Back in the 80's the world had not yet been saturated with the glut of terrible, cash-in, soulless remakes that we currently have so when stuff like the THE THING or THE FLY came out everyone didn't wretch in terror at the idea of a remake. Also those movies were around 30 years old by the time they were remade and not something that was solely redone for the purpose of inserting white or black American faces into a foreign-made film from the year before. Basically what these 80's remakes accomplished was to update the practical FX work and put a new spin on something very familiar. This particular example might be the last time Hollywood did a halfway decent retread. Not that this movie is perfect. It suffers from typical late-80's cheesy dialogue and some of the FX are a bit clunky(on the flip side some are actually done really well) but it's basically just a gorier version of the original. It even takes place in a small town that has a very 50's feel to it and has the "no one listens to the teenagers" device used a bunch in that era. While it might not be up there with THE FLY or THE THING I still think this is worth checking out for horror fans from back in a time when remake didn't automatically equal forgettable garbage.
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