Cavalcade of Awesome

So, Billy the Kid Week was last week and I finished it up with a review of the movie Billy the Kid vs Dracula.  This was a movie that looked and sounded terrible, but had a concept that was so completely out of left field (and AWESOME) that I fell head over heels for it.  Unfortunately, the movie lived up to how bad it looked and I gave up an hour into the complete mess of a movie.  However the concept stuck with me and I decided I wanted someone to remake this movie today (or, better yet, in the 80s/90s).  How incredible would that have been?  Something like Young Guns but with a little Lost Boys mixed in?  FANTASTIC.

So, I started to cast my remake of this movie.  I decided I wanted Emilio Estevez as Billy (obviously).  Late 80s or early 90s Estevez would be ideal.  However, if we made it today, I like the idea of an older Billy clashing with the King of the Vampires, too.  Now, for Drac, I really want to say Bela Lugosi, however, Bela died WELL before the ’80s/’90s so I needed someone else that could make a good vampire lord.  After much thought I came up with Sam Neill.  He was a fantastic vampire in Daybreakers and I think he would make a great Dracula. Plus, if we made this movie in the late 80s early ’90s, Neill doesn’t look much different now than he did back then (see him in Hunt for Red October in 1990 or Jurassic Park in 1993).  So, here’s our two protagonists.

I am so in love with this movie right now.  I literally would take this movie, move to Connecticut and marry it in a commitment ceremony, then make sweet, sweet love with it on a bear skin rug next to a raging fire until the sun comes up.  That’s right, bear skin rug by the fire love making.  You know I’m seriously in love.  Anyway, I also wanted a female caught between these two guys.  I thought about Angelina Jolie, but she may be too tough and doesn’t really fit into this.  I wanted more of a sweet female character.  My first choice would probably be Gwyneth Paltrow.   The first thing I remember seeing her in was Se7en in 1995.  I loved her in that and I love her now.  That’s my first choice, so I’m going with that.  Besides, 1995 seems like a good year to make this movie now that I think about it.  Gwyneth would be 23 and fresh off Se7en.  Emilio would be a few years past the Young Guns movies and he didn’t appear in any movies in 1995 but appeared in D2: The Mighty Ducks in 1994 and a small role in Mission: Impossible in 1996.  Sam Neill would be two years after his role in Jurassic Park. So 1995 seems like a nice fit for this movie.  Now the poster.

I tried to come up with a poster for this fictional movie but nothing I did really seemed to work. I used the above pictures as well as some other images and nothing really gelled the way I wanted it to.  Then I got thinking outside the box and decided to go all vintage for the poster.  It would make things look less Photoshop-y (but maybe that’s just me overestimating my Photoshop abilities).  I took one of my favorite Bela Lugosi Dracula posters from the ’30s and modified it for my own purposes.  So here’s the poster for my new Billy the Kid vs Dracula remake.

You’ll notice I put James Mangold as the director. I went more modern with that choice as he directed the 3:10 to Yuma remake a few years ago which I loved. As for his work in the 90s, he wrote/directed both Cop Land (1997) and Girl, Interrupted (1999) as well as writing the screenplay for Walk the Line in 2005.  That tells me he can also write my new remake as well as direct it.  However, I also toyed with the idea of having John Fusco write this movie as he wrote both Young Guns movies as well as The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li as well as the underrated Crossroads (1986) starring Ralph Macchio.  Mangold directed Heavy in 1995 with Liv Tyler but I’m willing to bet he would have jumped at the chance to direct this fascinating genre picture.  I mean, who wouldn’t?

I have a couple of ideas for story, but obviously if I landed Mangold and/or Fusco I would totally defer to their ideas.  The question is, does the movie take place in the Old West or does Billy get sent through time?  It may be easier to have Dracula traveling through a late 1800s America for whatever reason and meeting up with Billy in New Mexico, but I like the idea of having Billy sent through time to the future to face off with Dracula.  Billy the Kid vs Dracula is inherently ridiculous so adding the element of time travel could work, but might make it even more ridiculous…but in a bad way.

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This entry was posted on August 20, 2010 at 11:27 am and is filed under Billy the Kid, Dracula, monsters, movies, pop culture with tags Billy the Kid, Billy the Kid Week, Dracula, monsters, movies, Photoshop, pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.