz
‘The Wizard of Oz’, along with ‘Gone with the Wind’, is seen by many as the high point of Hollywood’s golden age – a cast iron 1930s classic. Based on L. Frank Baum’s children’s tale, it sees a young Judy Garland make her star-making performance as Dorothy, following that yellow brick road with a lion, a tin man and a scarecrow. What most probably don’t know is that there’s also a 1925 version of story. This forgotten silent film never made it to cinemas because the production caused Chadwick Pictures (the company behind it) to go bankrupt, and distribution ceased long before it was intended to. No wonder no one has heard of it.

The Departed
Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Departed’, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson, finally won an Oscar for the chatty director in 2007… but he didn’t dream up the idea himself. It was actually a surprisingly close (plot-wise anyway) remake of the ace 2002 Hong Kong film ‘Infernal Affairs’, that switched the cops and robbers action to Boston. ‘Infernal Affairs’ did so well in Asia it spawned the 2003 prequel, the oddly titled ‘Infernal Affairs II’, as well as a sequel, ‘Infernal Affairs III’ in the same year.

Vanilla Sky
Tom Cruise’s 2001 psychological thriller, directed, produced and co-written by Cameron Crowe, was in fact an English language remake of ‘Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)’. The interesting thing about this remake is that bilingual actress Penelope Cruz starred in both the original, made in 1997, and the subsequent Cruise reboot.

Scarface
The image of Al Pacino’s monochrome Tony Montana, groggily contemplating a mound of cocaine, has adorned many a teenage boy’s bedroom for the last thirty years. Yet the millions of film fans blown away by violent epic ‘Scarface’ probably didn’t realise it was a reboot of a 1932 flick of the same name, which starred Paul Muni as the titular character. The original was a thinly disguised biography of Al Capone, but it was delayed due to its grisly nature. The concept was obviously pretty similar, but major changes include the switching of Tony’s surname from Camonte to Montana and moving the setting from Chicago to Miami.

A Fistful of Dollars
This grim western stars Clint Eastwood as a wandering gunfighter who plays two rival families off against each other in a town torn apart by greed, pride, and revenge. It’s classic Sergio Leone fare, but the wily Italian director actually nicked the basic plot from an Akira Kurosawa film called ‘Yojimbo’. Producers of that film successfully sued the Eastwood version and claimed 15% of the film's worldwide gross and exclusive distribution rights for Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. According to some reports, Kurosawa later claimed he earned more money from ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ than he did from his original movie. So everybody won! Kind-of.

Heat
The masterly ‘Heat’ is actually a remake of the 1989 made-for-TV movie ‘L.A. Takedown’. Unusually, both films were written and directed by the same chap - Michael Mann - who had tried and failed for years to get his ‘Heat’ script made as a theatrical film in the 1980s. Frustrated, he pared down the script and made a simplified TV movie version. Six years later Mann had the clout to flesh out the plot, recruit a star-studded cast (including Al Pacino and Robert De Niro) and the rest is history.

True Lies
Who’d thought that ‘True Lies’ - a typically macho American action movie - was a remake of a French comedy called ‘La totale!’? Both films follow a seemingly boring family man whose wife gets tired of her lackluster life and has an affair, unaware that her husband is a secret agent. The 1994 version starred action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger alongside Jamie Lee Curtis. The original featured Thierry Lhermitte who went on to star in ‘Le Dîner de Cons’ (which was subsequently remade as ‘Dinner for Schmucks’ with Steve Carell and Paul Rudd).

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