FRIGHT NIGHT -- Cover Criticism

Fright Night may have a lot of gay sub text (find out what I mean in my review), but its VHS art is straight up iconic. People know it, but is that enough to give it classic status?  Will it be classic, characterless, or criminal?

Verdict: CLASSIC

How can you argue with this? Although this art does not represent any of the film's camp, its iconic demonic cloud is guaranteed to hook any passerby. In the bottom-half of the frame, a lonely, isolated house is penned in by trees on both sides forcing your attention to the curious figure in the window. Who could it be? Why are they so alone? Are they watching you -- a stalker or voyeur? The painted quality of the image saturated with grainy shades evokes a dark, story-book quality that offsets the creep-factor. But then your eyes are funneled upwards into the unfurling cloud of hell. From the center of a swirling mass of frightful shapes, the unmistakable face of a horrible vampire with piercing eyes impales you from across the room. It draws you nearer to its crooked maw. The person in the window is a victim! Unaware of the horror building behind them! And if you were like me, a kid who loved to be scared, this artwork certainly got you to beg your parents to rent this. Or you grabbed it yourself. No photoshopped headshots from promo stills. No busy, digital-sheen after effects. Just classic composition with effective visuals = horror win

Xtro -- Cover Criticism

Back in my review of Xtro (review) I talked about how weird, disturbing, and silly the film is. But how does its VHS box art stack up?  Will it be classic, characterless, or criminal?

Verdict: CHARACTERLESS!

The box art for Xtro typifies the verbal shrug that is "meh." For a film that includes alien rape, the birth of a full grown man from between a woman's legs, psycho midget clowns, a panther, and a giant killer action figure, why does Xtro look like the art for a lame arcade game? Sure, it represents the thematic content of the father-son dynamic, but compared to other 80's sci-fi / horror box art covers, Xtro just doesn't bring any Xtro-ordinary to the table. I like the warm colour compliments between Tony in his red turtle-neck and the orange/red hues of the alien behind him, but the profusion of white text leaves me cold. You'd have no idea going into this movie how bat-shit insane it really is.

Death Spa-- Cover Criticism

Now that I posted about Death Spa (review), let's look at its VHS box art. Will it be classic, characterless, or criminal?

Verdict: CLASSIC!

I love this box art! Like the movie, the art is so ridiculously fun and indicative of the the movie's tone but also 80's cheese. Although painted with a sense of depth and form, there's nothing particularly amazing about the composition except for the utter incongruity of the elements. When I look at this art, I can't help but think it shows a scene in which He-Man and a transgendered Skeletor have decided to visit Hell's spa. While He-Man is in the background being ass-tortured by an evil Pec Deck, transgender Skeletor is in the foreground feeling the burn as she sculpts a sexy butt and legs to go with her new female body. Although this art is ridiculous, look at the attention to colour. From the foreground to the background we move from the cool and deathly whites, greys, and blues to a higher saturation of infernal reds, browns, and oranges. Compare this to the omnipresence of blue filters and dull digital sheen that's slapped on most modern DVD art. The Death Spa box art is definitely a classic, and I want it as a poster.

CRITTERS 2 -- Cover Criticism

I wasn't impressed with the modern DVD art for Critters, so let's turn our attention now to the VHS art and modern DVD art for Critters 2 (review). Will they be classic, characterless, or criminal?

VHS COVER

Verdict: CLASSIC!

Although this is technically the movie poster, the VHS box art with which I am familiar features the same ball of Krites, but the box art had less text and a red border. This box art for Critters 2 didn't stray too far from the design of the first film's. Instead of a giant Krite, we see the ball of Krites that appears near the end of the film. A striking visual, lovingly painted and detailed, this box art is one I remember from my youth. Although this image feels more static than its predecessor, it makes up for the static design with such an intriguing visual hook.

Modern DVD COVER

Verdict: CRIMINAL!

