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What movies were blatant and terrible ripoffs of other movies? I know that Halloween was the launching pad for slasher/killer movies of the late 70's, early 80's but for the most part don't consider the subsequent bloodlettings copycats.

Carnosaur 2.  That movie so wanted to be Aliens.  A really painful mess.

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Good freaking grief!  Pick any big movie from the last  30 years and you can name dozens of copycats

Heck, I think Italy had a whole industry based on rip-offs of Conan and Mad-Max

I think I've seen a dozen movies that fall in the genre of "time travelling androids from a post-apocalyptic future" alone

Carnosaur 2. That movie so wanted to be Aliens.

Agreed you could name the rip-off points on a scene-by-scene basis in *that* one.

Good point Fearless, maybe I should have gone in the opposite direction and asked which movie wasn't a ripoff. LOL

Feardotcom was a ripoff of the Ring.  

Video where if you watch it you die became web site where if you watch it you die.

In both the heroes mistakenly think they broke the curse by finding the girl's body.

In both the girl's ghost makes a big scarey appearance at the end.

> Feardotcom was a ripoff of the Ring.

Video where if you watch it you die became web site where if you watch it you die.

In both the heroes mistakenly think they broke the curse by finding the girl's body.

In both the girl's ghost makes a big scarey appearance at the end.



Perfect example of Hollywood doing their part in recycling their waste. ; ) Come up with something new already.

Maby, we should ask which is the FIRST offical ripoff?
Could do by date of release and amount of copying.

There's two words I gotta say to you guys.....Kill Bill.

One of my all-time favourite ripoffs has to be Star Crash.

Let's see.... a smuggler, a guy with mystical powers and a comical robot set out to find and destroy a superweapon owned by an evil count in black leather and a helmet, whose first name happens to be Zarth. They locate the weapon, rescue a prince, have a laser sword fight and make a daring escape. The movie concludes with an all-out attack on the villain's giant space fortress.

Sounds really familiar, doesn't it?

Caroline Munro as Han Solo, Marjoe Gortner as Ben Kenobi and David Hasselhoff as Princess Leia, battling bad models, stop motion monsters on a par with Rudolph's Shiny New Year, and a lot of standard sword and sorcery crap. Too much goofiness to list.

"Maby, we should ask which is the FIRST offical ripoff?
Could do by date of release and amount of copying."

That's an interesting topic, Flangeport.  If you ever read The Onion's Our Dumb Century, there is a "film review" on their fictional 1902 issue that reads: "Man Riding Bicycle a stale retread of Man Jumping Rope."  A pretty brilliant cut at the earliest movies.

But that aside, the earliest ripoff that comes to my mind is the 1949 King Kong ripoff Mighty Joe Young.  Giant gorilla falls in love with a human woman, is removed from his natural habitat, misunderstood by society, and dies tragically.

Eirik wrote:

> But that aside, the earliest ripoff that comes to my mind is
> the 1949 King Kong ripoff Mighty Joe Young.  Giant gorilla
> falls in love with a human woman, is removed from his natural
> habitat, misunderstood by society, and dies tragically.

Actually, Mighty Joe Young was made by many of the same people who made Kong, so it is more like a retread than a rip-off.

Also, there is a bit of a difference between the two.  Joe was an honestly misunderstood ape, who, when he rescued a group of orphans from a fire, was released back into the wild.  Kong was an honestly misguided ape, who, after dropping, chewing on people, and causing general destruction throughout New York, was killed.  One's an adventure, the other's a tragedy.

Sorry for the nitpicking.

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And for Carnosaur 2's relentless copying of Aleins, it has earned a spot as one of my fovorite movies.  Pure art.  Highly recommended. but it is still pure crap.

For one that are very close copies and not just story and idea stealing
The previously mentioned Star crash and Carnasuar 2.
And DNA and The Watchers 3 (I think 3 it could be 2)  as copies of Preditor.

I also like the rework of Yojimbo in The Warrior and the Sorceress

The Movie "Virus" with Jamie Lee Curtis was such a ripoff of the Borg in Star Trek

Well if you are going to count "Virus" as stealing from the borg what does that make "Hardware"

Jayson wrote:

> The Movie "Virus" with Jamie Lee Curtis was such a ripoff of
> the Borg in Star Trek
>

Like the Borg are frightfully original.  The Cybermen from Doctor Who have been trying to "assimulate" Humanity more than twenty years before Star Trek: Next Generation was even on the air.

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Come to think of it, one artificial eye and at least one mechanical arm has pretty much been the basic sci-fi cyborg for a long time. Look at the Mandroid, for example, or a number of comic book cyborgs, or even Steve Austin for that matter.

