Harry here, I was in a really good mood coming in tonight. I had just returned from RUSH HOUR 2, a movie that is just sheer entertainment, sheer charisma and some very smart cultural fun-making. On top of that, this is the first time I've left the house since the back injury, where I didn't fall, didn't hurt myself. I came to my computer all set to just write happiness before going to sleep tonight, when suddenly Moriarty IMs me with:

"Did you hear that James (fucked up SCOOBY DOO) Gunn is writing a remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD?"

Suddenly I felt the stake drive its way into my fat-wrapped heart.

DAWN OF THE DEAD is in my top ten favorite films of all time. This is an absolute perfect horror film. Tone, delivery, pacing, effects, casting, performances, scope of the tale. Everything. It's a masterpiece of horror, if not the greatest horror film of all time.

Now Beacon Entertainment... the company behind BRING IT ON, THE FAMILY MAN, DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, THE HURRICANE and THIRTEEN DAYS... Mainstream slick filmmakers. Glossy clean, fresh face sexy leads. Bland mannequin performances. Hell, THIRTEEN DAYS worked, THE HURRICANE was savable only for DENZEL and the rest... Then there's END OF DAYS... I enjoyed it as a fun brainless action horror flick, but it was too slick, too blanded down. Hell, the company fucking abandoned their director on DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, basically allowing the NRG to re-edit their film. Oh, and their biggest financial success was a cheerleader exploitation flick with no balls - or tits, for that matter.

This fresh, nice and pretty company is going to mount a remake of important and poignant modern satire? What, say you, do we consider PG-13? Hey, why the hell not? Oh I know, let's cast known actors in their early twenties. OH NO, I know, we got James "I ass raped Scooby Doo and didn't even give him a Scooby Snack" Gunn... oh wait!!! I know, let's bring Scoobs and the gang to the mall, Scooby Doo has battled Zombies!!!

James Gunn, who stunned the world with THE SPECIALS, the superhero parody that actually made MYSTERY MEN look like a success. The author of a SPY VS. SPY script that I couldn't get 20 pages into because it played out like a bad MAD TV skit on rewind. Then there was SCOOBY DOO... where James Gunn showed the entire breadth of his intelligence. Where he managed to miss every single point and nuance of 2 dimensional cartoon characters. How is he going to approach 3-dimensional developed human beings when he's never even attempted that sort of work before? I'll tell ya what, I bet ya he's got a cute take on it.

Do you see the pattern in James Gunn's career?

He takes the work of others and through an addled mind, he manages to belittle, poorly parody, overly schtick it up and completely miss the point of the original source material.

OK, now I've talked with just about every major Horror Filmmaker that is working in film these days. I'm pretty good friends with some of them. We talk for hours about the state of Horror. There are very few films that Horror Filmmakers aspire to perhaps be held next to. THE EXORCIST, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, ROSEMARY'S BABY, James Whale's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, DAWN OF THE DEAD, JOHN CARPENTER'S THE THING, HALLOWEEN, CURSE OF THE DEMON, and that's about it. These are the perfection of the genre.

These filmmakers have never once mentioned the thought of remaking any of Romero's holy trilogy. Watching DAWN OF THE DEAD doesn't make you want to remake it, it makes you want to make a Zombie movie. Your take on a Zombie story. How you would go about doing it. What didn't Romero touch on? How do we use Zombies in terms of metaphors today? Well, obviously they run Beacon Communications and wrote SCOOBY DOO, and that's a real horror story.

Now what is particularly offensive about this announced abortion, is that right now George Romero is actually working on the 4th chapter of his Zombie series. These 'money people' and literally one of the worst screenwriters to actually get his work produced are mounting a high profile remake of Romero's classic... and they'll probably beat him into theaters with a PG-13 or soft R piece of crap self-referential self-aware load of popshit. Then when Romero has his next installment in theaters... SOME people will associate the 'of the dead' series with their load of crap.

BEACON? You liked DAWN OF THE DEAD did you? Why hire a bargain basement hack... WHY DON'T YOU DO SOMETHING ORIGINAL? Why don't you contact George Romero, the man that made that perfect horror film, and fully finance the 4th installment of the series. Why not help the filmmaker that made that work of genius finish the series right?

James Gunn... beware of Karma? Pissing on the work of MAD MAGAZINE, WILLIAM CASTLE, HANNA BARBARA and GEORGE ROMERO? Hell might be filling up, but I'm sure there's room for you!