John Dies at the End Contest Winners

UPDATE: If I don’t hear from winner “Lethargic Lad” by the time the weekend’s over, I’m reassigning that prize.

I love when I can give away three prizes. Always an easier choice than just going with one. In this case, it wasn’t too hard: the assignment was to describe a terrible reboot of a Don Coscarelli film. Since there aren’t many of those, and a lot of you have a go-to well of terrible movie people – Nic Cage, Tyler Perry, Michael Bay, Rob Zombie and…Justin Bieber? – I could simplify things a bunch this time by picking the ones who made the best joke first.

As always, the honorable mentions come first.

I see what you did there, filmphilosophy69:

Bubba Ho-Tep remade by Don Coscarelli

List of terrible thing that could happen:

No Bruce Campell

The movie dives into Elvis’s/Sebastian Hoffs past

The movie makes it clear that Elvis/Sebastian Hoff is Elvis

It stays in production hell

No black sidekick who claims he’s JFK

A title that is not Bubba Ho-Tep

A movie that hops onto the vampire bandwagon instead of less seen monsters like the mummy

Elvis/Sebastian Hoff is not elderly

But seriously, from all the things I can discern from the imdb page, these issues are all a part of the Prequel, Bubba Noseferatu and as a horror/film nerd I’m seriously worried. Also I still need to see John Dies at the End. So I could really use that DVD.

VindicaSean‘s could easily be Dreamworks’ next cartoon:

Beastmaster Remake

Director: Shawn Levy

Starring: Kevin James, Kate Beckinsale, Jayden Smith

Paul Blart himself stars as the eponymous ferret wrangler Durr (misspelled on purpose by me, purposefully by the studio to make jokes about his intelligence), with Kate Beckinsale in a very Racquel Welch-inspired leather cut-off bikini. The animals talk, and we the audience understand them. They make pop culture references and embarrass Kevin James whenever possible. They talk like the Chipmunks from that awful CG-laden abortion with Jason Lee. Christopher Lee sleepwalks his way through the movie as the villain, who has suspiciously borderline racist-sounding hench…things. Oh, and don’t get your hopes up about Beckinsale. It’s rated PG-13.

isaacjfeldberg brings the Cage with aplomb:

Beastmaster

Director: actor Nicolas Cage

Starring: Robert Pattinson as the Beastmaster, Kate Upton as Tanya, Nicolas Cage as Maax

Nicolas Cage opts to direct and co-star in a remake of The Beastmaster, believing only he has the creative vision and talent necessary to create a truly breathtaking reboot. He searches for celebrities with large fan-bases and, after seeing a double feature of Twilight and Cosmopolis, determines that Robert Pattinson has the look of Beastmaster. After signing the confused actor, Cage puts him on Taylor Lautner’s fitness regimen and gives him a month to bulk up. Meanwhile, he commissions M. Night Shyamalan and Stephanie Meyer to co-write the screenplay, explaining, “It needed an air of mystery, mysticism and sexuality to it that the original Beastmaster neglected.” After watching Kate Upton’s ‘Cat Daddy’ video fifteen times (for research), Cage casts the beautiful young model, saying, “Have you SEEN this girl? And ‘Cat Daddy’ is an animalistic dance that only a true Tanya could pull off.” Out of time and options, he casts himself as Maax, saying, “I can play any character. I am the greatest actor of all time, and Maax will be a welcome challenge.” Cage notes, “I’m creating the hard-R Beastmaster. This is the movie that was meant to be. To communicate the bestial nature of the characters and story, all of the actors will be nude in every scene. Loincloths are restrictive and will not be permitted on the set. In addition, I find that Beastmaster is a timeless tale, and so I have chosen to set the film in present-day New York. I find that Beastmaster and Tanya are well-suited to the city atmosphere as characters. The final battle will take place on the SHIELD helicarrier and continue on top of the Empire State Bulding. I’m excited, you all should be as well.” The film will hit theaters later this year, and industry insiders believe that the budget will be approximately the gross GDP of a small country, a budget Cage defends by saying, “The Beastmaster was made for 3D and Smell-o-vision. He cannot be contained.”

MasterFlinter gets comic-booky:

MVL Productions bring their winning formula to The Beastmaster.

First up, you gotta hire a visionless director. After all, you can’t have things like ‘artistic vision’ getting in the way of making the big bucks. Bonus points if she/he comes from TV to keep the salary down. Michael Cuesta, you’re up.

Next you need to get the cast together. Anton Yelchin specializes in remakes that nobody asked for so he’s a shoe in for Dar. Olga Kurylenko has the exotic looks and experience in action flicks to be Kiri, plus she doesn’t have to get the girls out since it’s going to be PG13! The WWE’s Big E Langston makes his big screen debut as Seth. Christopher Walken brings his own brand of batshit insanity to the role of Maax.

