You were obviously using your Illusion-O viewer wrong. If you look through the blue part you don’t see the ghosts. No telling how many heart attacks were prevented by that blue filter… (PT Barnum had nothing on William Castle.)
I like William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977) better than the French original Le Salaire de la Peur[sup]*[/sup] (1953). Most critics seem to prefer the original, but I’ve found a few folks who agree with me.
- “The Wages of Fear”.
I didn’t, for one thing it basically dropped the whole “real or not?” ambiguity half way in and never bothered with it again, the original had the guts to take that ambiguity all the way to the end. The director reveals what he considers to be the truth in the DVD commentary, but you can watch the film by itself and make up your own mind.
Battlestar Galactica is the premier example for me of the remake was better, the original show had a fascinating premise which was dumped about two seconds into the pilot and it just became a Star Trek clone. The remake not only stuck to the premise, it brought in some new elements like examining the nature of war and the dehumanizing of the enemy, along with questions about what makes one human.
Ending up with a show that felt like an adaptation of a golden era scifi novel, some of the best scifi in decades. The ending divided fans I’ll admit.
Douglas Sirk’s 1954 version of Magnificent Obsession with Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson is even more melodramatic than the 1935 version starring Irene Dunne.
I don’t feel qualified to declare one better, but I enjoy the later one more. That might just be the technicolor, but I think it’s more than that.
I believe it counts as a remake. Both films credit the the original novel, but the 1954 film is “based on the screenplay” used in the 1935 version.
The '70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland was, IMHO, a much better movie than the original '50s classic, iconic though the earlier version may be.
I think Heaven Can Wait was superior to Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
I am going to disagree that a work based off of another source material can’t be a “remake.” Now and then a film may be made that’s completely naive to the previous versions, but that’s going to be extremely rare. In practice, new films draw from everything surrounding the work, including previous movies based on it.
I was going to bring in another Sirk film. The 1959 Douglas Sirk Imitation of Life is one of the great masterpieces of film, full of brilliant commentary on the American dream, film, and race. It’s one of the greatest masterpieces on film.
The 1934 Imitation of Life was a fairly straightforward, not particularly interesting film.
A lot of people seem to feel that His Girl Friday was superior to the Adolphe Menjoe The Front Page, but I actually prefer the earlier version. I like HGF, too, and the 1970s version with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. But I don’t like the one set in the TV newsroom.
John Huston’s Moby Dick is definitely better than the Sea Beast.
I prefer Hitchcock’s later version of the Man Who Knew Too Much to his earlier black and white version, even though the first had Peter Lorre.
The first BBC version of Day of the Triffids is much better than the first theatrical film version.
The 1980s version of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters is infinitely better than the 1950s rip-off the Brain Eaters, but it’s still far short of what it could be (despite Donald-anything-for-a-back-Sutherland doing a good job, and the inspired casting of Richard-Conspiracy-Theory-Belzer as an agent who – Surprise! – gets captured by the slugs. )
What did he say? Is it like Blade Runner, where the director’s opinion is different from others?
I think they tried to raise the question again in the last scene, with their own Inception ‘spinning top’ moment. But yeah, it became less important as a plot element somewhere along the way.
The 1954 Judy Garland version of A Star is Born is superior to the 1936 Janet Gaynor version, though the latter is still a good movie. Judy’s is just a little bit better.
I liked the 2005 version of Dawn of the Dead better than George Romero’s original.
You and me both. I enjoyed the music much more in the remake as well. At least I know one other person in this world agrees with me on this! 
Ocean’s 11 is the first movie I thought of, although I thought the Rat Pack version was okay (but not great).
The first movie that came to mind for me is Little Shop of Horrors. The 1960 Roger Corman film is certainly low budget and has its own charms as a cult classic (a very early Jack Nicholson), but the 1986 musical version by Frank Oz surpasses it on many levels.
(TCM is showing the original this week, on 4/6.)
I don’t know if it could be called a remake, since it was based on the musical.
Peter Jackson’s King Kong was parsecs ahead of the 70s version.
You could argue that the Ed Norton movie isn’t a remake, but it’s a far superior treatment.
The circa 2000 Bedazzled (Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Hurley) is much, much better than the circa 1967 one (Peter Cook, Dudley Moore).
I wish we could plop John Wayne down in the middle of the remake. Everything else is much better, but I couldn’t get behind Jeff Bridges’ take on Rooster. He mumbled more than half-incoherently, which, while it was an interesting choice, sucked without subtitles.
As said above, Carpenter’s The Thing is far better. Batman Begins is better than any other live-action Batman origin story. Can’t speak to animated versions.
The Donald Sutherland version of The Puppet Masters was from 1994. I didn’t see the original, but for a low-budget production I liked it.
Speaking of the Coen brothers, I liked their version of The Ladykillers better than the original. I’m in the minority though.