Screen Gems Remaking 1971 Mia Farrow Horror Classic ‘See No Evil’

Every little daily task is substantially more difficult for a blind person: selecting clothes for the day, traveling from one place to the next, solving the grisly slaughter of all your relatives. That last one is more specific to Sarah Rexton, the heroine that Mia Farrow portrayed in the 1971 horror-thriller See No Evil. (Because she’s blind, and enjoys the music of proto-punk outfit Television!) In this delectably lurid picture from esteemed trash auteur Richard Fleischer, the mind behind dozens of low-rent exploitation flicks as well as Soylent Green, Fantastic Voyage, and the ill-fated Pearl Harbor drama Tora! Tora! Tora!, Sarah comes home from a date to find her mother, father and sister hideously mangled in their own home. Though she doesn‘t realize this right away, what with all the blindness. Fleischer built tension as Sarah used her wits to figure out why the house was so eerily silent, and kept that suspense up in the air as she teamed with a group of travelers to find the killer.

In 1971, the concept was just loony enough to work, and now Screen Gems has wagered that it’ll work again, because Deadline reports that the studio has announced plans to remake the film for modern audiences. With a script from Mike Scannell (who recently penned Screen Gems’ upcoming He’s Out There) and a director still to be announced, the film would buff up the “blind girl on the hunt for her family’s killer” premise with a few presumable modern touches. After all, technological advances have made life a lot easier for blind folks since 1971. Now, Sarah what’s to stop Sarah from calling her date and saying, “Hey, my house is quiet — too quiet — and I’m pretty sure my family got murdered. Could you come pick me up right quick?”

A horror remake’s a horror remake, so here’s hoping Screen Gems’ new project does right by its source material. If it puts up healthy box-office numbers, this could be a franchise-starter, too. Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil are just begging to be made.