Blumhouse has cemented itself as the top production company in the horror film world. In the last few years, they have started working with established properties like Halloween, Black Christmas, and Benji (it’s true). Blumhouse has a remake of the Universal Classic The Invisible Man and a horror reimagining of the classic television show Fantasy Island on the way.
With the track record they’ve made for themselves there is really no telling what they will attempt next. Hopefully, more modernizations of classic horror properties or new horrific takes on campier classics will come along from the genre powerhouse. Here are ten classics that they should take on.
The Universal Monsters
With Blumhouse’s take on The Invisible Man looking like a fresh and genuinely terrifying take on the classic, they are primed to take on the franchise that has been struggling to find its legs for a few years now. Reboots of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Mummy, and Creature From the Black Lagoon could all be scary again for today’s audiences if handled by the right people and treated like true horror movies instead of fun adventure or action films.
Blumhouse’s focus on smaller budgets and more scare-centric structure is exactly what the classic monsters need to feel fresh again, and even if the approach doesn’t work, it would be a rare original attempt.
Six Million Dollar Man
The classic adventure show where the non-wrestler Steve Austin uses his newly gained cybernetic enhancements to fight crime, come on. Blumhouse has already submitted their application for this one with their 2018 film Upgrade. Upgrade is a fantastic, vicious, and bleak take on the robotic enhancement premise that follows a man who becomes unstoppable after having a supercomputer put in his head.
Six Million Dollar Man could take the style and tone of Upgrade but throw in a large dash of Robocop and Terminator for good measure. A hyperviolent action-horror about a man who was saved from a spaceship crash by being put back together makes more sense than some of what Blumhouse has actually been tackling.
I Dream Of Jeannie
It might seem ridiculous to imagine this classic romantic comedy series as a horror film, but a year ago, Fantasy Island would have seemed equally crazy. The new take on Fantasy Island is to take the original premise of getting what you want, and then “monkey’s paw” it to be far more sinister.
The same exact ideas could be applied to Jeannie. Instead of the genie falling in love with her master, she looks for opportunities to twist his wishes to punish him, slowly escalating in how severe, and therefore how terrifying.
The Munsters
The horror-comedy sitcom about monsters living as a family has a lighthearted and wholesome tone that doesn’t seem built for horror despite using characters like Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. However, Blumhouse could make an interesting film by taking the familial set-up and simply letting the monsters be more monstrous. A film following the Munsters as they navigate their own relationships and conflicts at the expense of humans ripe for slaughter would make for a brilliant dark horror-comedy that would reinvent the classic while still giving fans of it what they would want from a reboot.
The Love Boat
Where better to go after Fantasy Island than to The Love Boat? The long-running hit show followed the passengers of a luxury cruise-liner as they constantly fell into romantic and/or funny situations. Take the same set-up, and then add a malicious twist somewhere in the itinerary and there’s a mid-budget horror reimagining right up Blumhouse’s alley. It would follow passengers out on the high seas looking for love and finding themselves instead trapped, due to someone or something on the boat having more sinister intentions than helping couples find love.
ALF
While this choice may just come from a selfish place of wanting to see ALF portrayed as a realistic alien beast instead of a felt puppet, it could work. The classic sitcom about an alien living with a family features one of the most lovable creatures in all of television. What better way to create horror than to ruin him?
In the show, the wise-cracking alien’s pod crash lands in the family’s garage. All this reboot would need to do is imagine what would have happened if the alien coming out of that pod was hungry for far more than the family’s housecat.
Bewitched
While the classic series about a normal man who marries into a family of witches was already made into a comedy film, it would be an entirely different movie under Blumhouse. A man slowly discovering his new wife is part of a secret society of witches and warlocks could easily move from fun to creepy without fully abandoning the ideas presented by the show.
Unlike the show, either the witches or the man would likely need to be up to no good for the conflict to build, but don’t put it past the company behind Insidious and Sinister to make even the twitching of a nose scary.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker
The horror mystery series from the ’70s only lasted one season but has since gained a cult following, becoming a hugely popular show to revisit. It followed journalist Carl Kolchak as he investigated crimes that seemed likely to be linked to the supernatural, then dealt with the monstrous entities responsible.
The show is in dire need of a reboot, and with Blumhouse’s track record of creating atmospheric horror, and their knack for doing intense action scenes on a budget, they are a match made in Hell for the evil seeking reporter.
Vampira
The campy female vampire was the first host of late-night television horror. She was a huge hit in the 1950s and has been emulated by nearly every host since, most notably Elvira. Blumhouse could easily reinvent the character as a host in some sort of anthology film, but that would be far less interesting, and more disrespect to her career than a straight vampire movie.
Seeing Vampira as the central character of an actual vampire horror film would be an interesting approach that was never taken when she was still acting as the character. The trouble would, of course, come from justifying the use of Vampira over any vampire, but with the respect that Blumhouse often brings its source material, they could figure it out.
Tales From The Crypt
It seems like Tales From The Crypt has almost been rebooted a dozen times since it ended in 1996. While most known for being a television anthology series, there were still some movies as well, and what better way to thrust the Cryptkeeper back into the limelight than in a feature film.
The film could work as an anthology, with the pun-loving dead man interjecting between segments. Plus, Blumhouse has no shortage of interesting writers and directors they have worked with so the shorts would likely be spearheaded by some of the best horror filmmakers working today.
