Recasting Beast from Haunted Cave

Beast from Haunted Cave is a 1959 crime drama disguised as a horror movie. It's really good as a crime drama, but only mildly interesting as a horror film. The monster is pretty cool and original - it's a cobweb-covered, humanoid creature with long, spider-like legs - but the budget was so low that we barely see it. And when we do see it, we sort of wish we hadn't. With modern effects, that monster could look really cool, but the challenge would be to keep the focus on the crime story. That's what makes the movie unique.

Alex Ward (Ryan Gosling)



Alex is the antagonist, not the main character, but he kicks the story off. He's a bank robber planning an elaborate heist in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

You don't get a good sense of the Black Hills in the original, black-and-white movie, but it's beautiful country and would make a fantastic location for a crime thriller like this. It's also wild enough to believe that there could be strange, undiscovered creatures living there.

Back to Alex, he's a ruthless man with a nasty sense of humor who rules his gang - and his girlfriend - with an iron fist. He's charming on the surface, which is how he gains trust and avoids suspicion, but he's pure evil underneath. Ryan Gosling can play both of those qualities equally well.

Gypsy Boulet (Mila Kunis)



Alex's girlfriend - though she's posing as his assistant in the gang's cover story - and our protagonist. She's all in for the heist until she meets Gil, the ski instructor Alex has hired to take the gang across country once they've committed the heist. Gil doesn't know what Alex and his gang are up to, so his innocent lifestyle is attractive to Gypsy, who discovers a peace with him that she didn't even know she craved. Whether or not she's willing to give up her life with Alex though is another story altogether.

Mila Kunis has super expressive eyes, all the better to communicate a woman who's worn out from the hard life she's been leading. She's also extremely easy to root for.

Gil Jackson (Chris Hemsworth)



Gil may not be the main character of the film, but he's certainly the hero. He's a good man living a quiet life as a ski instructor and nature enthusiast. He lives in a cabin away from town and that's one of the reasons Alex hired him to lead the gang on a cross-country skiing expedition. Once the group reaches Gil's cabin, Ward plans to have his airplane land and carry off his crew and their loot into Canada. After disposing of Gil, of course.

It doesn't help Gil's chances of survival that he hits it off with Gypsy and - not realizing she's already romantically involved - constantly flirts with her in front of Alex. The question is: is she flirting back because she likes him or because she's doing her part to distract him from Alex's plan? That's not just a question the audience is wondering, it's also one Gypsy herself may not know the answer to.

Can't think of a better hero these days than Hemsworth. Ryan Gosling's going to have his work cut out for him to play a threat to Hemsworth, but I have faith in him. Just watch Drive and you'll see what I mean.

Byron (Michelle Rodriguez)



Byron is a man in the original, but I enjoy gender-swapping when possible and there's no reason he can't be a woman in the remake. Let's just say that Byron's her last name and not even worry about giving her a first one. That makes her tougher and more mysterious, anyway.

Byron is Alex's right hand. She's as tough and ruthless as he is, if not as smart. For example, it's Byron who discovers the cobweb monster when she takes a date up to the mine where she's supposed to be planting explosives.

Alex's plan is to blow up the mine the following day and rob the local bank while everyone's dealing with the cave-in. Alex doesn't count on Byron's taking a local bar employee (a waitress in the original, and there's no reason she can't also be a woman in our version) with him to set the charges. Byron finishes the job, but the creature attacks and drags the waitress into the darkness.

The waitress' disappearance causes some problems in town (and Alex doesn't believe Byron's story about the monster), but the plan still works. The bomb goes off, everyone rushes out of town to help, and the gang robs the bank.

Marty Jones (Anthony Mackie)



Marty is Alex's other henchman, but not as tough as Byron. In fact, he kind of has a tender side, as demonstrated when he meets Imelda. I like Mackie and it's easy to believe him as a tough guy hiding a gentle heart.

Imelda (Moon Bloodgood)




Imelda is Gil's housekeeper in the original version, but let's make her his sister or childhood friend for this one. She lives with him, but their relationship is platonic.

When the gang arrives at the cabin, they're successfully hiding the money they stole (gold bars in the original) and Gil suspects nothing. Imelda and Marty hit it off, complicating a situation that's already tense because Alex is about done with Gypsy and Gil's flirting.

