Remakes sell one thing: Familiarity. People liked something once, so it’s likely they will enjoy it a second time. More importantly, it stands to reason they might pay a second time for the opportunity to enjoy it a second time.

But this is one of those catch-22 type situations — just like the one in that classic motion picture called, what was it? Oh yes, A Goofy Movie. Audiences want the comfort of familiarity, but they don’t want too much familiarity. There’s got to be some new twists on the concept. In other words: A totally new vision of a total rehash. Hence the catch-22 (or A Goofy Movie).

I must admit, I am endlessly fascinated by remakes for this reason. Stick too close to the original and you wind up with something like Gus Van Sant’s Psycho. Then audiences everywhere scream “That was exactly like the original but in color and in that one scene Vince Vaughn did something extremely pervy that was only implied in the Hitchcock version! What was the point of that?!?” Go too far from the original and you wind up with ... well, you wind up with the dozen titles on the list below, movies that are technically remakes but often feel like extremely different stories than the ones that inspired them.

That doesn’t mean those remakes are necessarily good or bad; some of these movies are good; a few are classics that far exceeded their predecessors. Others are pieces of junk. That’s another strange quirk of remakes. The thing that gets them made, that commercial hook of familiarity, is not always the thing that makes them worth watching.

READ MORE: The Worst Movie Prequels Ever Made