What’s he looking at over there to the left? It must be INTENSE.
The man with the piercing green eyes and the mostly shaven nutduster is Nelson McCormick, the man making all of your remake dreams come true with his Prom Night. That’s right, the horror film that was no good in the 80’s is on its way back to you and it’s bringing heavy hitter Johnathon Schaech fresh from his stint as the writer and star of Roadhouse 2: Why the Fuck?.
Brittany Snow, survivor of Hairspray, also has a date at this prom as does Jessalyn Gilsig. Folks who watch Nip/Tuck may remember her as the nymphomaniac whose overuse of the word "asshole" almost made many innocents want the FCC to come in and manhandle the FX Network back to Disney territory.
But it is not the high wattage cast of this remake that this article exists for, no. You see, Nelson McCormick has taken the momentum from this Screen Gems project and parlayed it into another horror movie in one graceful balletic swoosh.
He’s now directing a McRemake of The Stepfather. You remember this movie, one of eighteen Terry O’Quinn franchises of yesteryear. That was a damn good little movie, one of the ones made when Jill Schoelen was cute as a button and director Joseph Ruben was riding high on Dreamscape. Heck, Ruben made the sublime True Believer after this and has in fact has had a pretty solid little career as a director and we all know that Terry O’Quinn has managed to become quite a television icon in the wake of Lost.
The Stepfather was good. The Stepfather II…. wasn’t. I was working at the movie theater when that came out and it was a great house for the staff to go in and dry and/or wet hump each other because there was never the threat of customers. The first one was a good film but it doesn’t have the name recognition to really gather much salivation as a choice for a remake. I mean, is anyone going to care if a movie about a homicidal stepfather came out which copied the plot of the original but called itself Bad Dad or Mommy Married Murder or Here Comes the Nightpenis? No! In fact, they could probably call it The Stepfather, ape the plot, and not even have to call themselves a remake.
Regardless, it’s another one of those decisions [and hey, who can really expect too much from Screen Gems, the studio that allowed Ghosts of Mars to happen] that reeks of rushed judgment and opportunism and the desire to get the teenage dollar on opening night. It makes me sad but it’s so commonplace in this business that it’s hard to work up much of anything. The fact they’re doing this makes me wonder when remakes we deserve are going to happen.
Where’s some Boogens? The Gate? Breeders? Neon Maniacs?
Nelson McCormick needs to pay his McBills, I understand. He’s got to build a filmography so he can do his McDream projects, like The Ray Kroc Story… but unless I’m mistaken he’s 0 for 2 in the horror integrity department and I gotta call McFoul.
That said, if they retitle his first remake Pr0n Night, I’m there opening weekend with a raging hard.