(As a way of welcoming my very favorite month of the year, I thought it would be fun to reprint one of the very few good articles I've ever written. So here it is!)

By: Scott Weinberg

House of Wax, starring Paris Hilton. The Fog, starring Wooden Superman. The Amityville Horror, starring Van Wilder.

Yep, it's tough to be an old-school hardcore horror fan these days, what with all the really atrocious remakes that keep flopping off of the studios' assembly lines. (If you paid money to see When a Stranger Calls, you're either one devoted horror fan -- or a really bored high school kid.) But since the Horror Fan is nothing if not loyally optimistic, we trudge off to each successive remake with a small kernel of hope -- maybe this one won't suck the proverbial egg. So while it's perfectly logical for a passionate horror geek to throw up his/her hands and shriek "Ack! Horror remakes! They all suck!!" -- the simple truth is that they don't all suck. The good ones are just pretty darn few and far between.

7. Night of the Living Dead (1990)-- Splatter-master Tom Savini got the chance to direct his own remake of Romero's all-time classic back in 1990, and -- whaddaya know? -- he did a pretty solid job of it! With extra gore dripping from the floorboards and the presence of genre favorites Tony Todd & Bill Moseley, this re-visit came long before the Remake Renaissance, but I think it still holds up pretty well today.

Right off the bat, I have issues with this list. Not so much for the fact that almost all of the films are sci-fi horror/thrillers, but because they left off a film with such a depressing ending that it still haunts me to this day. But first off, Den of Geek has compiled a list of what they feel are the 10 most depressing movie endings ever. Before you click over and check them out, be warned that massive amounts of spoilers await you. Here's their top ten: Soylent Green, The Elephant Man, The Descent, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Spider, Nineteen-Eighty Four, A.I. and -- drum roll please for number one -- The Mist.

Yes, valid points are made on all of them. Yes, they are depressing. But what about The Last American Virgin? Now there's a film with the most depressing ending I've ever seen (and if you've watched that film, you know exactly what I'm talking about). Off the top of my head, No Country for Old Men had a pretty depressing ending -- as did Goodfellas. There's Untamed Heart, Venus, Requiem for a Dream -- pretty much any film where someone is dying of an illness, but gets one last chance at love. Though it served as a bridge film, I thought Empire Strikes Back had a pretty depressing ending. Check out their list, then tell us which films were left off.

In your opinion, which film has the most depressing ending of all time? (Dammit, now I have The Last American Virgin ending stuck in my head. Sigh.)

UPDATE: Here's another list from our friend Alex on the 15 Bleakest Film Endings of All Time. A lot of the films you folks talked about in the comments are on his list, so hop on over and check it out.

Now and then, an interview yields an unforgivably tantalizing piece of information -- and, while 9 times out of 10 these nuggets are pure, idle, meaningless crazy-talk, now and then they're just too good to ignore. So it is today, as Empire pulls a sidebar from their recent interview with Diary of the Dead director George A. Romero where he idly mentions that one of his dream projects is a stage adaptation of ... John W. Campbell's Who Goes There?, later filmed as The Thing from Another World. Later, of course, filmed as The Thing.

It turns out Romero's a huge fan of the 1951 iteration of the tale, citing it as a major influence: "It really worked, it really scared me." And that admiration isn't just academic; Romero notes, teasingly, that "I watched The Thing many, many times but there's a reason for that ... I keep trying to get hold of the rights and I'd love to do it as a stage play." Romero then goes on to offer his own take on how to make the live theatrical version a more visceral experience: "I'd love to freeze the whole audience ... first of all, we'd have to chill the whole theatre down to some sub-zero temperature."

Empire points out that in a universe that's already offered us Evil Dead: The Musical, a live play of The Thing doesn't seem like a stretch; I'd also add that Cronenberg's The Fly is also due to hit the boards in an operatic adaptation in July. In his interview with Cinematical, Romero mentioned that he's already working on following Diary of the Dead with a sequel -- and, since we're indulging in some crazy talk, which project would you rather see the director focus on: More zombies for moviegoers everywhere, or a (literally) chilling night of theater for the lucky denizens of one city?

It's rather a strenuous life doing this stuff, I'll tell you, but every now and then you get acknowledgment. Like, say, a grotesque animated parody in the form of French critic Anton Ego. All summer long, I've had his little speech quoted at me: you know, the one about the natural sadism of people in the critic game? So lo and behold, how does Disney promote Ratatouille? "The Best Reviewed Film of the Year!" Despite what Ego says, nothing takes it out of you faster than writing a series of slams and pans.

The kind of film that really makes you want to stay up late writing about it, is the work with the fascinating tensions in it: between optimism and despair, between lust and disgust, and between the marketplace and the artist. Yet whenever I teach a class, the students always ask "What's the worst movie you've ever seen..." hoping that they'll hear some serious, foaming invective.

Just as the robin marks the arrival of April so does the turkey herald November. And I'll put it plain: I've seen some real damned bad 'uns in my time,, some real wattled, strutting, wobbling gobblers. Perhaps November is the time to memorialize just a few of these cinematic freezer-eagles. Say, for instance, The Vulture, a bonbon about strange black-feathered curse striking one of the most tedious rural towns in the British Isles.

Lots of things are scary: walking dead people, dudes with chainsaws, aerosol cheese (it's just wrong, I tell you). Sometimes, though, the chills can come from outer space, another dimension or a laboratory experiment gone horribly wrong. The greatest fear is a fear of the unknown, and what's more unknown than an alien life form or the endless expanse of space? Let's take a look at seven movies whose scares come from the world of science fiction.

