Howdy do, everyone, Papa Vinyard here.
The Hollywood Reporter has put out the news that LD Entertainment has gotten the wheels spinning on a remake of the 1990 psycho-horror flick JACOB'S LADDER. They've hired Jeff Buhler, responsible for the Bradley Cooper-Ryuhei Kitamura splatterfest, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, to rewrite a preexisting draft by Jake Wade Wall, the writer of the HITCHER and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS remakes; good call! MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN was maybe the most Clive Barker-y Clive Barker movie that he didn't direct himself, and it definitely deals with the kind of "normal guy watching his sense of reality get flushed down the toilet" stuff that they'll need to call up for LADDER.
For those who haven't seen Adrian Lyne's original, it stars Tim Robbins as a Vietnam vet in New York City suffering from a case of post-traumatic stress that would put most to shame. I'm talking seeing demons in the street and shit. It also has Danny Aiello as an angelic chiropractor, and early performances by Jason Alexander, Ving Rhames, Lewis Black, and Macaulay Culkin. It's a moody, atmospheric movie that is very stylistically unique, and sometimes truly tragic and horrifying. I can't imagine that the remake, which will probably transplant Jacob's Vietnam experience to either Iraq or Afghanistan, will have the same oddball gut punch that the original pulls off. But let's see who they get to direct; Kitamura would probably rock it like a hurricane.
The original wasn't a huge hit, nor is it a universally known cult flick or anything, and the Vietnam/Agent Orange element is kind of specific to the film's time period. It's also heavily dependent on its lead performance by Tim Robbins, and they'll have to find someone with a decent amount of clout and talent to hold down the entire movie. It's a questionable one to do over, but hell, it's probably easier to pick a recognizable movie out of a stack of DVDs and then remake it than it is to develop a decent original horror script, am I right?
-Vincent Zahedi
”Papa Vinyard”
vincentzahedi@gmail.com
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