Top 10 British Movies We Want To See Remade

Highly controversial and criminally underrated, “if…” is a film which was shocking in the '60s – but would surely get the respect it deserves today. Despite some recent efforts to bring it more attention, a remake would go miles to raise the profile of its important story. Starring a young Malcolm McDowell, it centres on a gang of public-school boys who rebel against their authority figures and stage a miniature and violent revolution, going as far as to steal live ammunition and fire on the teachers and students they hate. The controversy is clear, but so’s the potential for a powerful new picture.

This spy thriller follows the misadventures of Birdie Quilty, a patriotic, English-hating Irishwoman who tries to join the IRA but mistakenly starts working for the Nazis. She begins by aiding in breaking a Nazi agent from a Devon prison, but eventually becomes aware of who she’s actually working for when she retrieves information informing the Germans about the D-Day landings. In the end, she's a changed person, having fallen in love with a British officer who saved her life after she was abducted by enemy spies. Love. Betrayal. Split loyalties and a historic setting… It’d translate to twenty-first century film just as well.

Here we find Louis Mazzini, a disgraced aristocrat ninth in line to his family’s dukedom, who decides to murder everybody standing between him and his title, in order to exact revenge for being a social outcast. The twist is that the people he has to kill are all played by Sir Alec Guinness in an array of comedic performances. It’d be great to see Louis’s ingenious murder spree reimagined to fool modern police. But, who would take on Guinness’s nine iconic roles?

Suave private eye Sexton Blake may ultimately be a knock-off version of Sherlock Holmes, but this didn’t stop him from entertaining the British public for more than thirty years. He may not be the world’s greatest detective, but his b-movie antics briefly made him a fictional celebrity. The tacky-but-endearing “Echo Murders” sees him investigating a murder at a mine in Cornwall, and a new version of this classic detective certainly wouldn’t go amiss. After all, everybody loves a good drama, and this is a character proven to work as well on the small screen as the big.

Another Alec Guinness epic, this World War II drama won seven Oscars – including Best Picture, Director, and Actor – but is that any reason to leave it alone? In the sweltering, Burmese jungle, British POWs in a Japanese camp are ordered to build a railway bridge to aid Axis movements – an endeavour destined to be sabotaged by the Allies. But the best scenes revolve around the psychological warfare between Guinness’s Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson and the villainous Colonel Saito. Giving fresh actors a chance to shine in these demanding but iconic roles is an opportunity few would pass up.

This silent, Hitchcock masterpiece will be reaching its 100th anniversary sooner rather than later, and is surely due a respectful remake to commemorate one of the greatest directors of all time. Inspired by the Ripper murders, an erratic lodger’s ailing landlady suspects him of being a brutal serial killer who only murders young, blonde women. This terrifying tale of a monster stalking the streets of London is truly timeless, and would be as frightening today as it was in the 1920s – transporting audiences all the way back to the real-life Ripper murders in 1888.

A comedic satire of post-war trade unions and strikes, “I’m All Right Jack” is a politically charged romp which became the most popular film of 1959. The upper-class Stanley is forced to take a working-class job at a missile factory, and ends up lodging with a communist shopkeeper and his beautiful daughter. It's not exactly well trod subject matter, but whether you side with the union or side with the strikers, “It’s All Right Jack” manages to mock both. Given the ever-dicey economic landscapes in recent British history, something similar in today’s cinemas would likely be just as popular.

This Cold War classic perfectly satirised the nuclear arms race and doomsday fears of the 1960s, and has been hailed as one of the funniest and most culturally significant films of all time. But with the global political spectrum getting more and more intense today, maybe some good, old-fashioned lampooning is just what the doctor ordered. Updated to be more relevant, while keeping its beloved absurdity, a remade “Dr. Strangelove” would be sure to deliver more than a few laughs in the often bleak, modern world.

Released when the Second World War was in full swing, “‘Pimpernel’ Smith” has often been described as a valuable piece of British propaganda – indirectly helping toward the war effort. The story itself follows an archaeology professor who moonlights as a rescuer of concentration camp inmates. Most remarkably, the film was said to have inspired a real-life rescue in a Hungarian camp, meaning it actually saved thousands of lives. Heroic sentiment like that is hard to find these days, so breathing new life into this classic is worth anyone’s while – whether as a reworked drama, or a documentary-style feature.

It’s what the British Film Institute considers the greatest British film of all time, and for good reason. “The Third Man” is a noir thriller by acclaimed author Graham Greene with an equally celebrated score. It also stars the legendary Orson Welles as Harry Lime, a man murdered in unusual circumstances in post-war Vienna. With his suspicious death being investigated by a childhood friend and writer, there are dark twists afoot and gruesome conspiracies. If it ever were remade, it’d demand the very best in acting talent, production and directorship – and would surely reap massive success all over again.