11 Films That Did Not Need a Remake

Is a Police Academy remake really necessary? Obviously, someone thinks so. But in the Telegraph, Mark Monahan offers up a cautionary list of other, better films whose remakes we could have lived without:

• Psycho: Though there's not much "inherently wrong" with Gus Van Sant's 1998 reboot of the 1960 Hitchcock classic, there was just no point to it. "What’s the best thing to do with something unimprovable? That’s right: don’t try to improve on it."

• The Haunting: The recent remake of this 1963 Robert Wise film is an "extraordinary achievement"—in that Jan de Bont managed to one-up himself, delivering a movie that was even worse than his awful 1997 sequel, Speed 2.
• The Italian Job: The 1969 original is "pure, Swinging Sixties!" The 2003 version, on the other hand, is the movie "minus all the charm and fun."
• Clash of the Titans: You may have forgotten, due to 2010's "morass of uninspired CGI as magical as a Lidl car park," but the 1981 original "soared like a winged horse in places."
• The Thing: "You can pretty much close your eyes, throw a stick, and hit a marvelous John Carpenter film that has been dreadfully remade."

Click for Monahan's full list. (More movie remakes stories.)