Inspired by this thread, what are the worst remakes (any medium).
I’ll start: Rear Window remade as Disturbia.
Excruciatingly bad.
Planet of the Apes.
Remade a bad science fiction movie into an awful science fiction movie.
Remakes are awful and unnecessary as a rule; good ones are the rare exception.
Wicker Man. They took a beautiful, understated creeper and turned it into a Nick Cage movie.
Casablanca was remade as the Pamela Anderson vehicle Barb Wire. Nuff said.
The Longest Yard
Death Race 2000 (remade as Death Race)
Rollerball
All favorite movies from my childhood, all turned into shit within the last few years. It’s only a mater of time until they rape Soylent Green.
If we qualify “worst” as the biggest drop-off in quality from original to remake, then the hands-down winner has to be the gawdawful CG crapfest that was the remake of The Haunting.
Also, “Rear Window” remade as “Rear Window.”
Yeah, but Helena Bonham Carter was a really cute monkey.
My submissions:
“The Shining.” Yeah, the remake was closer to the book, and yeah, Stephen King liked it. The problem is, Steve, that it was a pretty crummy book that Kubrick vastly improved by throwing half of it away. Maybe this doesn’t count, though, since it was a TV movie.
“Great Expectations.” There are several remakes of this, and the only other version I’ve ever seen is David Lean’s. But the Ethan Hawke/Gwyneth Paltrow one is an utter disaster.
Speaking of Dickens, any remake of “A Christmas Carol” that doesn’t have either Alastair Sim or Reginald Owen. George C. Scott did a reasonable reimagining of Patton as Scrooge for people who really need color. But other than that, in the name of all that’s holy or otherwise, stop remaking this thing.
I never saw the originial, but Disturbia was really fun, at least the first 2/3rds of it. The last 1/3rd lost something. Still a flick worth watching, IMO.
Except for the unintentional hilarity. I bought the DVD just so I could see the portrait of old Hugh Crane that hangs over the stairs over and over and over. Comedy gold.
A Muppet Christmas Carol was a very good remake, though.
Some bad ones that come to mind:
The Heartbreak Kid
The Bing Crosby Anything Goes
Marlon Brando’s Mutiny on the Bounty
Mussolini’s version of Quo Vadis?
Take a Hitchcock classic, remake it shot-for-shot, and you get crap.
Why mess with Psycho? Why presume that Vince Vaughn could hold Anthony Perkins’ freakin’ jock? Why destroy it with color? Why have one of the minor changes to the original be adding masturbating sounds while Norman watches Lila through the peephole? Why, why why, why?
Yeah, especially after seeing Vince Vaughn do all those comedy roles the past few years, it makes it impossible to watch it without cracking up.
Yeah, the casting definitely left you wondering. Vince Vaughn trying to kill Anne Heche. 
“War of the Worlds” was remade badly. The original was great ,with high quality actors and cutting edge effects of the time. They mishandled the ending in the remakes.
The "Thing "was a scary grabber in the early 60s. It lost a lot when it became a shapeshifter.
The original “Invasion of the body Snatchers” was a tense and exciting movie. The new ones were not as good.
I have to disagree with that assessment. The remake was scarier and more faithful to the original story. It is an improvement.
Disagree on that point. I think the 1978 version has a fair amount of chills and also works as a pitch black satire of the New Age movement.
I’m probably in the minority, but I think two of the remakes of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” are pretty good because both bring something new to the material. The original 1956 version was perfect for the Cold War fearing audiences of its time. The 1978 version was an appropriate update and comment on the dangers of conformity. The 1993 version asks how would you know people were being taken over, if the ones being taken over were well-disciplined soldiers who are trained to normally act like pod people? (Plus this one has Gabrielle Anwar nudity.)
I haven’t seen the most recent version but I’ve heard it sucks.
About three years time roughly.
An oldie, but I thought that the '78 remake of King Kong was generally stinky. The Peter Jackson version was OK, but still didn’t outdo the original.
How were the endings mishandled in the remakes? The ending of neither the book, radio play nor two major movies deviates much, if at all.