Jamie Lee Curtis Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Oh, what might have been! Alison Lohman gives a terrific performance as the cursed loan officer Christine Brown in Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, which opens tomorrow. If not for the vagaries of scheduling, though, Ellen Page would have played the lead role. Would Page have been any better? We'll never know, but she joins a long list that inspires thoughts of 'What if ...?'

Once upon a time, we might have seen Leslie Howard as the titular Frankenstein and Bela Lugosi as The Monster. Instead, Colin Clive played the good doctor, Boris Karloff got a jump-start on life, and the rest is horror history. Here are seven more recent examples of actors and actresses who were considered for key roles in great horror films ... and the ones who replaced them, listed in chronological order. [Disclaimer: Based on information provided on IMDb's "trivia" pages, so no guarantees on accuracy.] Better? Worse? You decide.

1. Melanie Griffith / Sissy Spacek (Carrie)

Even though she was in her mid-20s, Spacek looks so young and fragile as Carrie that it's difficult to imagine anyone else in the role. Griffith was 18 or 19 and already had made an impression in Night Moves, The Drowning Pool, and Smile when she auditioned to play the telekinetic high schooler. Conveying Carrie's complexities might have been beyond her still-developing skills at that point. The pic above, left, is from Joyride, released the following year.

I've been itching for a new Jamie Lee Curtis movie for a while now. When I saw her at hubby Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration premiere, I wondered when on earth we'd get more Curtis. Now the desire is being fulfilled, but not really in the way I was hoping. I was thinking maybe a good action movie, or perhaps a drama or even a thriller. Instead, she has signed on for yet another family film, following in the footsteps of Freaky Friday, Christmas with the Kranks and The Kid & I -- Disney's South of the Border.

Back in May, Patrick Walsh gave word that Piper Perabo would be the the human amidst dogs in the Southy feature. The plot: a pampered Chihuahua from Beverly Hills gets lost in Mexico and makes friends to help her get back to her home. In June, Christopher Campbell posted that Drew Barrymore would voice the pampered pooch -- with a posse that includes Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, Paul Rodriguez, Plácido Domingo and Edward James Olmos. Now we've got good ol' Jamie Lee as the only other live-action character -- Aunt Viv, the owner of the Chihuahua. Since Perabo isn't the doggie owner, I assume she plays Curtis' niece, otherwise, "Aunt" Viv is rather pointless. Director Raja Gosnell doesn't have the best track record for loved films, but he did find a decent amount of success with his last Barrymore pic, Never Been Kissed, so maybe this will be his second gem. Either way, I just want the lovely Jamie Lee to do something better. I can't be the only one itching for her to do some quality work, can I?

Man, the remake-makers are really digging through the bottom-shelf horror titles these days, aren't they? (When's the Hell Night remake coming out already?) And what's up with the current rash of Jamie Lee Curtis remakes anyway? Between Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night and the just-announced remake of Terror Train, the gal's entire back catalog is about to get a new coat of paint. (Someone tell Richard Franklin to keep his phone handy; his Road Games is absolutely guaranteed to be remade soon.) Yes, aged horror fans, you read that right: Someone, namely Nu Image Films, is about to remake the 1980 slasher flick Terror Train. Yep, the one with David Copperfield in it.

Assigned to the adaptation/directorial duties is Gideon Raff, while the whole Nu Image squad will be on board as producers. Production will begin later this year in Bulgaria, which is the sort of country Nu Image loves to shoot in. The studio's premiere titles include Mansquito, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Octopus 2: River of Fear and Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep. For those who don't watch early-'80s horror flicks three times a week, I'm happy to remind you that Terror Train is about a bunch of college students who throw a New Year's Eve costume party on board a moving train ... only there's a raving psycho on the loose who aims to kill everyone. I'm sure the Nu Image guys won't have any trouble adhering to such a complicated plot structure. (For a full and hilarious list of the Nu Image titles, please click right here.)

Interesting trivia regarding the original Terror Train: It was the first feature from Canadian filmmaker Roger Spottiswoode, a man who would go on to direct films both very entertaining (Under Fire, The Best of Times, Shoot to Kill) and very painful (Turner & Hooch, Air America, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot). He also got to direct one of the James Bond movies, only it was Tomorrow Never Dies, which makes the credit a lot less impressive. Also, Terror Train does indeed feature a very bizarre acting performance from master illusionist (and weirdo) David Copperfield. You'll just have to rent the movie to appreciate it.

For those of you looking forward to the remake of Prom Night, we have a bit more information for you. We already reported that the horror pic will star Brittany Snow and Idris Elba, but now we have the rest of the official casting to reveal: Dana Davis, Jessica Stroup, Scott Porter, Collins Penne, and Kelly Blatz likely all play ready-to-carve-up teens and Jonathan Schaech plays a character named 'Richard Fenton.' Additionally Bloody-Disgusting.com has the official synopsis, which appears to be about the same as the original: a killer begins picking off a group of high school students on their prom night. It was written by J.S. Cardone, is being directed by Nelson McCormick and is set to be released February 1, 2008.