Into all this tension comes the monster. I won't reveal what happens, but the threat of the cobweb monster makes everyone decide very quickly where their priorities and loyalties lie. Played well, the beast is less about creating horror and more about pushing the drama forward, though it should certainly also be scary in order to do that.

Beast of Haunted Cave is a B-movie that doesn't handle it's material as well as it deserves, but the material is excellent and ready to be done right.

Recasting The Cyclops

The Cyclops is a giant monster movie with the crappiest special effects you've ever seen. By 1957, backscreen projection was solid technology (King Kong used it in 1933, for crying out loud), but that's too fancy for The Cyclops. Instead, they simply superimposed images of creatures onto footage of the actors, making the monsters transparent.

Still, the story told in The Cyclops is sound. I love the characters and the group dynamics and it would make a great ensemble piece for a small cast of actors.

Susan Winter (Keira Knightley)



Susan Winter is a woman searching for her fiancé, Bruce Barton. Barton's plane went down in Mexico a while ago. I forget how long, exactly. It was months, at least, and maybe a couple of years. Certainly long enough for everyone but Winter to have given up hope that he'd be found. Winter's been trying to organize a search ever since, but unfortunately, the Mexican government refuses to allow her access to the region where Barton disappeared. Unrelenting, Winter has funded her own expedition to the forbidden jungle, but the small team still has to get around Mexican authorities to fly into the area.

The original film is clunky in the way it handles the early exposition, but there's potential for some great drama and action right off the bat as Winter and her team force their plane through opposing forces.

I picked Knightley partly because I just like her; partly because she's a fantastic, tough actress who can give Winter the determination she needs.

Martin Melville (Woody Harrelson)



Winter finances the expedition by convincing wealthy speculator Melville that there's uranium in the area where Barton's plane went down. Melville puts up part of the money in exchange for claim rights to whatever uranium they find.

In the original, Melville's played by Lon Chaney, Jr. He's a greedy, selfish man who causes all kinds of problems once he learns that there really is uranium in the area. He wants to get back to file his claim as quickly as possible, Barton be damned. It's that conflict with Winter that drives a lot of the drama throughout the film. Woody Harrelson would make a powerful, slightly unhinged opponent for Knightley to overcome. Fortunately for her, she has an ally.

Russ Bradford (Benicio Del Toro)



Bradford is a scientist, but his reason for being on the mission is that he's a friend of Winter and Barton's. He's also obviously in love with Winter and wants to help her put to rest her hopes about finding Barton so that she can move on with her life.

I picked Del Toro because I'm tired of seeing him play creepy villains. He's a great actor and I'd love to see him in a complicated, but positive role like this one.

Lee Brand (Kate Beckinsale)



The pilot and owner of the plane. Brand is a guy in the original, but there's no reason the character has to be male; especially with a name like Lee. Melville knows that he only has to convince Brand to leave the mission early in order to make it happen. He tries to convince Brand by suggesting that the pilot could fly Melville home early and then come back for the other two.

Melville's rich enough to make that worth Brand's while, but Brand understands that that's completely outside the original arrangement with Winter. The question is whether or not Brand's the type of person to stick to the letter of the contract or take a lucrative deal when it's offered. Beckinsale plays heroes and villains with equal ease, so she could do awesome things with a conflicted entrepreneur like Brand.

With all the human drama in place, all that's left is to include some modern effects when the team discovers that the radioactive area is crawling with giant lizards, spiders, birds, and other animals. There's also the cyclops of course. His origin is all too easy to guess, but it's the human drama that keeps the movie going. The mystery of the giants is just icing for the cake.

Recasting Night of the Demon

I haven't participated in The League of Extraordinary Bloggers much lately, not because I've lost interest, but just from lack of time. I really appreciate the ready-made topics, but they still require planning and thought that I haven't been able to give them lately. It's my loss. I'm glad I'm able to squeeze this week's assignment in though, because I'm probably going to make a regular feature out of it.

Remake one of your favorite movies with a cast of current Hollywood stars.

The reason I dig this is because I already do it all the time in my head. I watch a lot of old genre movies and some of them have really great stories. I'd love to share these movies with people, but I know that for some of my friends (and a large percentage of the general public) the dated - if not outright crappy - special effects are an obstacle. Heck, for a lot of people, just their being in black-and-white is off-putting. So I re-imagine the movies in my head with modern effects and a current cast of Hollywood's best. After this one, I'm already thinking about how to recast The Cyclops and Beast from Haunted Cave.

