Premake

The word premake is something like the word prequel. Start by imagining that a move generally regarded as not being based on an earlier movie WAS based on an earlier movie. Then do the movie over again set in an earlier time and using the stylistic and production values of that time.

I use "Die Hard" as an example but lots of things could be treated this way. Pretend that the 1980s Bruce Willis vehicle is a remake of a movie called Die Hard made in, say, 1965. The basic plot is the same. Bad guys take hostages in tall building (tall in this case meaning 25 stories). The hero is in the building without the bad guys knowing it, and by coincidence the hero's wife is one of the hostages. The bad guys say tell the cops they'll kill hostages if their Communist comrades aren't released from their unjust imprisonments, although it turns out their motives aren't political, they just want to steal the huge sum of money (3/4 of a million dollars) that's in the building. In the end, the hero pushes the bad guy out a window to his death.

All this is done in hokey 60's style cinematograpy, sort of the way they made "Far From Heaven" look like it was from the 50s. Also corny music. And the villain's fall is intentionally made unconvicing, perhaps like Jimmy Stewart's fall near the end of "Rear Window."

There's no really purpose to this, it's just for fun, just to amuse people who pay attention to the stylistic considerations of movies. This would be a niche market, so movies like this would have to be done on the cheap, but that would fit in nicely with re- creating the crummy look of old films.