Recovered

Welcome to Carpenter Summer, where Dan and Keith take on two 2005 remakes of vintage John Carpenter flicks! First up, The Fog, one of three 1980 horror movies starring Jamie Lee Curtis, in which an eerie fog sweeps over a small California town, bringing with it ghost sailors out for revenge! Or their money back. Or both? Twenty-five years later, Early-Smallville Tom Welling and Just-Started-Lost Maggie Grace headline a remake of this simple ghost story that lathers on lore, sets up a love triangle that doesn't pay off, and ends with a payoff that has almost no set-up. Is it a successful expansion of the original's concept, or simply too much mustard? We discuss, you are entertained.

Throw on your special glasses and get ready to get haunted as Dan and Keith dig into 13 Ghosts. Back in 1960, William Castle attempted a new gimmick: a special pair of glasses for audiences that either made ghosts appear, or made the movie utterly incomprehensible, as a family inherits their ghost-hunting uncle's house only find it filled with approximately a dozen ghosts. Forty-one years later, it's the cast in the special glasses as Tony Shalhoub must save his family from a little over ten ghosts with help from Matthew Lillard, and a bit of ghost writing from James Gunn. James Gunn, Matthew Lillard... well clearly Dan is going to fit Scooby-Doo in here somehow. Who haunts the best? Find out!

Casablanca! Generally regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made, perhaps the most correct the Oscars have ever been, and the last movie you'd ever expect to see on a podcast about remakes! So why is our favourite they-slash-femme comedienne Munsi-Parker Munroe joining Keith to talk about it? It's not like there's a secret 90s Casablanca remake that's also a grim sci-fi comic book adaptation starring Pamela Anderson, right? Right? RIGHT!? Love for a cinema classic quickly gives way to deep dives into a 90s schlock flick that might not be good, but was it the Casablanca remake we needed? Find out!

While James Gunn's Superman is soaring through theatres, Dan and Keith look back at the first time he wrote a big-screen adaptation of a Warner Bros. franchise: a pup named Scooby-Doo. Digging into the casting, the rewriting of the pitch, we ask: is it over-hated? Is it more clever than it's given credit? Maybe. Then it's time to jump from 2002 to 2020 as WB tries to launch a Hannah-Barbera Cinematic Universe with Scoob!, teaming up Mystery Inc. with less familiar characters Blue Falcon, Dyna-Mutt, and Captain Caveman. Do they try too hard to launch a franchise? Is it funnier than we think? Or is trying to do a Scooby-Doo movie and Blue Falcon: Brave New World at the same time too much? We break it all down for you!

Dan, Keith, and guest Emma Gallaher are back to Transylvania for the 21st century Nosferatus! In 2024, horror auteur Robert Eggers decided to take another spin at Count Orlok... and perhaps because of this some amateur filmmakers Kickstarted their own version in 2023, with almost three recognizable stars in the mix. We tackle this low-budget retread first, which makes some odd choices with the central trio, then move on to Eggers, which shifts the focus from money-focused Thomas to tormented Ellen. Does Doug Jones as Orlok make the amateur version worthwhile? How does Eggers manage retelling the first vampire movie? We discuss, you are entertained!

Dan, Keith, and returning guest Emma travel as far back in film history as we've ever been to discuss the cinematic attempt at to file the serial numbers off Dracula with Nosferatu! In this first installment, it's heute auf Deutsch time as our hosts break down 1922's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, one of the earliest and most groundbreaking surviving horror movies of the silent era. How does it hold up? Can it hold up, asks Keith? Then we jump to the 70s, as Werner Herzog takes his own spin at the story, but while very much adapting Nosferatu brings back the names from Dracula? Odd choice. What other odd choices hit as the 70s auteur era reimagines the classic ugly-style vampyr? Join us to find out!

People always say "You couldn't make a [insert Mel Brooks classic] today." But were there movies Mel Brooks shouldn't have remade? That's the question facing Dan and Keith, presented by guest Olav Rokne of the Hugo Book Club, as we tackle To Be Or Not To Be. In 1942, Jack Benny starred in a farcical comedy about a theatre troupe rallying to save the Polish resistance from the Nazi occupiers, an occupation that was still very much ongoing during the film's release. Did that make the comedy a tough line to walk? Then, four decades later, Mel Brooks produced and starred in a remake that hit the throttle on the comedy yet still had more insights into the Holocaust, thanks in part to hindsight. Dan, Keith, and Olav break them both down, figure out who did what best, and how much the subject matter affected the laughs. Join us!

Dan and Keith head all the way back to the time to that brief overlap between the Golden Age of Hollywood and the dying days of vaudeville with comedy legends the Marx Brothers. In A Night at the Opera, Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx were said to hit a new height by blending their signature antics with a more grounded emotional arc (outsourced to supporting characters), but how do those antics hold up? Are aspects a little too vaudeville for a modern audience? And who would be bold enough to attempt to remake a Marx Brothers movie nearly six decades later, and why have you never heard of it? Should you have heard about it? Well, we're going to tell you about it. Listen in!

Dan and Keith head to ancient Greece and classic hero Perseus to weigh old-school stop motion against modern CG in the Clashes of the Titans! Back in 1981, legendary animator Ray Harryhausen wrapped a storied career with Clash of the Titans, in which Harry Hamlin's Perseus fights his way through stop-motion monsters to win the girl and claim a throne. Nearly three decades later, an all star cast (and Sam Worthington, fresh off one of the biggest hits in film history so you probably haven't already forgotten him) takes on a new twist on Perseus, with no throne to claim and the wrong girl gets chased, and only a few big name actors get wasted. Who did Perseus better? And who should have quit while they were ahead? Find out!

Turns out Rollerball was not the first instance of a Norman Jewison classic being remade by John McTiernan, so Dan and Keith strap in for round two, the Affairs of the Thomases Crown. In 1968, last days of the Hays Code, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway squared off as bored millionaire turned bank robbery mastermind Thomas Crown and the insurance investigator who gets pulled into his orbit while trying to prove he's the thief, in a languid romance featuring some crimes. In 1999, when sexy crime thrillers were fully off the leash, Pierce Brosnan's Thomas Crown orchestrates an art heist just to feel alive, putting him in the path of insurance investigator Rene Russo, for a much sexier game of cat and mouse. Which story of romance and betrayal manages a better theme? Better heists? Fewer crimes by law enforcement? Find out!