The ’70s Sci-Fi Movies That Desperately Need A Remake

Hollywood has been trying to remake Disney’s 1979 The Black Hole for what seems like forever. High profile screenwriters like Travis Beacham (Pacific Rim) and Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) had been attached to the project at various stages of the development, but every time you think there is forward momentum building, it hits a wall for one reason or another.

The cult classic is the story of the Palomino, a deep-space exploration vessel that comes across the USS Cygnus, a ship that has been lost for years and years. Improbably, the Cygnus is suspended on the edge of a black hole.

The only living crewmember left on the ship is Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), and a collection of robot assistants. As you can imagine, he’s gone a wee bit insane, and says that the ship was damaged in a meteor storm and the rest of the crew evacuated and headed back to Earth. The truth, however, is a much darker, more dangerous affair.

Given the massive evolution of special effects technology, there are no limits to the things a studio could do with a Black Hole remake. At the same time, you run the risk of churning out yet another bland, empty attempt at a sci-fi adventure, glossing over all of the things that make this a unique movie and made you want to remake it in the first place.

I grew up with Buck Rogers as a regular staple of my childhood, with Gil Gerard in the title role as a strapping 20th century astronaut frozen in suspended animation for 500 years.

Once awakened, he finds himself in a strange future filled with crazy aliens, irritating droids, and Erin Gray in a series of puberty-inducing outfits.

But what you might not remember is that the feature-length pilot actually got a theatrical release several months before the show premiered on TV. It’s great stuff when you’re eight, but it’s painfully cheesy when viewed through non-nostalgic eyes.

Which actually makes it perfectly suited for a remake. The “man out of time/space” thing is a great way to ground the crazier science fiction elements — just look how well the John Crichton dynamic worked in Farscape. But Buck doesn’t have the hope of returning to his own time; he’s stuck in 25th Century, like it or not.

This is one of those properties that could go a lot of ways. You can play the concept as a straight-up sci-fi space adventure, and with the right people involved, that could be a blast. The far trickier task would be to shoot for a Guardians of the Galaxy-style mix of comedy and action.

The bad version of that — I’m picturing Will Ferrell as Buck — could be truly awful. But with big-screen space operas making a return, it’s time for somebody to thaw Buck out and let him have another go. (And there’s already a recent comic revival if Hollywood needs some ideas.)

1972’s Doomsday Machine is widely considered one of the worst films in existence, in the same orbital neighborhood as Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, only with far less vision going into its creation.

For one, it saw two different directors (and the uncredited Herbert J. Leder) come and go during production, which was halted at one point and then started up again at a later date without any of the original stars or locations.

As if the flagrant use of preexisting footage wasn’t bad enough, it essentially turns into a different movie near the end. And it’s pretty glorious, if shoddy MST3K-ready cinema is what you’re looking for.

For a remake, I say someone should approach it like a sci-fi Tropic Thunder, where the layers of filmmaking are pulled back in a satirical way. The film’s plot is standard ridiculousness:

China has the titular doomsday device and they’re going to blow everything up, so the U.S. sends a space crew to Venus, and TWISTS happen.

Whether this would be a tongue-in-cheek approach to the concept like a Larry Blamire (The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra) movie or a faux making-of Doomsday Machine documentary, a remake of some kind needs to happen, and then theaters across the country could play the original in celebration of the remake, and that’s all anybody really needs in their lives.

The 1976 Logan’s Run film starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter is justifiably a cult classic, but Hollywood has already been trying to get a remake up and running for years now.

It was X-Men director Bryan Singer’s baby for a long time, and then Drive‘s Nicolas Winding Refn was going to do a big-screen version with his man-muse Ryan Gosling. That’s fell apart too.

You could do a straight remake of the movie, but there’s also plenty of material to mine in the original book written by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, and the two sequels, Logan’s World and Logan’s Search.

Notions of overpopulation and limited resources are even more timely now than they were in 1976, and it would be fascinating to see what the future of Logan’s Run might look like now, with our own present as the speculative launching-off point.

Plus, it’s just a great, meaty narrative concept: would it be worth dying at 30 (or 21 in the books) if all those years were filled with hedonistic excess? And would the deal still sound like a good one once you’re about to blow out your final birthday candles? Just remember, there is no Sanctuary…

I want to get this clear right out of the gate, I’m not lobbying for a Soylent Green reboot or remake or whatever label the studios would slap on such a rehash, and I’ll be the first one to decry it as unnecessary.

Unless they can bring Charlton Heston back from the grave to star in it. That I could get behind: a zombified Heston shuffling around, moaning, “It’s people,” and chomping down on random passersby.

It is an uneven film, to be sure, and there are some woefully underused plot elements, but the themes of industrialization, pollution, and corporate greed gone wild are still every bit as resonant today as they were so many decades ago.

Of all the various things I would want out of a remake of Richard Fleisher’s 1973 dystopian vision, there is one particular thing I desperately need to see.

Granted, it was the early 1970s, and there were different rules in regards to human safety on a movie set, but when you watch those crowd scenes with the bulldozers scooping people up, it’s hard to imagine that people aren’t actually being mauled and injured.

Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but that’s definitely the impression that comes across. It adds a visceral edge to the whole movie, a feeling of danger that gets you emotionally invested in the events on the screen.

Don’t get me wrong, Mike Hodges’ 1974 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1972 novel is a perfectly suitable movie for the time period, and is probably still compelling.

But sci-fi fans are in need of a smarter and more nuanced look at technology’s stronghold over human existence and identity.

And while I’d love for a brand-spanking-new idea to come out of some sharp screenwriter’s brain out there, a dark and minimalist return to Crichton’s original novel seems like the best way to get this accomplished. (At least that’s what the electrodes in my head are making me think.)

The story centers on computer-fearing genius Harry Benson, an epileptic who allows surgeons to implant a pacemaker in his brain to try and control his seizures.

Unfortunately, the implant takes little time to start working against proper protocols, and Harry begins experiencing extreme erotic pleasure from one of the electrodes, which leads his behavior to become increasingly erratic and violent.

I’m picturing David Cronenberg’s Crash, only mixed with the suspense of his body horror films. This doesn’t have to be about the world’s fastest computers or giant advances in technology. It just has to be about a guy who succumbs to the very thing he was afraid of all along, and that’s an idea timeless enough to earn a remake.