When Hollywood Runs Out of Catchy Movie Titles...

...They Will Recycle The Old Ones (and confuse the hell out of people).

Case in point: there's a film out now in theaters (though not for long) called Running Scared, starring Paul Walker, better known for his character driven roles in 2 Fast 2 Furious and Meet the Deedles. Now, I admit, I haven't seen this movie, and neither has most of America it seems ($3MM opening weekend), but from what I've read about it, this is in no way, shape or form a 'remake' or 'inspired by' the 1986 buddy cop comedy classic of the same name, starring Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal. That pisses me off.

As you can see from the images above, the only other thing these two films seem to have in common other than sharing the same name is that both poster design firms decided that red would be the best color to treat the title. How could New Line taint such a semi-decent 80's comedy flick with this dilapidated action-thriller drek!? If someone mentions Running Scared in the future, will people now first think of the shitty gangster movie starring that 2 Fast 2 Furious guy? That would be a low down dirty shame.

My question to the studio is, did they not have a $1,000 to hire a copywriter to come up with some original catchy title options? Perhaps they knew this movie was going to bomb like Hezbollah so they purposely gave it a recycled name thinking that perhaps fans of the 1986 movie would run to the theaters thinking it's a remake. Dumb asses! It's a sad state of the film industry, especially now more than ever, when studios are hedging their bets on remakes (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), sequels (Rocky 6), and adaptations (The DaVinci Code), that these mofos can't even come up with an original name for a crappy movie!

What absolutely kills me, after doing some further digging, was that I discovered that the 1986 Hines/Crystal Running Scared wasn't even an original title when it came out either! WHAT THE BLOODCLOT!!! There was a movie of the same damn name back in 1980 starring Ken Wahl (know for TV's Wiseguy), and Judge Reinhold (Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Unbelievable. I guess these shenanigans have been going on for a while.

I started to think about what other movies share this multiple personality trait, movies with the same title but completely different plots altogether, knowing that there has to be a few more of these chumps out there. I didn't have to look far in cinematic history to find one: Crash. Yes, this year's Oscar nominated film for Best Picture is a friggin' doppleganger. The other film of the same name if you can recall came out in the mid 90's, directed by David Cronenberg, and starred James Spader as a man who after a having a car accident, develops a sexual fetish toward car crashes. Not necessarily Oscar material.

If you think of any others that fit the bill, send me a post.