Wow, these Critters DVD covers really are abortions of Photoshop. This cover is the worst example of lazy digital DVD art I've ever seen. For one, it shamelessly steals the central image of the classic poster -- the ball of Krites -- and then brutally rapes it into submission with radial blur filters. At least the other Critters DVD covers use stock photos. After blurring the shit out of it, some lazy designer pasted it over a nondescript background and photoshopped in some fire that is WAY TOO BIG to be in scale with the stock-photo barn. TA-DA -- new covers for the Critters mass-market DVD release. This probably took, what, six minutes? Maybe four mintues if you don't count all the times the design intern sat there furrowing his or her brow over whether to click "Radial Blur" five or six times.

CRITTERS -- Cover Criticism

In conjunction with my review of Critters (1986), let's compare its original North American VHS box art to its modern DVD art. Will they be classic, characterless, or criminal?

VHS COVER

Verdict: CLASSIC!

Critters had the perfect type of box art for the mid-1980's. Well-produced and eye-catching, it was ready to perfectly target its audience. The thin-line title text in front of a star field evokes associations with other sci-fi films of the era such as Blade Runner or Alien while the two meteors descending out of the atmosphere on a rural horizon establish the film's setting. Then, incongruously smack-dab in the middle of it all, is a big, fat, hairy grinning monster. Lovingly detailed and illustrated, the monster isn't scary but intriguing. Since the film was rated PG-13, this toothy alien is clearly meant to intrigue the kids browsing the movie store. Additionally, the cover's composition leads the eye in a very satisfying circle. Drawn by the creature, the eye is then drawn to the title. From there, the curving arcs of the meteors bring the eye to the barn and back to the the monster. True to the tone of the film while still exaggerating its qualities, the Critters box art is one of the classics.

Modern DVD COVER

Verdict: CRIMINAL!

Oh my God. What is this crispy turd? It looks like someone made this during an afternoon of learning Photoshop from a drop-in course at the local library. Where to start? How about the obvious? Someone went a little nuts with the clone-stamp tool. They couldn't get more than one stock photo of the Critters to paste all over the DVD? They didn't even appear to change the direction of their eyes, so everyone is looking  to the left. This cover is also guilty of two counts of Bevel and Emboss Abuse as well as one count of Reckless Drop Shadow. I've bitched a lot about the lack of imagination in modern DVD art, and I point to the whole Critters series on DVD as proof. Worst of all, the composition is painfully static. The beam of light and row of cloned Critters keeps the eye focused on the centre title text (which is just painful to read anyways). This leaves a lot of dead space in the bottom third of the image. Bleck. Throw this one in the stockades. No chance for parole.

HORROR OF HOT LINKING

One of my biggest influences for starting this blog was the website Critcononline.com. Since 1982, Fred Adelman has been keeping his finger on the pulse of horror with his independent publication Critical Condition and more recently his website. One of greatest resources on his site is the page called "A Visual History of Video Companies in the 80's" that boasts an impressive collection of scans and photos of vintage 80s-era VHS box art.

Recently Critcononline.com went offline and had its account suspended by its domain host. In correspondence I began with Mr. Adelman today, he said that 1000's of sites are hotlinking to his VHS scans and images, stealing his bandwidth and forcing the server host to shut him down.

EDIT: Hotlinking commonly occurs when someone (person A) shows an image on his or her website by linking to the image's source on the server used by someone else (person B). Whenever other people download the image from person A, it costs person B bandwidth. Person A should have uploaded the image to his or her own server and linked to it from there.

I thought it was worth reminding people that lazy actions such as hotlinking to a site's content can do a lot of unintended harm, especially when it threatens such invaluable historical resources as the content that Fred Adelman keeps on Critcononline.com.

While steps are being taken to get his site back up and running with code to prevent hotlinking, he shouldn't have to do this. In today's digital age, with the availability of free image-hosting services, there's really no need to hotlink. Unfortunately, with so many more people starting up blogs and websites in and out of the horror fandom that there's also a lot of careless image-hosting going on. Some people are just to lazy to take the time and find their own space to host images.

If you want to support a strong horror fandom, stop hotlinking. 

Strange Invaders-- Cover Art: Classic, Characterless, or Criminal?

Following up on my review of Strange Invaders (1983), let's compare its original North American VHS box art to its modern DVD art and see if either is worthy of the title classic, characterless, or criminal.

