The director does make a difference

The 1978-version is great entertainment in its own way, but as you said it is also a reminder of what a superior DIRECTOR Hitchcock was. Every bone in his body knew how to tell a story with pictures. He learned the art in the last years of the silent movie era, when conveying emotions and drama without sound had reached perfection. Hitchcok knew the importance of planning every shot, he put his entire heart and soul into almost every scene he ever made. Too many directors since then has totally forgotten about what the art of MOTION PICTURES was all about. Today we have filmmakers like Michael Bay who thinks the art of entertainment cinema is all about loud spectacular action and noise, instead of composing a story with pictures. And to make matters worse we have new aspiring filmmakers who choose to idolize the Michael Bay-type of filmmaker, instead of studying the true masters of movie storytelling, like Hitchcock, Lang, Murnau, Von Stroheim etc.

Yes, this one paled in comparison to the Hitchcock film (and I'm not even a big Hitchcock fan). It wasn't even remotely entertaining to me, not even in the "it's so bad it's hilarious" kind of way that the remake of The Lady Vanishes was.

Where the Hitchcock film charmed and enthralled you, this one just fell flat.