Masses of monster movies rebooting? Here are five lame films we could have lived without the first time around… 

With Monsters University ready for release, plus Godzilla and Gremlins remakes both in the works, it seems cinemagoers have a spate of monster movie rehashes to look forward to. All of which led Thatfilmthing to wonder if bygone monster movies are the new hot topic in Hollywood? (We are speculative beasts).

Sadly, the monster movie genre is rife with abominations that need to remain sealed in their crypt for the sake of mankind. Consider this our open letter to the rubber-stampers in LA…

1. Jeepers Creepers

The first 45 minutes of Jeepers Creepers, which sees two 20-somethings relentlessly pursued along the highway by a psychotic truck driver known as The Creeper, is fantastically tense. However, once The Creeper reveals himself as a bloke clad head-to-toe in an oily rubber bat-suit, all tension and mystery goes out the window and Jeepers Creepers devolves into a big, cliché-ridden mess.

In an ideal version of this film, The Creeper would have never truly been revealed, leaving audiences to stew in their own paranoia and twitchingly overactive imaginations. Given that there have already been three movies in this series, our take is, “enough, already!” It’s doubtful modern Hollywood would show any more restraint or inventiveness when attempting to tackle this walking anti-climax in the future.

2. Leprechaun

Leprechaun is pretty niche. In fact, unless you’re excited by the idea of a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston being chased around by a short actor in green lederhosen, there is very little to recommend it. Exploitative, garish and a sad waste of the charismatic Warwick Davis’ talents.

3. Anaconda

The ‘monster’ in Anaconda is just a really big snake. Considering some of the unspeakable horrors that have been birthed upon our screens in the last 30 years (see the work of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg), a big snake just doesn’t seem up to par.

The only way an Anaconda remake would have any commercial viability is if they got Jon Voight back in that wet T-shirt. You know, for the ladies.

4. Gingerdead Man

Gingerdead Man, which sees Gary Busey’s psychotic murderer brought back from the dead by his sorceress mother as a piece of demonic pastry, missed a massive trick when conceiving its monster: why hide Busey’s terrifying face for most of the film behind crappy prosthetics?

Busey, a first-class graduate (with honours) of the Ron Perlman School Of Nightmare Faces, is pretty much perfect as he is, popping him in a Mr Blobby costume only serves to lessen the impact of his impossible mug.

5. Birdemic

Birdemic isn’t here because of its measly $10,000 budget or its porn movie dialogue or its dead-eyed stars or the fact that its lame flying vomit-birds look like those Windows 98 clip art gifs overlayed onto the film in post-production.

It’s here because – while the birds spit acid as their primary mode of attack – it also seems they will explode if they touch the ground, which means they can never stop flying or hovering long enough to take aim. They’re useless.

Even the most menacing green-screen Hollywood could muster still wouldn’t help, because they couldn’t do anything but fly around, vomiting acid on each other and then dropping dead of exhaustion and exploding in a sad little blood and hydrochloric acid-filled mist.

The only hope for any Hollywood remake would be if the titular mutant birds were recast as a sort of Revenge Of The Nerds style fraternity of plucky losers. Maybe they could cameo in Monster’s University, we’d at least pay to see that.

Monsters University opens on 24 June 2013 in US cinemas and on 12 July in the UK.