Seven Great Movies You Did Not Know Were Remakes

1. Scarface (1983): The original “Scarface” was released in 1932 during the beginning stages of the “great depression.” Paul Muni played the original Antonio “Tony” Camontewho’s has a more visible scar than Al Pacino’s Tony Montana. Both men are shot down by the lawmen and both die with the phrase; “The World Is Yours.”

2. Three Men and a Baby (1987): This was based on the French movie “Three Men and a Cradle” which was released two years earlier. While the American version did do a sequel three years later based on the success of ‘Baby.’ The French counterpart waited much longer to follow up in which the baby is a teenage girl entering adulthood, rather than the baby entering childhood. Their sequel finally came out in 2003 with the title “18 Years After.”

3. 12 Monkeys (1995): This 129-minute movie was inspired by a 28-minute French movie in 1962 called “La Jetee.” There is also a TV series adaption of “12 Monkeys” currently on SyFy, which is about to make its sprint to the finish line as the series will reach its climax in 2018.

4. Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986): The very first Walt Disney movie to get an R rating, thus the need for the Touchstone Pictures imprint which was created two years earlier. The movie was based on the 1932 French movie “Boudu Saved from Drowning.” Before that ‘Boudu’ was a stage play.

5. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988): This movie starring Steve Martin, and directed by Frank Oz of Jim Henson’s Muppets had its origins from the 1964 movie “Bedtime Story” which started Marlon Brando and Shirley Jones.

6. A Fistful of Dollars (1964): This movie started the trend of American western movies made in the countries of Italy and Spain and/or directed by Italians (aka Spaghetti Westerns), but it was a movie made in the east that planted the seeds. It was a jidaigeki (the Japanese term for period movie) that was made three years earlier in Japan about a rōnin (a samurai without a lord or master) in 1860 who takes on crime lords in a small town. The movie was titled “Yojimbo.”

7. Airplane (1980): The movie itself is a parody of Arthur Hayley’s “Airport” trilogy of the 1970’s. What you may not know is that the overarching plot of “Airplane” is based on the 1957 movie “Zero Hour” which itself was a serious movie. Makes you want to avoid eating any fish on a plane, since bad fish is part of the plot in both versions. If they made this movie today, they might have called it; “Fish on a Plane.”