Quit Changing the box/cover art!!!
It seems superficial to bitch about boxart but the pinciples of "out with the old and in with the new" pisses me off. The original art captured the era of the movie and represents it better than any new crappy picture, therefore original art should be used ALWAYS!!! The movies are identified by the original poster in our memories so we can't even recognize what movie is what anymore when walking into a store! Seems like every movie box is trying to look like the next "Saw" or the next "Ring". You can't deny the power and influence a cover has. Covers help you find the type of movie you want in a sea of other movies (remember when you could figure out a genre of a movie or album just by looking at the cover?). DVD companies know this for a fact and thus generally repackage classics so that they will appeal to trendy dimwits instead of fans of the actual movie, which doesn't work in the long run because kids have a tough time appreciating anything before 1996 that wasn't publically namedropped by Eli Roth yet. It's basically false advertisment to make a classic film look like some recent hip movie. Sometimes when I see an old movie with a new box, I'm like "is this a re-make???". I'm starting to just rent off netflix so I won't have to own the disgraceful art. I seriously cannot take the abused CGI effects. Having to see such worthless modern "art" when I look through my classic movies to ESCAPE MODERN BULLSHIT in the first place defeats the purpose and is very frustrating.
Here are just a few examples of what I'm talking about.
I'm a proud owner of the original poster, the one with a cheezy ninja and a huge American Flag. It's like seeing G.I. Joe action figures come to life. The DVD cover pisses me off though. Notice how it has the flag burning in some stupid red shit, MGM must be a bunch of red commie scum!
I honestly thought the dvd was a re-make!!! No kidding. Wow, they're really trying to appeal to the jackasses that buy into that "Ring" and "Grudge" trend. Pale blue CGI girls are what horror is all about apparently.
Old poster is a classic, I even have a shirt of it. The new one looks like a scene from VH1 Behind the Music for some reason.
A damn shame they got rid of the classic 50's Detective comic art and replaced it with a generic photoshop job.
The DVD looks like a mascara ad in an issue of Seventeen...nuff said
Apparently it's an angry lump of shiny dogshit. It's probably pissed cause it can't even read "Deadtime Stories" on the cover. Why are digitally blurred words so cool all of a sudden? Hey look, the books are blurred too, I didn't even notice them at first. Are kids so illiterate these days that a clear sight of the books would have offended them? It kinda looks like the company wanted to pass this movie off as "The Ring" or "The Grudge". Attention whoever did this "art", go diving in a woodchipper, you fuck. I'll take a piss on whatever's left of you then feed it to your family until they choke and die. I'd actually be doing them a favor cause I'll have spared them from seeing your stupid "art" any longer.
"Hey, lets make the Breeders DVD look completley worthless so everyone can write it off as some Species rip-off even though the movie came out way before Species" ~ some dumbfuck at MGM. I never even knew the two movies were the same. I worship that original poster art. Such brilliance ignored just to show some retarded green twinkle. Notice the words are blurred again! Digital twinkles and blurring...whoever decided that was "cool" should hold a knife in both hands and run across an oil spill....come on I dare ya'.
Annoying digital twinkle strikes again! FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!
Such an amazing painting not being used. Instead lets have some yellow crap glowing around what appears to be the Cleveland Indians mascot.
Luckily the DVD cover can be flipped so that the original art can be seen....but still that shitty red computer effect is the version you see on store shelves. Wow, Henry looks more disturbed because random shitty computer effects fucked up his skin. Now he looks like a piece of wrinkled red foil. What's with the red/yellow photshop effect again? Is this done by the same hack that did the Deathdream cover?
Again with the shitty red/yellow computer coloring. The old poster ruled but it got replaced by a CGI werewolf drooling cum cause it gave those gay bikers a blowjob.
They turned Evilspeak into a wintergreen chewing gum advertisement...fucking assholes.