Alien (1979)
"In space, no one can hear you scream," or so they say. I guess this is the obvious one to start with. Isolation is a key element of horror, and can you get more isolated than a space ship light years from home? The crew of the mining vessel Nostromo are awakened prematurely on their return trip to Earth to investigate a transmission from an alien world. The crew finds an ancient alien spacecraft, the mummified remains of one of its non-human occupants, and several large eggs. The creature inside one of the eggs gains entrance to the Nostromo by latching onto one of the crew members. Once aboard, the little beastie quickly grows into one of the most horrific and memorable monstrosities the screen has ever seen. I saw this one when it first hit theaters, I've seen it many times over the years, and I recently watched it again. Like Dorian Gray, this film just refuses to age. The effects are just as magnificent as ever, the story is tense and fast paced, and the cast is excellent. More importantly, though, this is one scary ride.

The Thing (1982)
A lot of people took me to task for not including this one in my Cinematical Seven: Cool Horror Films of the 80s. With a list of only seven you're not going to please everyone. Regardless, John Carpenter's The Thing is a remarkable film for a number of reasons. Not only is it one of the greatest horror films of all time, it's also one of the rarest of the rare: a remake that surpasses the original. Based on the novella "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell, Carpenter's version of the story is more faithful to Campbell than 1951's The Thing From Another World. In Carpenter's film, the members of an Antarctic research station find an alien space craft that's been buried in the ice for centuries. A creature with the ability to absorb and mimic other life forms gets thawed out and infiltrates the camp, creating one of the greatest combos of isolation and paranoia in horror history. Kurt Russell is one of the great movie bad asses as MacReady, the helicopter pilot who becomes the de facto group leader. The creature's pre-digital transformations are a thing (pun definitely intended) to behold, to say nothing of seriously gross.

Chewy movie morsels for Tuesday:

• Nick Films has decided to go back to one of the oldies but goodies of classic children's entertainment: the unicorn. With producer John Jacobs, the company has nabbed rights to Joe Aucoin's fantasy comedy spec, which is simply named ... Unicorn. The tale is about a single, over-worked father in Manhattan whose 5-year-old daughter really wants one of those fantastical creatures of her own. That's great and all, but are unicorns really the way to reach the kids these days? Let's just hope they don't widen appeal by placing pictures of them on the seat of sweatpants.
• Recently, Scott Weinberg brought us word that David Cronenberg, Howard Shore and Placido Domingo were going to adapt The Fly into an opera. Now, we've got rumors by way of Film-Ick that the non-Cronenberg movie remake is gearing up. According to the Canadian director, Nicolas Cage is itching to be in it. He reportedly told E!: "From what I hear, Nic Cage wants the part." Sure, the Jeff Goldblum hit was a remake itself, but do we really need to re-visit the topic every 20-30 years?
• After his crappy, crappy love-collaboration, Swept Away, Guy Ritchie has not only directed Revolver, but is gearing up for an ABC crime series, Suspect. Yes, another one, but to be extra-super different, this one looks at all of the suspects in a crime. Variety has now reported that Carrie-Anne Moss will play a "smart, plain-speaking cop" in the drama, joining Charles S. Dutton, Michael Ealy and Kathleen Munroe. Is Moss taking this role for some extra cash? Her career is still going strong, although I'm sure that her recent roles don't bring in half the money that The Matrix brought her.

Howard Shore has composed the music for about a dozen of David Cronenberg's films, including Scanners, Dead Ringers and A History of Violence. But my favorite collaboration between these guys came in 1986's drop-dead heart-stoppingly brilliant The Fly. So successful was this partnership that the old friends recently announced that, along with Placido Domingo, they'll be turning their version of George Langelaan's The Fly into an opera. Not just a musical, mind you, but a full-bore (three character) opera piece! What a strange and intriguing idea.

According to The CBC, the trio will have their Fly opera open in Paris on July 1, 2008 before moving over to Los Angeles some time in September. The production will consist of a chorus, a 75-piece orchestra and three characters: a baritone, a tenor and a mezzo-soprano. As a diehard fan of the flick, I'm guessing the ill-fated Seth Brundle is the baritone, his lady love the soprano and the horribly awful Stathis Barnes as the tenor. Too bad I won't be anywhere near Paris next July or Los Angeles next September.

This might be fresh news to many of you, but apparently Fox Searchlight has its heart set on mounting a fresh remake of The Fly ... only they're not exactly sure what it is they want to re-make. Do they want to head back to the source and "re-imagine" the short story by George Langelaan? Maybe they'd like a "re-do" on Kurt Neumann's 1958 adaptation or (perish the thought) David Cronenberg's 1986 remake? Heck, there's even a bunch of lame-duck sequels (Return of the Fly ('59), Curse of the Fly ('65), The Fly 2 ('89)) that are perfectly worthy of cannibalization.

One man who's probably not all that interested anymore is newcomer Todd Lincoln, a guy who's currently banging out a flick called Hack/Slash for Focus -- and who also (along with his partner, Martin Schenk) penned the first screenplay for Searchlight's impending Fly retread. Over at Fangoria, Mr. Lincoln somewhat immodestly describes his script as "a dark, smooth mixture of Val Lewton, Don Siegel and Roman Polanski," before explaining that the plan was to do a new take on Langelaan's original story. No fly head on a man's body, no telepods, no Brundlefly. The guy's screenplay actually sounded pretty cool ... but wouldn't you know it? "Last I heard, the people behind the people at the studio had changed their minds again and are leaning toward a straightforward remake," says Lincoln.

As for me, I say scrap the whole project. Then again, I'm speaking from the perspective of a passionate horror fan, and not of a studio executive who believes "horror remake" is synonomous with "easy money."