The time Citizen Kane was remade as an eighties action film

The door smashes open. A large man stands in the doorway, silhouetted by flames.

He steps forward, his soldier’s uniform is battered, his stubbled face spattered with blood.

From the other side of the room, six Russian soldiers open fire. The man dives into cover.

When the shooting stops, he pulls out a handgun as he stands.

Six shots later, the Russians are all dead. The man crushes his cigar under his boot and growls ‘Rosebud, bitch.’

He picks up the sledge and leaves the Russian fortress as it collapses around him.

“Citizen Kane is a classic, its genius. It taught us everything there is to know about movie making. I, myself, try to watch it at least once a day,” said acclaimed director Sheridan Monkhouse in a 1986 Wogan interview to promote the film.

“But, it does have its problems.”

“It’s black and white, it’s a bit old-fashioned, there’s no action, no hot topless girls, and no screaming guitar solos.”

“Now, I guess that, for whatever reason, that’s how Welles wanted to make his picture, but in the eighties, that just doesn’t cut it.”

Monkhouse set about developing a script for a remake of Citizen Kane with a classic eighties twist.

Entitled Kane: Blood of my Childhood, the film followed a broadly similar storyline except the search for ‘Rosebud’ wasn’t conducted by a reporter, but by a grizzled mercenary, and ‘Kane’ wasn’t a reclusive newspaper magnate, but a hot topless girl.

Opening on a cabin in the New England woods, Roy Danger, a troubled mercenary, returns from his battles with someone foreign to find his hot, young wife sat in a chair with no top on.

She is almost catatonic, but a tear falls down her cheek and she utters a single word – ‘Rosebud.’

So begins an epic quest as Roy travels into the heart of Russia, shooting hundreds of communists as he searches for the elusive ‘Rosebud.’

“I’m not saying it improves on Welles’ work,” said Monkhouse.

“That’s for others to judge, but I don’t think anyone can deny that we made a classic action movie, that a lot of people are really going to enjoy.”

Sadly, that didn’t happen, and the film is now largely forgotten.

But, for a few enthusiastic fans, the true ending of the Kane story isn’t a dusty old storeroom with some faded words on a sledge, it is the sight of a happy topless girl, sledging down a hill with her grizzled mercenary husband.