Flash Gordon (1980)
With Star Wars lighting up box-office tills ♛across the globe, De Laurentiis’ answer was a remake of old sci-fi serial Flash Gordon.
It fizzled on release, failing to earn back its budget. But with its synth-vamped Queen score, big-booted camp style and – sweet Jesus – Brian Blessed in full-beard-and-shouty form, it’s become a cult hit.
Conan The Barbarian (1982)
Conan made a star of Austrian bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, and in the conte🌺xt of ꦿearly-‘80s Hollywood seemed to come from nowhere.
The Dead Zone (1983)
Hungry for raw material, De Laurentiis struck a deal with Stephen King that would see him produce several films based on the author&🐼rsquo;s work including Firestarter, Cat’s Eye🐼, and the awful but still awesome Maximum Overdrive.
The best – all right, only good one – was The Dead Zone, not least because De Laurentiis coaxed a fresh-from-Videodrome David Cronenberg into directing. Cronenberg reshaped the script and formed a very effective partnership with shock-faced hero Christopher Walken.
Dune (1984)
A full-blown fiasco t🀅hat nearly de-railed the career of true original David Lynch and has given us one of the strangest and most beautifully flawed films ever.
Again it’s De Laurentiis hunting the Star Wars crowd, this time with an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s multi-million selling sci-fi novel. But Lynch was the wrong man for the job, obsessing over details (the wonderfully crafted Harkonnen homeworld) but losing his grip on the monster project, leaving us with a fractured snowglobe of a potential epic.
Breakdown (1997)
By the late &lsqಌuo;90s De Laurentiis was beginning to ease off the production pedal. But he sti♔ll found time to unearth this criminally unsung kidnapping B-movie.
Written and directed by Terminator 3 helmer Jonathan Mostow, the film’s big asset is Kurt Russell, on hugely watchable and determined form as the husband whose wife disappears after a roadside breakdown. The low-budget thriller is tight, tense, and comes with a crunchingly satisfying pile-up conclusion.
Red Dragon (2002)
After Manhunter’s poor 💧box-office De Laurentiis passed up the oppo🌄rtunity to make Silence Of The Lambs – and regretted it for years.
Three times he would return to Thomas Harris’ series and the character of Hannibal Lecter in an attempt to correct his mistake, and the best of the resulting films is a remake of his own Manhunter under its original title, Red Dragon. It lacks the edge of Mann, but offered a strong cast of Ed Norton, Ralph Fiennes and Anthony Hopkins.
