One of the most popular sex scenes of all time is the kitchen scene from the 1981 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice. But many people find the more implicit parts of the 1946 version to be sexier. These people include the earlier film’s female lead, Lana Turner, who wrote in her autobiography, “[The makers of the 1981 film] didn’t have to worry about the censors. I’d had to project a rather intense sexual presence, but always with my clothes on. I was amused to read that [NY Times film critic] Vincent Canby considered the remake a pale, rather sexless imitation of my version.”

Yes, a film with neither nudity nor simulated lovemaking can be quite sexy, likely sexier than an explicit remake, for innuendo and other teasing maneuvers around either the Hays Code or the MPAA ratings board’s restrictions are far more tantalizing than any bare and balls-out displays of graphic sex common in movies today. Though many classic implications of sex on the big screen were rather obvious and quick, giving the audience a nudge but hardly a rise (think the Eisensteinian metaphors of a train entering a tunnel in North by Northwest or fireworks exploding in To Catch a Thief), loads of films turned up the heat through the use of careful camerawork, daring dialogue and more subtly suggestive actions. Sometimes such sexy moments of tension and/or playfulness are definite forms of foreplay and serve as lead-ins to actual sex acts, on or off screen. But not always.

Everyone has his or her own ideas of what’s sexy, so feel free to disagree with our choices and/or suggest your own (I can guess what the first suggestion will be). Consider our list simply a starting point for discussion.
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Publisher Quirk Books and author Seth Grahame-Smith have come up with the best way to make a literary work more accessible since the creation of Classics Illustrated comic books: they’ve added “all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action” to Jane Austen’s 19th century novel Pride and Prejudice. This new version, out in stores this May, is titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now With Ultraviolent Mayhem! And if you didn’t think it was a masterpiece before, chances are you will now.

Could we do the same thing to classic films? Well, the technology to add extraneous enhancements to movies exists. Just check out The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for proof. But like Pride and Prejudice, we’d need to “enhance” films in the public domain if we wanted to get away with it. Fortunately, there are hundreds of such titles (see a list at Wikipedia), some of which actually already have zombies (Night of the Living Dead, White Zombie, Revolt of the Zombies, and in a way the “scientific” film Experiments in the Revival of Organisms).

Avoiding the majority of public domain movies already consisting of horror and science fiction elements, we’ve come up with ten great classic films that would be even greater with the addition of zombies.
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• Yes. Sci-Fi Footloose meets You Got Served! Exclamation point. Actually, Chris Stokes’ Boogie Town probably won’t be as good as it sounds, but it is set in a ludicrous near-future New York City where dancing is illegal. So, kids start an underground “battle dancing” scene. Obviously, it’s also being labeled a “modern West Side Story for the hip-hop generation,” and it’s set in 2015, so hopefully there will be hoverboards. Then it would actually be better than it sounds. Anyway, Vivendi will release the film next summer.
• Another music-genre sci-fi/fantasy: Stephen Edmond’s Emo Boy comic book is being turned into a movie, which he’ll script. The property is described as “being in the tone of Napoleon Dynamite, Harold and Maude and Zoolander,” which is funny, because none of those movies are similar in tone at all.
• Hot off The House Bunny (and let’s pretend also Smiley Face), Anna Faris is set to star in two new comedy projects, one of which she co-pitched with Bunny writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith. The untitled movie involves the Golden Age Hollywood plot of husband-seeking sisters. The other project, called 20 Times a Lady, is also about finding Mr. Right, though also concerns the non-Golden Age idea of “a person’s sexual quota.”
• Another hot romantic comedienne, Amy Adams, will produce and star in an adaptation of The Ten Best Days of My Life, which treads in the same kind of afterlife territory as It’s a Wonderful Life and Defending Your Life.
• The Dark Knight re-release has been slated for January 23rd, one day after the anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death, which is unfortunate for the celebrity death cult. It’s also one day after the Oscar nominations are announced, so it could be advertised as a “Best Picture Nominee.”

If you took one look at the existence of the new movie Ghost Town and dismissed it on account of its familiarity, you’re ignoring the potential of one of the most valuable plot devices available to fiction. Sure, the employment of ghosts in a narrative may also be evidence of laziness, as the device is just as much a convenience as it is a useful tool for storytellers. Not everyone can be Shakespeare, and of course there is a lot of redundancy and (excuse the pun) lifelessness in the majority of movies involving ghosts.

However, ghosts can also be highly representative and/or serve a film on a deeper level than the surface story. To use another pun, ghost movies are not always so transparent. Like zombies, their plot-device sibling, ghosts have a way of signifying greater ideas, subjects and themes, and aren’t always merely about scares and talking-to-thin-air gags. In a conversation with Cinematical’s Erik Davis, Ghost Town director/co-writer David Koepp had this to say about the significance of ghost stories:

Part of the reason they’re so enduring is because, well, first off all they give hope — because if they are ghosts, then it means we don’t die when we die. But also because they work really well in a number of genres. Ya know, in a drama like Ghost, or a horror movie, suspense or comedy in our case — I just think they offer so many dramatic possibilities; to have someone that’s dead, but still around to talk about it really suggests a lot of great situations.

Okay, so that bit of promotional fluff is actually more about the literal dramatic qualities of the ghost device than the figurative and subtextual, but the quote at least jumpstarted my thinking. Initially I had thought about simply outlining how ghosts have been applied to different film genres, but then I fortunately switched my goal to seek out ten specific ghost films (from the seemingly thousands out there) that utilize the device for more meaningful purpose.

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In response to Paramount’s consolidation of the marketing divisions of Paramount Pictures and Paramount Vantage, I went looking for a mash-up trailer that would give us a sense of what we’re in for. Because advertising for specialty films is typically different from advertising for major studio films. But seeing as Vantage has already done a fair enough job lately trying to make a documentary look like a teen comedy, the consolidation may not really be that noticeable after all.

Anyway, I couldn’t find a good mash-up that re-cut a recent independent film to resemble a blockbuster, so here’s something else entirely that I found during my search. It’s a Wonderful Life “made to look like the movie is about George Bailey’s descent into madness.” Consider it a belated celebration of James Stewart’s centennial (he would have been 100 on May 20th). Or consider it merely a fun re-imagining of a classic. And consider this assignment for mash-up enthusiasts: how about a reverse re-imagining of There Will Be Blood as a Capra movie?

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