This is an extreme case of a brilliant poster replaced by the most worthless garbage ever. Okay...you got some stupid bitch (probably computer generated from head to waist) holding a cake with a knife in it. Oh my god, that's more menacing than actually holding the knife!!!..seriously, what's the message here? That cakes make good knifeholders? That you shouldn't leave knives in your cake or else your eyes will look like a lizard's ass? I don't get it. This is what a Hot Topic shopper would "draw" after graduating some hopeless art school. What a trendy little mallgoth cunt. It makes the movie look like an "I Know what You Did Last Summer" rip-off even though "Happy Birthday to Me" was made while that Jenifer Love bitch was still shitting her panties on the playground.
When I think of Humanoids from the Deep, I think of bikini chicks horrified by an awesome creature, I DON'T think of some dumb slut sleeping like a retard. Maybe she has a hangover? Wait, is that suppose to be Paris Hilton? And those eyeballs really blow, it looks like its feelings got hurt. It's basically giving an emo stare. It's being emo cause its face is covered by a generic landscape shot that belongs on a bottle of Pine Sol.
Monster Squad is a childhood favorite for many people. The poster helped define those fond memories. Wow, it finally comes to DVD (ABOUT FUCKING TIME) but only to shit on everyone's childhood by replacing the art with what looks like a digital Nambla ad.
That nu-green one really does look like TRASH. Is it suppose to be a character from one of those worthless Image comics back in the 90's? You know, the ones you could find in the 10 cent boxes at your local comic shops now...the ones you practically have to PAY people to buy. Luckily Synapse later on released the deluxe edition of the DVD with the original art.
Great, now this movie looks like a softcore porno on Cinemax made in 1995 starring Anna Nicole Smith.
Another example of shitty computer effects replacing handmade classic art. It looks like an advertisement for some sort of "icy cool" binaca for metrosexual hipsters that keep their sunglasses on in pitch black bars.
Where's the fucking alien? We want the alien damnit!!! Quit trying to sell it off as a Star Wars prequel or something.
This is the one that pisses me off the MOST because that retarded chainsaw represents EVERYTHING WRONG WITH HORROR TODAY. There's CGI blood that looks like diarrhea from a Hot Topic shopping faggot. Not only the blood, but the ENTIRE chainsaw is CGI too! God forbid they get a real chainsaw and spray some stage blood on it. That wouldn't look shiny and weightless enough. It has to look like something out of a video game for today's dimwit MTV-raised demographic. I swear that chainsaw was just lifted out of Tomb Raider. A chainsaw and some blood, seems like a dumb way to cash in on the moronic SAW/Hostel-era of horror. TCM 2 is a COMEDY, the original poster is one of my favorite movie posters of all time because it reflected the film's humor. The new art is a pathetic attempt at being "m0rBiD s1cK g0tH1c" for fruits that collect Living Dead Dolls, listen to Slipknot, and worship Johnny the HOMOcidal Maniac.
(Update, July 2007) Finally From Beyond, a personal favorite of mines, gets a DVD but MGM fucks up on the cover, making it look like a lousy Sci-fi channel tv show begging to get cancelled meets the gayness of Slipknot. They should have used the DVD cover on the right or the VHS cover which was also good.
I doubt MGM had no rights to any of the original art, they've done this way too many times with a lot of their releases, the odds of them having no rights at all to original art for so many consecutive releases is unlikely. And if they did lose the rights, why do they have to go with this trendy lame style? Can't they make something that doesn't look like a generic photoshop job? Something that's hand-drawn and actually requires talent? Or how about just get a screenshot of the movie for a cover? That would be better than this new computer generated abomination. Seems to me MGM, as always, wants it to appeal to a lame new audience that thinks anything before 1990 is "cheezy grandpa" stuff. It's such an insult to have a classic movie masked under some hip glossy generic bullshit just to sucker some idiot kid into buying it, even though the nu-kids will end up hating it since they needed worthless decieving art to make it attractive to begin with.
contact: joseangeles AT muchomail.com