george kennedy Tagged Articles at Cinematical

As if he didn't have too many comic book adaptations to write, Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand) has been named as the new screenwriter of Joel Silver's remake of The Dirty Dozen, which we unfortunately heard about early last year. Originally it was reported that the movie was being scripted by three high-profile writers, André Nemec, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, but apparently their work isn't good enough and a rewrite is now necessary. Of course, one has to wonder why Silver needs to go through so many writers when there's already a perfectly good screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller. It isn't like too much needs to be updated; the movie is set in World War II. I'm not familiar with E.M. Nathanson's original novel, though, and I guess the first movie may have omitted some things that the new adaptation could include. Anyway, I guess it just isn't common practice to reuse an old script when remaking an old movie.

For those who haven't seen The Dirty Dozen, it's about a group of military criminals sent on a suicide mission to assassinate Nazi officers. It features an iconic ensemble of actors, most of whom were reunited to voice characters in Small Soldiers as a sort of homage. To the faithful, it will be very, very difficult to see a new version without Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, George Kennedy and the rest. I don't know what the time frame is for the production of the remake, but we may get to see it as early as next year. And if Silver can get the project going soon, maybe it can even go head to head with Penn's buddy Bryan Singer's Hitler assassination movie, Valkyrie. They might even make a good double feature -- or you can rent the original Dirty Dozen and then go see Valkyrie and more possibly experience a great double feature.

Did you guys know that Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) has never been released on DVD? That's right: One of the most imaginative, intelligent, and thought-provoking science fiction films of all time (yes, I said all time) is still sitting in some vault collecting dust, while genre contemporaries like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, War of the Worlds, and The Day the Earth Stood Still have all hit DVD sporting all sorts of well-deserved bells & whistles. Directed by Black Lagoon's Jack Arnold and penned by certified ultra-genius Richard Matheson, The Incredible Shrinking Man stands as one of the most influential movies in the history of Weinberg. Plus all that stuff with the cat, the spider, and the dollhouse ... awesome.

So this got me to thinking about other movies that I loved as a kid, most of which (stuff like 1941 and Jaws 2 and The Goonies) already have a home on a special little DVD shelf all their own -- but SOME of which have never seen life as a shiny digital disc! For example, how is it that we can get 11 different versions of (the truly awesome) Evil Dead 2 -- yet The Incredible freakin' Shrinking Man remains DVD MIA?? I actually have a theory on this one: Universal owns the rights to Shrinking Man, and that studio has spent several years trying to cobble together a remake with Keenen Ivory Wayans as the director. One can only assume that Uni is waiting for that retread to bear box office fruit before releasing the original film on DVD as a "tie-in," which (obviously) annoys me to no end.

So listed below in this most recent edition of Cinematical Seven are a bunch of semi-obscure 1980s horror movies that I'd really like to see on DVD. Why switch over from The Incredible Shrinking Man to the generally unpleasant topic of "forgotten 1980s horror movies?" Because a wise man once said "write what you know," and I know very, very little outside the realm of 1980s horror movies. (OK, and Futurama and Halo ... and The Phillies. I know a lot about those things, too.)