Legendary producer Roger Corman passed away last year at the age of 98, but the stories he brought into the world will live in forever. Not only are we getting a remake of the Corman classic Deathstalker next month, but Variety has just broken the news that distributor Clever Creature has, through its sister company Fast Motion Films, acquired the remake rights to three films that can be found in the library of Roger Corman and his wife / fellow producer Julie Corman: The Haunting, The Terror Within, and Battle Queen 2020.
Variety lists the release year for the original The Haunting as 1992, but Corman didn’t release a movie called The Haunting that year. However, he did bring us a movie with that title in 1990 – and it happened to be a reworked version of his 1963 horror film The Terror, which starred Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff. That production was a mess, as Corman shot the first days of it while working with just the sketchiest outline of a plot. It was then up to directors Francis Ford Coppola, Dennis Jakob, Monte Hellman, and Jack Hill to cobble together the rest of the movie. In it, Lt. Duvalier (Jack Nicholson), a French soldier, loses contact with his unit and is forced to wander alone near the Baltic Sea. While in search of his regiment, he spies Helene (Sandra Knight), a mysterious beauty, walking by herself. Mesmerized, Duvalier begins tracking her, but she vanishes. He later catches up with her and follows her into a castle, where he encounters the bizarre Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff), finds signs of witchcraft and learns the shocking truth about Helene. Additional footage shot by cast member Dick Miller then turned The Terror into The Haunting in 1990.
The Terror Within was more straightforward. Directed by Thierry Notz, that 1989 sci-fi horror film was set in a post-apocalyptic world where a chemical warfare accident has left the surface populated by mutated “gargoyle” creatures. Survivors in an underground bunker, after rescuing a pregnant woman named Karen from the surface, discover she has been impregnated by a gargoyle. When her monstrous offspring is born, it escapes into the bunker’s ventilation system, and the scientists must fight for survival against both the monster and the horrifying implications of the creature’s unnatural reproduction. George Kennedy, Andrew Stevens, Starr Andreeff, and Terri Treas star. The creature costume created for this movie was later reused in Watchers II and Crystal Force.
Directed by Daniel D’Or, the sci-fi action movie Battle Queen 2020 came along in 2001 to tell us another post-apocalyptic story: After a civilization is all but wiped out by a comet, evil forces take advantage of the weak. A powerful woman fights back for the sake of the vulnerable. Julie Strain starred alongside Jeff Wincott and Zerha Leverman.
I’m kind of surprised to hear that anyone would want to remake The Haunting / The Terror, but I’m interested to see how it’s going to turn out. I’m totally on board for a return to The Terror Within, and Battle Queen 2020 sounds like fun. I haven’t seen the original Battle Queen 2020, so I need to fix that oversight.
Are you interested in seeing remakes of these three Roger Corman productions? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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