In keeping with the Marvel ethos a few things need to be changed. Focus groups don’t like on screen human deaths or the occult. The only characters that will ‘die’ are the formerly hooded beast-warriors who will now be animated constructs. Rather than being stolen from his mother’s womb and birthed by a cow Dar will now simply be sent adrift down a river during a raid on his mother’s village. The terrifying vampire clan who aided Dar on his quest will now be golden-haired elves.

Finally, the one golden rule of MVL Productions: the villain must be endowed with shittier versions of the hero’s powers. Whereas Dar can speak to animals, Walken-Maax will only be able to mumble incoherently at them.

rpmarsh knows the Tyler Perry formula best:

Bubba Ho-Tep remade by Tyler Perry. Elvis would be Tyler Perry who after recovering from his coma finds out he is now old and fat. JFK would be Tom Cruise and the primary villain who summoned the mummy to feed off of the rest of the retirement home to keep him young. But all of this would be a side plot to the gripping tale of the retirement home’s nurse: a beautiful, educated, professional black woman trapped in a troubled marriage with her own mummy (her aging husband).

monstermensch ropes in Brett Ratner:

Ok, this is a cheap shot, but we all know that Hollywood is thinking about this RIGHT NOW!

Brett Ratner will direct a reboot of “John dies at the end”

John (Eddie Murphy) finds a meteor filled with some strange black liquid in his garden. After he and his neighbour David (Ben Stiller) touch the liquid, they gain superpowers.
At first they use their powers (which include basically everything the kids in “chronicle” could do) to impress women and screw with some assholes in the neighborhood.
Finally they have to fight a strenage creature known as “Largeman” from a paralleluniverse, who wants to reign over earth. A final battle ensues, which will remind us of the glory that was “Howard the duck”.
In the end our heroes win not only the fight for earth, but also the love of their respective women.

After Hollywoods experience with “john Carter”, the producers decide that no one wants to watch a movie with the word “John” in it, also since its rated PG no one can die. So the title is changed to “David rescues the world”.

Box office will put Titanic to shame.

perc2100 is creative, but I said to imagine a Hollywood remake, not an arthouse one:

In a move both heavenly and head scratching, Don Coscarelli’s BUBBA HO-TEP are sold off and snatched up by renowned Denmark filmmaker Lars von Trier. von Trier’s company Zentropa, known for making hardcore explicit pornography in a mainstream artistic way, decides to change the focus of the film from a battle between Elvis and the mummy to an NC-17 rated love affair. Von Trier further pushes the boundaries by casting a non-acting down syndrome afflicted 86 year-old Danish man as Elvis, who is constantly having violent sexual relations with not only a 101 year old man, but also with a dead fox (a returning character from von Trier’s ANTICHRIST who again utters the “chaos reigns” catch-phrase).

The only legit actor cast in the film is Tyler Perry in the role of JFK. The audacious BUBBA HO-TEP wins the Palm D’or at Cannes, is hailed by critics, and becomes the cult hit of the decade. Bruce Campbell weeps publicly that he wasn’t a part of the reboot.

and shadowoverportland comes up with a Michael Bay pitch that doesn’t sound like parody – it sounds like something he’d actually do for real:

Oh, the worst remake would be Bubba Ho-Tep. Picture this…..

Michael Bay picks up the rights to the film. Of course, a rewrite is in order, as the original doesn’t have enough explosions. So we start with the bus transporting the Egyptian mummy across Texas being hijacked by a cult out to restore the glory of the Ho-Tep dynasty. And they have access to several heavily armed helicopters, so a high speed chase ensue, as cars go flying through the air as they are shot full of holes and explode like mini nukes.

The cultist use the same flying suits used in Transformers 3 (because who needs something new in a Michael Bay movie if it looks cool), drive the bus off a bridge and use the suits to land safely by a nursing home.

The cultists allow Ho-Tep to absorb their souls, knowing the resurrected mummy would need more souls before being able to rule the world, and the nursing home will offer plenty of slow moving victims. But they didn’t reckon on the kung fu power of The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. Played by Nic Cage, he’s in hiding for his fans, loving life while playing hospital sex games with the hot nurse (Megan Fox) tasked with rubbing steroids on his junk.

The King discovers the mummy. but finds his kung fu skills can’t best Ho-Tep and his minions of darkness. He turns to a man who might be JFK (Tracey Morgan), who has access to an arsenal of high tech CIA weaponry, including a rocket powered wheelchair with front mounted gatling guns.

