Movies You Probably Didn’t Know Were Remakes, in Honor of ‘Evil Dead’

Movie #3 – Meet The Parents

Year – 2000

In 1992 a small, independent movie went around the festival circuit and just killed. Audiences would erupt in laughter. People would openly weep at the masterpiece they had just witnessed. Women would flash the screen in gratitude even though that doesn’t really make any sense. Or maybe it was just something that people kind of liked. It’s hard to say because the film has been all but erased from existence.

The movie was popular enough that Universal acquired the rights and gave it to Ben Stiller…then scrubbed the original from the planet earth. Going so far as to hunt down and kill the handful of people who saw the original.

Ok, I made up that last part. But I’m not too far off the mark. There are no clips of this film on YouTube which could be chalked up to copyright issues if it weren’t for that fact that there are dozens of clips of the remake. The film has never been released on home video (not even on VHS back in the day). Even most websites that have articles about the film are now nothing more than a collection of dead links.

People who have seen the original call it vastly superior and one of the funniest movies they’ve ever seen. But absence does make the heart grow fonder so it’s hard to say how much of that love is truly deserved and how much of it is the result of the original’s existence becoming almost apocryphal.

Next: The Last House on the Left