I've talked at length before about my love for Jacques Tourneur's 1957 classic, Night of the Demon. It's a thrilling, ambiguously supernatural mystery that deserves to be enjoyed by modern audiences. I'll describe some of the plot below, but not the ending, so minor spoiler alert. Here's how I'd recast it.

Professor Henry Harrington (John Hurt)



The first character to appear in the film is Professor Harrington, a former skeptic about the supernatural who's now afraid for his life. John Hurt has the perfect demeanor to play an English academic who's scared out of his wits.

Dr. Julian Karswell (Alan Rickman)



Harrington goes to the estate of Dr. Karswell, a self-professed warlock who presides over a cult of followers. Unfortunately, Karswell tells Harrington that his repentance is too late to stop the forces that Karswell has put into motion.

In the original film, Karswell is a portly fellow whose tissue-thin jolliness masks a deep menace. He's the key to whether or not the movie works, so we need a top-notch actor like Rickman who can alternate between charm and threat in varying degrees. We need to be afraid of him, but also like and empathize with him.

Mrs. Karswell (Judi Dench)



Karswell lives with his mother, a kindly, seemingly clueless woman who doesn't ask too many questions about where her son's wealth comes from. There's some ambiguity about how much she understands and whether she supports her son out of love or fear. Dench could do a lot with that.

Joanna Harrington (Kelly Macdonald)



After the death of Harrington, his niece returns from the United States to take care of his affairs. She knows about her uncle's investigation of Karswell's cult and suspects foul play.

I cast Macdonald mostly because I just really like her. Joanna isn't much of a character - she's mostly there to build tension by worrying out loud about the protagonist - but Macdonald has a ton of personality that could flesh Joanna out nicely.

Dr. John Holden (Don Cheadle)



Joanna shares the plane ride from the U.S. with Holden, an occult debunker on his way to London for a conference on the supernatural. There, he intends to pick up Harrington's crusade against Karswell. He and Joanna have a meet-cute where they don't get along at first, but when they re-meet in London, they join forces to bring down Karswell. Holden doesn't believe there's anything supernatural going on, but Joanna's not so sure.

Cheadle's easy to like, which is important in a leading man, but he's also great at looking irritated. That would serve him well playing Holden, who can't believe so many people are buying into Karswell's schtick.

Professor Mark O'Brien (Denis Lawson)



O'Brien is Holden's closest colleague at the conference that's investigating Karswell. He's also a skeptic, but isn't as serious or as irritated by believers as Holden. The character's mostly there as a sounding board.

Denis Lawson is best known to geeks as Wedge Antilles from the original Star Wars trilogy, but I picked him based on his performance in the BBC's 2005 production of Bleak House. He was able to play the troubled, but caring John Jarndyce with a lot of warmth and gentle humor. He'd make a great companion for the very serious Holden.

Professor K.T. Kumar (Irrfan Khan)



Another of Holden's colleagues at the conference. Kumar is also a skeptic, but not a complete unbeliever. One of the things that I really appreciate about his character is that he's not just there to predict supernatural doom; that's more Joanna's job. Kumar is extremely intelligent; he just admits that there may be things going on that none of these scientists can explain. He's agnostic about the supernatural; not prejudiced against it.

Mr. Meeks (Rowan Atkinson)



Meeks is only in one scene, but it's an important one. He's a medium that the well-meaning Mrs. Karswell hires to communicate with Professor Harrington to learn how he died. She invites Holden and Joanna to the seance, but the results can be interpreted multiple ways depending on the prejudices of the witnesses.

Meeks seems to fully believe in his gifts, but he's a comical fellow who adopts the voices of the spirits he's channelling. Rowan Atkinson knows a thing or two about silly voices as well as earnest acting. He'd be a great choice to introduce a tiny bit of levity to the otherwise serious case.

Rand Hobart (Jamie Bell)



Hobart is a farmer and a former member of Karswell's cult. He's also the only enemy of the group who's ever managed to survive. He's been driven mad - almost catatonic - from the experience though, and that makes questioning him a challenge.

Jamie Bell has a great, rustic look to him and is a talented enough actor to pull off Hobart's craziness without going over the top. Hobart's only in one scene of the original movie, so the thing about casting Bell would be that I'd want to fill out his story a little more. Maybe through flashbacks or a prologue or something. Even in the original, the character feels a little under-used. He's the key to unlocking the mystery, so some more time building that up might be good.