Armed to the teeth, the trio set out to Dallas, where Ho-Tep has transformed into a towering being able to spit out little mummy minions that morph into various mystical beings. Fox brings her shortest shorts and cut off tank top, while Morgan acts more like Reagan in his later years than JFK, yet still takes out the mummy horde. And Cage gets to shout out lines like “I’m filing you in alphabetical order!!! A,B,C,D,E…” and “How’d you get burned, mummy bitch? How’d you get BURNED?!?!?!” And, what the hell, he punches out a mummy disguised as Pedo Bear. Hey, it’s a Michael Bay film.

I’m not sure what to make of superdino19‘s idea – it scares me a little.

Movie: Bubbah Ho-tep

Director : Brian Henson

Actors: Jack played by John F Kennedy’s corpse in blackface

Elvis played by Elvis Presley’s corpse (note Kurt russell is an acceptable alternative if Elvis cannot be reached for filming, though Kurt may have to be knocked unconscious during filming)

Bubba Ho-Tep played by Boris Karlof’s corpse, reprising his star role as a mummy

The entire movie takes place shot for shot the same, with the exception that Jack, Elvis, and Bubba Ho-Tep are all played by their real life counterparts. (Boris Karlof actually being a mummy is a scientific fact, look it up if you need to) The movie is changed in only one fact, that the three lead actors are wheeled around on their own dolly, and each of them are in stages of puppet, marionette, or a combination of the two (this is why Brian Henson is chosen as director, for his previous “Muppet” work)

The actors lines are voiced over to sync with the puppet work by executive producer Paul Giamatti playing Bubba Ho-tep, Don Coscarelli as Jack (he does not get payed extra for this), and Kurt Russell voicing Elvis regardless of if his unconscious body or Elvis Presley acts.

After the jump, your winners…

Lethargic Lad‘s final casting suggestion really sealed the deal for me:

Barbara Ho Temp – Romantic Comedy (PG-13)

Written by E.L. James and directed by Michael Patrick King who gets replaced by Dennis Dugan halfway through the shoot due to creative differences.

A 3000 year old Egyptian woman gets a job as a secretary in a nursing home and falls in love. She then has to decide between an old Justin Bieber and a white Barack Obama.
Starring: Adam Sandler as Justin Bieber, Sarah Jessica Parker as the old Mummy (no makeup effects required), and Liam Neeson as President Obama.

EvilMonkeyPope gets points for originality and honesty, plus making a Michael Haneke reference:

Since Coscarelli has only directed 12 movies (half of which are sequels), I’ll pick the more obscure “Kenny & Company.” Hypothetical Hollywood can get the rights to it much cheaper than “Phantasm,” “Beastmaster,” or Bubba Ho-Tep.” The fact that it doesn’t have enough renown to justify a reboot is irrelevant. It can star Jackson “Evil Harpo!”Rathbone as the precocious pre-teen Kenny. Amanda Bynes can come out of retirement to play his crush, Marcy. Rob Scneider will be the class bully. Instead of bein set in the suburban 70s, it’ll now take place in the inner city during the 90s but with lots of anachronisms. Michael Haneke can direct it since he goes together with “wistful coming of age story” like Pixie Stix & diabetics. The skateboarding sequence will be replaced with drift racing. The scene where 12 year-olds discuss their misapprehensions about sex from the original film will be taken literally & lead directly to graphic scenes involving snowballing roofies while naked & brandishing screwdrivers. The studio believes playing up the Halloween setting into a slasher horror film will appeal to Coscarelli’s fanbase. Kidz Bop will do the soundtrack to contrast the film’s dour humorless tone. Now granted, I’ve never seen “Kenny & Company” but I reckon that puts me on equal footing with whatever studio exec is coked up enough to greenlight a reboot of it

and finally, while it’s possible the various Bay/Cage entries split the vote, I went for kylerexpop‘s take on the other old standby, in large part because I can actually see it happening.

Phantasm

Malcolm McDowell as Jebediah Morningside

Sheri Moon Zombie as Elizabeth Morningside

Directed by Rob Zombie

Rob Zombie reboots the acclaimed Phantasm series as only he can: by focusing entirely on Jedediah Morningside, the man who would be The Tall Man, as he and his wife Elizabeth tend to their twilight years together in a secluded farm house in the countryside. But Jebediah is consumed by dreams he can not understand, dreams of bizarre other worlds & warped creatures that seem to not only know him but recognize him as their master. As Jebediah finds a creative outlet in his workshop, constructing silver poles to mark out grazing spots for his goats & somehow creating roving silver balls that will be able to herd his cattle in from the fields, Zombie shows how much he misses the point entirely by shooting endless sequences of Sherri in horrible old age makeup pleading with Jebediah to find a way to either save her from the cancer that ravages her body or, if it comes to it, bringing her back from the dead to reunite with him forever

Congratulations, winners – email me to claim your DVD/book packages!