A simple list of films and remakes that were either as good or superior to the original or worse.
Good remake: the Thing
Bad Remake: Psycho
Good Remake: The Italian Job
Bad Remake: Planet of the Apes
Man. There are a lot more bad remakes than good remakes.
Good Remake: Ocean’s Eleven.
Bad Remake: The latest ‘Around the World in 80 Days.’
Just saw a trailer for it. Boy oh boy, does it look crappy.
Original: The Front Page
Good remake: His Girl Friday
Good remake: The Front Page
Bad remake: Switching Channels
Original: What Price Hollywood?
Good remake: A Star is Born (Judy Garland)
Bad remake: A Star is Born (Barbara Striesand)
Original: Casablanca
Bad Remake: Caboblanco
Bad Remake: Barb Wire
Original: The Evil Dead
Good Remake: Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
Original: The Fly
Good Remake: The Fly
Good remake: Freaky Friday (and I’m not ashamed to admit it!)
Bad remake: The Haunting - though if what Jan de Bont claimed is true, it genuinely wasn’t his fault.
Good remake: The Ring
Bad remake: The Vanishing
Good remake: The Man Who Knew Too Much
Bad remake: Miracle on 34th Street (David Hartman version) 
The Richard Attenborough version didn’t look all that great, either, but I haven’t seen it to comment.
Good Remake - Sorcerer - remake of The Wages of Fear
Bad Remake - Get Carter with Sylvester Stallone
Original: Dawn of the Dead
Wait To See But I Suspect Bad Remake: Dawn of the Dead (March 19th, 2004) - Although there are many people who are complaining about valid reasons it will be bad, to me the first and foremost cardinal sin: WISCONSIN?!? What the f–k???
Thou shalt not make Romero zombie movies and not base them in Pittsburgh. So it is written, so it is done!
Sheesh, Wisconsin… what are they going to do, kill the zombies with CHEESE?!?
MeanJoe
This reminds me- Good remake, I gotta admit (I may be pelted)-
Night of the Living Dead
I won’t pelt ya. The first good remake I thought of was Night of the Living Dead as well. I like it better than the original myself.
Good Remake : Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The 1932 version with Frederick March and the 1941 with Spencer Tracy were both very good films. I haven’t seen the silent 1920 version, but the two I mentioned were proof to me that you can re-make a film within a decade and still have good results.
I agree, very good remake and I do prefer it to the original, mostly due to the improved special effects.
Good, until the last 10 minutes or so.
Spoiler if you’ve missed either version (which you really oughtn’t. As much as I push the original, the remake’s worth watching)
Having Ben actually be a zombie when they shoot him at the end SUCKED. The fact that it was a mistake in the original just capped the movie perfectly.
Ha! Talk about a remake that missed the point. “Before you die, you see the ring.” The title of the original refers to the ring of a telephone…
I actually liked the remake of Planet of the Apes,
all except for the ending, which I still don’t understand.
Somebody’s definitely missed the point, but it wasn’t the filmmakers. Here is a quote from Suzuki Koji, who wrote the original book:
Meaning that the title is up for interpretation. It’s far from being “the point” of the movie. I think that the makers of the American remake showed a lot of imagination for coming up with another, even creepier interpretation of the title that still fits in perfectly with the story.
Good Remake: The Ring
Other good ones already mentioned: Freaky Friday and His Girl Friday.
I liked the remake of Sabrina a lot better than the original, but I think I’m the only one on the planet who thinks so.
The Stephen King-approved remake of The Shining was just about as bad as made-for-TV gets.
And the Psycho remake is an abomination on every level: just a bad movie on its own merits, horrible for being a completely unnecessary remake of a movie that the filmmaker clearly didn’t understand. Gus Van Sant should’ve had his nose rubbed in it and been hit with a newspaper.
Really? Because, y’know, I’ve seen the remake and I still don’t have a clue what ring you supposedly see before you die.
The one on the video.
You watch the video (the most memorable part of which is the ring of light), you get a call, you die in 7 days. What’s not to get?
Not sure if this needs a spoiler, but just in case:
It’s the ring of light formed by the lid of the well that Samara’s mother dropped her into. When the cover was placed over the well to trap her inside, the ring of light it formed was the last thing she saw. The next 7 days it took her to die, she spent in total darkness. The video (and the visions you get after watching it) are psychic impressions Samara left on the tape as she was dying; she wants to force people to go through the same things she went through. Therefore, the last thing you see before you die is the ring of light from the top of the well.
Of course, the phone call is still in the American remake, and they get some scare value out of that version of “the Ring,” but they chose to emphasize the other one. In any case, I stand by my argument: the title itself is far from being the point of the story; if anything it’s something of an afterthought.