It really p**sed me off one year when I wore a cyborg costume to work for Halloween and everybody kept assuming I was a Borg. I looked nothing like a Borg -- the cyborg parts were silver, and I was wearing ordinary clothes.



Post Edited (01-21-04 09:50)

You tell 'em, Cullen!

Though, thinking about it, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Man Who Was All Used Up" seems to be about a cyborg from way back when ...

Judge Dredd is a ripoff of Demolition Man;

A law officer in the future is framed for deaths he didn't commit. He's sentenced to prison for these crimes, but ends up tracking down the real bad guy with the help of a female officer who believes in him. The bad guy is someone the hero has a history with and who is released from prison by a city official who hopes to use the criminal to accomplish their own goals. The criminal doesn't like being controlled and ends up killing the official so that they can do things their way, including killing the hero, which is more important to them. There's an excursion and a fight in the lawless areas, and then a chase in which the hero hands the controls of his vehicle over to someone who isn't experienced in driving it. The bad guy hopes to create an army in a high-tech facility, but is foiled by the arrival of the hero before he can accomplish this. In the end, the city is left without leadership as the hero returns to being an officer of the law.

Is that a joke!??  Please say it is...

The "Demolition Man" was a rehash, with a few twiddles here and there, of  the original Judge Dredd comic strip!  
That came out decades before "Demolition Man"...
The same can also be said about "RoboCop"...
The s**t awful FILM of "Judge Dredd" came after "Demolition Man" but it was based on the aforementioned comic strip that pre-dated "Dem Man" by about 2 DECADES!

I'm not familiar with the comics at all, I only know the movies. Are you saying that the basic plot for both movies was taken from the original Judge Dredd comics?

Blimey, I thought everyone knew about the Judge Dredd strip. Sorry.

It's from Brit sci-fi comic "2000 AD".  Dredd was the most popular of the stories in it.  Started in 1977..  
The film was on and off for YEARS.  Clint Eastwood was always muted to play Dredd but it never happened.  "RoboCop" then came out (very much like a Dredd type story in parts and in the 'emotionless' way he dispenses instant justice on the streets.  Then we had "Demolition Man" which was a bit like Dredd again.  With the future City and it's strange way of life and fines.

Then "Judge Dredd" finally appeard and it was a s**t heap.  A f**king insult to the comic strip in everyway.  p**s on it's negatives.

GO HERE and you can see some Dredd comic strip info and pics:

http://www.2000adonline.com/

Click on 'Characters' above and then the face of Dredd...

>Blimey, I thought everyone knew about the Judge Dredd strip. Sorry.

I knew it was a comic, just not any of the details.

What I meant was that it looks like the makers of Demolition Man took a lot of the IDEAS from Judge Dredd for their movie and then the makers of the Judge Dredd movie came along and ripped off Demolition Man's PLOT. Unless of course, the JD script had already been written and the makers of DM saw it and used the same basic plot for their movie. Either way, there are too many plot similarities between the two movies for it to be a coincidence.

In a perfect world, there would never be a use for the phrase "David Hasselhoff as Princess Leia".

In a perfect world, there would never be a use for the phrase "David Hasselhoff as Princess Leia".


In a perfect world it would be  a criminal offense

My pick will always be "Unknown Origin:"
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/unkorigin/index.html

Dialog is taken directly from "The Thing" and so are a number of scenes.  Not just what happens, but lighting, position of the actors, camera position - complete awful ripoff.

Also, of course, movies that tried to be "Jaws:"
Orca
Tentacles
Up from the Depths
Tintorera (never seen, but so I understand)

On the good side, I always like "Blades" as a parody of "Jaws."  Them shooting the killer lawnmower with the, ah, stand-ins for the barrels was funny as all heck.

"Stranger from Venus" and "The Cosmic Man" did a number on "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

Also, since I watched "Waxwork II" lately.  That movie did not have an original bone in its entire body.  Well, if it had a skeleton, that is.  I was really staring in slack-jawed amazement when I realized they were doing a homage/parody of "Creature."

Was that the one with Bruce Campbell as the scientist in the "Haunting of Hell House"/"The Haunting" scene?  I vaguely remember the entire movie completely turning to crap around that point, but Bruce Campbell seemed to be having a hell of a good time with it.

>Was that the one with Bruce Campbell as the scientist in the "Haunting of Hell
>House"/"The Haunting" scene?

Yup, that was Waxwork II.

Just saw "The Silencers" this weekend and I'm fairly certain "Matrix: Reloaded" ripped off the truck chase scene from this movie