Comments on: Boss poster art for really bad movies

By: Ahlock master

Ahlock master — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 03:54:31 +0000

Troy Z.. that was a “Roger Corman and AIP” bio flick.. I have it somewhere.. I remember that ..

By: Butch R

Butch R — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 22:07:30 +0000

Looks like we remember/picked up quite a few of the same VHS tapes back in the day. I remember a similar Mom & Pop video store behind the fast food restaurant I worked behind. Friday came and it was pizzas & videos from there. I will say, even when they lied, those one sheets looked great and made you think you wanted to watch this dog. How come we don’t see great art like this on films today? Heck, imagine a great flick with a great poster like one of these!

By: Troy Z

Troy Z — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:05:39 +0000

[sigh]

I… too… understand.

At this point we should probably roll up our sleeves or lift our shirttails to competitively expose our scars inflicted by the wildlife to which we subject ourselves.

I take this mutual jadedness (jadosity? jadiciousness?) as a personal challenge to eventually write a screenplay that would sate our jaundiced palates, but on what ground would one start that hasn’t already been strip-mined, its goods exhumed, defiled, and reinterred? The Leatherpocalypse of which you spoke may only beget a lackluster Doomsday. What would you suggest?

By: Bryan White

Bryan White — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:52:50 +0000

It’s a sad truth, Troy. Time was, I would consume anything with gore and boobs eights ways to sunday but years of constantly bombarding my sensibilities with crap for fun have left me awaiting each movie I watch with arms crossed and an eyebrow cocked. I basically have my phasers set to kill before I even decide which movie I’m going to watch on any given evening.

It’s the burden I carry.

By: Troy Z

Troy Z — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:49:16 +0000

Time-honored tradition, this. I recall a documentary on American International Pictures in which they disclosed that they actually made up the titles and/or commissioned the posters to get financing even before a screenplay was written. A telling quote by a co-producer that I can’t attribute properly said that if they could put sprocket holes in the posters, they should show those in the theaters instead.

I love how IMDB lets one discover that the director of “Slumber Party Massacre” is also the woman who wrote “Mystic Pizza.”

As for the preponderance of the Def-Con 4 poster in the 80s, it’s true, kids. I recall one actually up in one of my high school science class’ lab room. It also possessed me with the same postapocalyptic fixations even though I never actually got around to seeing the movie.

And rilly?! “Demons” has a scene driving around on a motorcycle through a theater while Iron Maiden’s “Flash of the Blade” plays and you lament that you wish that there was more to it than that? You are made of stone, sir. For shame.

By: David

David — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 07:09:26 +0000

I talked with actress Camille Keaton at a convention about the box and poster art for I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, pointing out — as graciously as I could — that it didn’t seem to be her derriere so prominently featured. She was genuinely miffed that the director, her husband at the time, used a model’s butt for the shot and not hers, as hers had been so generously displayed throughout the movie. I doubt it contributed to their eventual divorce, but still–!

By: tophatpainter

tophatpainter — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 07:08:08 +0000

I love knowing that in some cases, they may have spent more, or as much, on the poster art as they did the cast. Good times!

By: Blake

Blake — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 02:57:37 +0000

Man I remember Escape from the Bronx, and the bitchin’ poster for it! The MST3K treatment is amazing.

By: Tenebrous Kate

Tenebrous Kate — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:34:28 +0000

Oh my god! I actually picked up a VHS of “Ironmaster” in that very box for one of my movie nights in high school. We were so bummed out to discover that, as you say, it’s really just a “Quest for Fire” ripoff and not an awesome sword-and-sandal adventure story. If memory serves, there wasn’t even a sword in the movie. There *was* a lion falling out of a tree, however. Hardly a fair trade IMHO.

By: Bryan White

Bryan White — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:17:48 +0000

I actually had not. I have a couple of coffee table books that are nothing but poster art for cheap exploitation movies but I’m just now discovering this.