Out of all the horror movies being remade these days, Prom Night is one of the few that I actually saw as a kid (never was a big scary movie fan). Still, I barely remember it. From what I can recall, it was your typical slasher film where the bad guy is someone familiar to the victims (a la Halloween, Scream, Scooby-Doo) and also had the familiar theme of a covered up past coming back to haunt (a la Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street). Specifically, though, Prom Night had pretty much the same plot as I Know What You Did Last Summer (not surprising, I Know producer Neil H. Moritz is producing this remake). As little as I care for horror in general, I do like the occasional straight-forward, cliché-ridden slasher movie (save for the too-simple Valentine), so I may be interested in this redo if I can be promised a recreation of the originals' opening, which is all that I really remember of it. Or is showing a little girl falling to her death atop a greenhouse too tame for today's audiences?

On my Prom night, a mixup at the rental shop forced me to wear the tuxedo of a morbidly obese man. I spent the entire evening sweating profusely and praying my pants didn't fall to the ground. That was pretty scary. But I'm sure it has nothing on the upcoming remake of the slasher favorite Prom Night, starring Brittany Snow (John Tucker Must Die) and headed up by TV director Nelson McCormick. We mentioned the remake last month and now someone else has been added to the cast -- British actor Idris Elba. Fans of the mind-blowingly great HBO show The Wire (in a perfect world, this would include everyone), will recognize Elba as the beloved-by-fans Stringer Bell, the man who tried to apply economics classes to the Baltimore drug trade.

Elba's got a lot of projects lined up -- you'll soon be able to see him in the Hilary Swank thriller The Reaping, the horror sequel 28 Weeks Later, and the highly anticipated Denzel Washington/ Russell Crowe flick American Gangster. Elba will play a police detective in Prom Night. The original film was about a group of kids who accidentally kill a child and six years later are stalked by a masked killer at their high school dance. It starred scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis and ... Leslie Nielsen! It's easy to forget that Nielsen was once a dramatic actor. In the summer of 1980, Prom Night was released just a few weeks after comedy classic Airplane!, which must have made it difficult for horror fans to take Nielsen seriously in the role. "A hospital? What is it?" "It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now."

I'm continuing to find photos of this year's Academy Award nominees from earlier in their careers. This time it's Eddie Murphy, who's up for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Dreamgirls. My husband and I were in the mood to watch an Eddie Murphy comedy last week, but we didn't think we'd like Norbit. Fortunately, Austin Film Festival was holding a special screening of one of Murphy's first films, Trading Places, the 1983 film in which he co-stars with Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Ackroyd, as shown in the above publicity still. At the time, Murphy had been a hit in 48 Hrs. and was well known for his recurring characters on Saturday Night Live. Trading Places holds up remarkably well, and the audience enjoyed the film a lot. I'm especially fond of Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy as the two millionaires who decide to use Murphy and Ackroyd as human guinea pigs in their experiment testing heredity vs. environment.

I was amused to see Al Franken in an early role as a stoner baggage handler. Frank Oz practically reprises his cameo in The Blues Brothers, which was also directed by John Landis. We rented Coming to America over the weekend to get even more of our Landis/Murphy fix, but the DVD was damaged and stopped playing about halfway through the movie ... before we could see Ameche and Bellamy again. Coming to America (what we saw of it) wasn't nearly as funny as Trading Places. My least favorite part of Trading Places is the costumes-on-a-train sequence, and I realized I prefer watching Murphy when he's not disguised in a fat suit or as an old man or with an accent. That may be why I'm in the camp that thought he was one of the highlights of Dreamgirls, although I'm torn between him and Jackie Earle Haley for the Oscar.

I've seen a lot of horror movies, and I mean a lot. Most of them weren't so great -- it was the 80's, so the slasher flick reigned supreme -- but the movie that really scared the bejesus out of me was Halloween. Released in 1978, John Carpenter continued the tradition of the "scream queen" with Jamie Lee Curtis and created (for better or for worse) an enduring horror franchise. To me, Michael Myers was absolutely terrifying -- forget Jason and Freddy, my money has always been on Michael.

The original Halloween has been digitally re-mastered and will be showing at selected theaters for two nights only (October 30-31). A 20-minute extra feature will also be shown, including interviews with cast and crew right after the screening. Now, the cynical side of me says that this is just a cheap cash grab to squeeze out some publicity for the upcoming Halloween 9 (2007), to be directed by Rob Zombie. The other side of me gets the 'willies' just thinking about that theme song. What classic horror movie would you like to get the chance to see again on the big screen?

[via Topix.net and AP Wire]

Despite the fact that I still have a really hard time watching the "Hey, Let's Be Really Cruel To Ken!" scenes (seriously -- those things are so sadistic that the movie no longer a comedy while they're going on), it's impossible to deny that A Fish called Wanda was one of the funniest movies of the 1980s. As far as I can tell, though, the only in-print DVD is pathetically bare-boned (if you don't count the very special-sounding booklet "featuring trivia, production notes and a revealing look at the making of the movie"), a state of affairs that is awfully frustrating for a movie filled with so much special feature potential (I mean, it stars 1/3 of Monty Python! How can the outtakes not be worth seeing?). Thankfully, come August, that horrible oversight will be corrected: MGM is finally releasing a DVD SE of which the film is worthy.

For less than $25, you'll get nearly 30 minutes of deleted and alternate scenes (I'm imagining 40 different deliveries of "Don't call me stupid!" crammed into a two minute montage), a couple of different documentaries, easter eggs, and A COMMENTARY TRACK FROM JOHN CLEESE!, in addition to other goodies. That, friends, is more like it. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go give more money to amazon.com.