Foreign remakes of famous movies you didn't know exist

It's a common complaint that Hollywood has a tendency to remake foreign films, often losing a lot of the appeal of the original in the translation. It's not surprising from a business standpoint: a successful foreign film is one with a proven formula, and American audiences are notoriously subtitle shy. But when even films from other English-speaking countries get the remake treatment, it's inevitable that some will grumble about Hollywood ruining films that were perfectly good in the first place. For every great remake, like Seven Samurai becoming The Magnificent Seven, you get a host of stinkers, like Spike Lee's lackluster Oldboy, Roland Emmerich's ludicrous Godzilla, and of course The Wicker Man ("The bees! The bees!)

What's less known is the fact sometimes the stream goes in the other direction, and foreign filmmakers take an American property and make a localized take on a Hollywood hit. Sometimes the results are good, or at least an interesting depiction of cultural difference, with the same story manifesting in different ways across borders. Other times, the results are just as ludicrous as the worst Hollywood remakes. These are foreign remakes of famous movies you didn't know exist.

In 2008, Chinese director Zhang Yimou acquired the rights to the Coen brothers' 1986 film Blood Simple, a movie he'd seen a quarter-century earlier—despite not understanding English at the time and watching it without English subtitles. Clearly, Zhang had been heavily affected by the movie, and since the rights were owned by the Coens rather than a studio, Zhang was able to negotiate with them directly.

Zhang's interpretation of the gritty noir flick, called A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop in the US, is set in a stylized vision of the feudal past, a clever way to avoid hassles from censors in the country. Much like the original, the film features a detective hired by an unhappy cuckold to kill his adulterous wife and her lover, an employee of his. While the detective in the original was a somewhat sillier character, the remade version is solemn, one of many ways the film shows how the same story can be told very differently. Where the Coens' vision is desaturated and nihilistic, Zhang's is colorful and farcical.

1957's 12 Angry Men is a classic of American film, so it was an odd choice to be remade in 21st century Russia. In Nikita Mikhalkov's 12, a jury is deliberating in the case of a Chechen boy accused of murdering his Russian adopted father. All but one of the jurors is convinced of the boy's guilt, and in explaining how they come to the conclusion each character explores his past and his philosophies, ultimately offering a commentary on the zeitgeist of post-Soviet Russia.

This approach allowed Mikhalkov to retain the core elements of the American original in the service of Russian cultural goals. As the director put it, "In the course of the film, I'm trying to show the reality of what's happening in Russia. In the end, I show what I wish was true."

One creepy element of this adaptation involves accusations the film serves as an apologetic for the policies of repressive Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is known to be close friends with Mikhalkov. Opposition journalist Zoya Svetova pointed out most of the juror characters were caricatures of archetypes of Russian political society: the anti-Semite, the Jewish intellectual, the bumbling liberal, the hypocritical Soviet; while the noble main character is a secret service officer. He also argued the premise of the story doesn't make much sense within the Russian legal system, as guilt there is determined by a simple jury majority rather than a unanimous decision.

1968's Planet of the Apes was a worldwide hit, so it came as no surprise when other film industries tried to take advantage of the monkey mania. Japan produced a 26-episode series called Saru no Gundan, or "Army of the Apes." This was condensed into a 97-minute feature film about a scientist and two children trapped in cryogenic containers only to wake up in a world dominated by apes with modern technology. There are elements both similar to and very different from the American original, and some fresh zany elements—there's little better way to spice up the struggle between man and ape than by introducing UFOs, robots, ninjas and a military coup by chimpanzees against gorillas.

Then there's Brazil's O Trapalhão no Planalto dos Macacos, or 'The Tramps on the Plateau of the Apes.' This low-budget effort sees a comedy troupe fleeing the law after a misunderstanding, only to end up being carried by hot air balloon to a mysterious plateau inhabited by sentient apes. It's a lot sillier, and more of a spoof than a true remake, but despite a lower budget the Brazilian production actually turns out some serviceable makeup and effects.

In 2013, Korean-Japanese director Lee Sang-il developed a remake of Clint Eastwood's 1992 classic Unforgiven, with Japanese star Ken Watanabe taking over the role of the squinting cowboy. Lee is said to have watched the film as a 19-year-old student, and it left such an impression on him he thought about its meaning for two decades before deciding to remake it. 

Lee shifted the setting from the Old West of the 1880s to Hokkaido in the early Meiji period, when Japan struggled with early modernization while pushing into the lands of the indigenous Ainu of the far north. Lee's intention with the remake was based on a desire to make a different type of Japanese historical epic, deviating from their clear delineation between good guys and bad guys.

The film had a mixed reaction in Japan, with some dismissing the work as merely derivative. One fan was Eastwood himself, who according to Watanabe said of the remake, "Very impressive. I am beyond contented. I feel the beginning of a new era for Japanese cinema."

Nigeria's growing film industry rose in the wake of the proliferation of cheap video cameras in the mid-'90s, allowing many budding filmmakers to put together productions on the cheap. In 2003, Nigerian director Farouk Ashu-Brown developed his own version of the 1997 hit Titanic, renamed Masoyiyata Titanic (My Beloved Titanic). In this version, teenager Binta wishes to marry a young man named Abdul she meets aboard the Titanic. Her parents, however, want her to marry the villainous Zayyad, who owns the ship.

Much of the film is made up of local shots intercut with scenes taken from the James Cameron original, as well shark attack scenes taken from Deep Blue Sea. There are also a number of Bollywood-inspired song and dance routines, including a Hausa rendition of "My Heart Will Go On" with altered lyrics more befitting of the Nigerian cultural environment. The popularity of these movies reflects the willingness of Nigerian audiences to put up with dubious special effects and stolen scenes as long as the filmmakers respect Nigerian cultural mores and traditions.