VHS COVER

 VERDICT: Characterless

Featuring a tag line that sounds like the sarcastic exclamation of a exasperated husband ("Your sisters said they'd leave after dinner. SURPRISE! They're still here!"), the box art for Strange Invaders is otherwise fairly boring. I dig the long shadows being cast by the text, but the rest of the elements don't seem to mesh. Worst of all is the cheesy alien materializing out of the clouds, which clashes with the squiggly "Strange" text in terms of style and tone. By no means a crime against VHS box art, it's a fairly forgettable piece of art. At least it offers some air of mystery unlike it's modern DVD cover art.

Strange Invaders has had at least three different VHS box covers that I know of, including a fairly rare one featuring an alien head shot (currently available on eBay in the UK)

Modern VHS / DVD COVER

VERDICT: CHARACTERLESS

While the original box art offered some air of mystery, when MGM released Strange Invaders on VHS in 2000 and on DVD in 2005 they went with the philosophy of "You want aliens? Here's yer friggin aliens!" While this image certainly reflects the film's campy tone better than the VHS box art, it suffers from a bad case of collage-itis. It also puts too much emphasis on the alien faces which, let's face, look like brown prunes. Flying orbs and lazer fingers attempt to add a sense of excitement, but there's only so much outer-glow you can add to the composition before it starts to look cheesy and outstay its welcome.

While I prefer the original VHS box art, I like it only marginally better. In a somewhat fitting way, both these examples of cover art are as forgettable as the actual movie. A rare example of truth in advertising from the VHS art world.

Gore-Met: Zombie Chef from Hell @ The Zed Word

This week on The Zed Word, my zombie blog, is Zombie Cuisine Week.

To celebrate zombies and food, I've posted a review of an obscure film from 1986 with a classic title and VHS box: Gore-Met Zombie Chef from Hell

All you really need to know is summed up in the following video clip, but if you want to read my review of the film check out THE ZED WORD

Chopping Mall: An Awakening to Horror

Sadly, the glorious era of the VHS horror box art is truly dead and gone. Young horror fans today are growing up in the age of DVD horror art: a bland, cold, digitally filtered and homogenized age in which the call of the marketing teams and designers is primarily, "More of the same! More of the same!". I am truly sad for the lost art of the VHS box cover. It was precisely my love for VHS box covers that made me the horror fan I am today.

VHS horror in the 1980s and 1990s, like the horror comics of the 1940s and 1950s before them, needed art that was sexy, shocking, surreal, and sometimes even silly in order to stand out in the ever expanding new market of home video. I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s with parents who were careful not to let me watch a lot of adult horror movies. Therefore, much of what I learned about horror I learned from VHS box art. Every trip to the video store, I would disappear to the back of the store, passing the beaded curtain of the porno section whose mystery would appeal to me a few years later -- but not then. No, I got all the titillation I needed from the horror and horror / sci-fi section of the local Video Network.

If I can point to one image that made me a horror fan, it's definitely the VHS box art for Chopping Mall (1986). The perverted use of everyday items, the shocking grotesqueness of severed body parts, the tongue-in-cheek pun -- all of these things would become my favorite elements of the horror genre. I loved to spend my time in the horror section browsing the box art even though I wasn't allowed to rent anything. I had to imagine the kinds of thrilling horrors, dark taboos, depraved maniacs, and lurid nudity that were waiting to be discovered behind the greasy box covers and entombed in the mysterious spools of black tape. My fertile imagination was compelled to nightmares and all kinds of new and exciting dirty thoughts by the mystery of such films as Monster (1979), Maniac (1980), Evil Spawn (1987), The Rejuvenator (1988), Phoenix the Warrior (1988), Cinderella 2000 (1977) and Love Me Deadly (1973).

What I imagined films like Chopping Mall to be invariably turned out more disturbing and exciting than the actual films. In fact, most of the time the box art was completely irrelevant to the film's actual plot. Yet, VHS horror box art still holds a place in my heart.

Since I never had the opportunity to watch the majority of the VHS films whose box art captivated me as a youth, I've started up this new blog: Monster Chiller Horror Theatre. Monster Chiller Horror Theatre is an attempt to seek out and write about these films. As well as modern horror, I will cover and review the sexiest, silliest, most shocking, most surreal horror films of the VHS age -- that lost age that ushered me into horror.