With the completely unnecessary remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still already vanishing from the charts, it should be said that remakes are extremely tricky business.

As with sequels, they need a reason to exist. The "creative" teams behind them often deliver a rehearsed line about how they loved the original so much, they felt compelled to rape its memory and drag its name through the mud of history.

Every once in a while, however, a remake emerges that matches its inspiration. Even rarer is the gem that surpasses it.

The first film is a longtime favorite of mine – John Carpenter’s The Thing. Not only is it better than the Howard Hawkes’ original, it is far closer to John Campbell’s excellent short story “Who Goes There” (which may in part account for its superiority.) Fantastic special effects from Rob Bottin are showcased here; no uber-sleek, fake-looking CGI. When the Thing changes form, it does so by messily breaking into its dark menu of shapes. A head rips off its neck, sprouts legs, and scuttles away for safety. Bones break and reform, giving the monster a sense of dimension and reality… and something we can only hope doesn’t exist in some hellish corner of the galaxy.

But the film’s excellence is not rooted in its special effects wizardry. Here is John Carpenter at his absolute finest direction. He paints a picture of true isolation and paranoia, serving up a morality-play on mistrust taken to its most demented extreme. Here also is a fiendish examination of biological life and its raw hunger for survival. Carpenter brings out the best in a superb cast led by Kurt Russell and Keith David, and juggles all film elements perfectly. He must have been truly inspired during the making of this movie — everything works, right from the instant the title opens like a blister popping from your TV.

The second film is also typical of 80’s sci-fi horror: special effects in splatter-based full-color. But it is nonetheless a truly remake that surpasses its original: David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Before he settled on playing nerdy caricatures, Jeff Goldblum gave cinema a chilling and credible performance of a brilliant man being ravaged by mutation and madness.

It’s too easy to dwell on the stomach-churning effects. The real star here is Goldblum’s acting, which makes every moment so very credible. The script-writing is smart, chillingly effective. The scene where he talks about “insect politics” is, I believe, the most horrifying moment in the film… his awareness of the disintegration of everything that makes him a human being left a cold chill in my spine. It’s all straight-up Cronenberg, too, whose obsession about physical permutations is his signature style (existenz, Videodrome) and even finds its way into the dialogue (look for the scene where Geena Davis and Goldblum discuss flesh and how it even makes old women crazy.)

Last on the list is a 1970s offering. The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers was the genre's perfect take on Cold War paranoia and McCarthyism. Not to mention, it stars a McCarthy too: Kevin.

The remake is, while not necessarily better than the original, almost comes across as a sequel. (Look for Kevin McCarthy's clever cameo.) Augmented by a better backstory and excellent visual effects, Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a frightening and kinetic horror film with a slam-bam ending. The camerawork is a bit eccentric, recalling the dutch angles and experimental editing of the previous decade, but the result is a classic nightmare. Too bad the latest attempt, The Invasion, failed to match the standard here.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-2106-DVD-Examiner~y2008m12d19-3-Scifi-Remakes-Actually-Worth-Seeing