Benji was a dog who went on adventures. Somehow, that concept managed to sustain five films from 1974 to 1987, a TV series (Benji, Zax, & the Alien Prince), and a modernized version in 2004 (Benji: Off the Leash).  Now it’s coming back, and not a bit too soon. I mean who could possibly come up with a better idea than “a little dog goes on adventures?”  I’m sure the 46-year-olds who were 10 in ’74 are just dying to relive the novelty dog movie memories of their childhood.

Walden media has paired with Brandon Camp, son of Benji creator Joe Camp Jr., to write, direct, and produce a pic that will reboot the character for a new crop of young moviegoers. Camp will begin a nationwide search to find a dog and hopes to partner with a rescue organization to “screen test dogs in pounds,” he said, because the original Benji, a dog named Higgins, was a pound puppy.

The dogs not chosen for the role of Benji, meanwhile, will be murdered with poison gas, as per pound policy.  If only Hollywood operated like this more often.  You know how many resources we’ve wasted on Skeet Ulrich alone?

Camp recently co-wrote and helmed Universal’s “Love Happens,” starring Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston, and he is attached to direct Walden’s family comedy Relativity.

Well I guess you could say he has experience DIRECTING DOGS! (*toilet flush*)  Slow and go on the 280 folks, look out for brake lights.

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National Lampoon’s Vacation (the one where they go to Wally World) has already had three sequels, which in the mind of movie execs, makes it ripe for another.

New Line is developing a sequel of sorts to the 1983 comedy classic, with David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers, Fred Claus) attached to produce and possibly direct.  New Line is meeting with writers to write the script but the take is already developed: the story focuses on Rusty Griswold, the son of Clark Griswold, the protagonist of the initial movies portrayed by Chevy Chase. The younger Griswold is now a father himself and takes his family on a road trip vacation. The characters would acknowledge that first trip, making the movie more of a sequel than a reboot.

The original “Vacation” is a Warner Bros. property but as soon as New Line became part of the studio, exec Sam Brown began sifting through the parent company’s titles to see what was available in terms of rights. He eventually found “Vacation,” a movie he has watched more than any other in his life, and brought it to New Line president Toby Emmerich and production president Richard Brener, who jumped at the possibilities.

They’d probably jump for a frozen herring too. This is the problem with the movie business in a nutshell: the execs are too stupid or lazy or cowardly to read new scripts (or to ask the opinion of people they pay to read scripts for them), and instead spend their time trying find out which movies they already made that they can make again.  What is this, karaoke?  Grow some balls, you pussies.

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Today’s forgotten classic is 2004′s Karate Dog, and it may be the best thing I’ve ever posted.  It’s a REAL FILM.  Called KARATE DOG.  And don’t worry about it departing too much from the Karate Kid mythology, because it also has Pat Morita, there to lend it credibility.  Pat Morita, Chevy Chase as the dog, and literally everything I’ve ever wanted in a movie:

• Dog in a fake mustache and glasses
• Dog driving a red convertible
• Dog listening to rock n’ roll in red convertible
• Dog feeding Simon Rex lines during his date with Jaime Pressly via radio (because the dog is cool, and knows all about what chicks like to hear, you see)
• REER!
• Doggy lounge band
• Doggy conga line
• Dogs playing poker
• Black dog scamming on some white bitches in a hot tub
• Dog scratching his OWN RECORDS

With all this and more packed into just two minutes of trailer, you might realistically wonder whether they ever actually show a dog doing karate.  DO THEY EVER.  And might I add, JON VOIGHT.  This movie makes my leg involuntarily kick the ground in pleasure.  The tragedy here is that this is probably the first and last time I’ll ever need a “Simon Rex” tag.

[Thanks to Patrick for the tip]

A while back FilmDrunkard Jared sent me to the IMDB page of Not Another Not Another Movie, presumably a spoof of those Seltzer-Freebird idiots.  With no other info to go on and a cast list that included Chevy Chase, Burt Reynolds, Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones, and Stuttering John, I assumed it was someone’s idea of a joke.  Not so, apparently.

Chase plays a studio head who quits his floundering company, leaving his ex-con sibling (Madsen) in charge. Soon their equally inept gangster friend (Jones) takes over and assigns a production assistant (David Leo Schultz) to direct a spoof of spoof movies. Reynolds plays an actor playing the director of the chaotic film within the film.

Writer-director David Murphy’s “Movie” features cameos from actors playing themselves spoofing their memorable roles, including Richard Tyson (the villian in “Kindergarten Cop”) and Wolfgang Bodison (the young African-American Marine on trial in “A Few Good Men”). Ellie Gerber, Tim Piper, Jennifer Sciole and James Duval also star. [THR]

…So it’s a spoof of spoof movies, about a guy making a spoof of spoof movies, starring actors spoofing themselves.  In the movie.  I think.  Michael Madsen was so confused by the idea that on the first day of filming he cut off Jean-Claude Van Damme’s ear and wrote a poem about it.