Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

VHS Box Cover Art that Tormented You


piranesi

Recommended Posts

This thread is inspired by the trailer thread and by today's update of Dino Drac's Halloween countdown...which I am following this year with particular enthusiasm.

If you are old enough to remember browsing the stacks at a Blockbuster or West Coast or Hollywood Video, or even earlier whatever was in your town before Blockbuster bought them, then you know the thrill of passing certain VHS boxes over and over.  They were placed just at 12-year-old eye level because the video store knew that was the only people they would appeal to and you couldn't watch them...so, sadistic fuck teenagers, right? 

 

They were off limits when you were too young to rent a movie on your own (too sexy or too scary and your parents just wanted to rent LEAGEL EAGLES because your mom wished your dad was Robert Redford and your dad just wanted to bang Darryl Hanna...GODDAMMIT WHY CAN'T THE TWO OF YOU JUST LOOK AT EACHOTHER I'M GOING TO MY ROOM...)
 

 

 

...ahem....

 

 

 

and they were probably too dumb or cheesy once you were old enough to rent movies and you didn't want to be "that guy" and your film nerd friends made you rent BLUE VELVET or IMITATION OF LIFE or whatever asshole film geeks make you watch.

But for that brief period in your life they represented unobtainable perfection.  There is literally no way the actual movies could have been as good or scary as the box art.  And there was no way you would ever find out any way. To this day, you may not have actually watched them...but by God if you don't remember those boxes.

Here are a few of mine:

 

Posted Image

The absolute most terrifying.  I never went to the video store without checking in to see if any poor soul had been brave enough to watch this.

 

STATUS: Eventually saw it.  It was, indeed, horrifying.

 

Posted Image

I'm not going to hide this.  But apparently adolescent me had a serious fetish because I imagined that I was the dude holding that girl every time we stopped by the video store.  I was fully preparing myself to do battle with whichever ethnic gangs I had to in order to get with her.

 

STATUS: Never did see it.  Never had a letterman jacket or an asian girlfriend in high school.  Did eventually do battle with the Tongs.  But that story is for another thread.

 

Posted Image

 

Something about the hair.  That crazy careless hair.  the whole thing seems so low-budget that it felt like it must be real...like a documentary.  And that fucking hair.  that doesn't lie.  that's what an axe-murderer's hair looks like, backlit, at the top of the staircase which is the only way out of your house.

 

STATUS: Never saw it.  Nope.  Not getting anywhere near it.

 

Posted Image

 

For some reason the super simple ones scared me the most.  This looks like something from an evidence envelope in police storage or something.  Like, that picture is not bleeding.  So that means that here on the box we are actually in the madman's apartment as he creates this bleeding-picture montage.  I'm not in Blockbuster anymore.  I'm a hand's reach away from being pulled into this guy's world.

 

STATUS: Never saw it.  I can't imagine it's actually any good.

 

Posted Image

 

I don't really need to explain to you why 13-year-old me slowed down every time I passed this box on the shelf.  Let's just say this is what I imagined high school was mostly going to be.  Studying by day and hooking by night.  Again, I had a lot of preparing to do.

 

STATUS: It's on Youtube.  I think I'm ready.  I'm probably now close to the original target demographic anyway.  Me and Jerry Lawler.  @sep9lawlerjoke

 

Post yours!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All the big-box ones with "under 18" warnings on them. Zombie, The Gates of Hell, and especially the one of Nightmare (AKA Nightmares in a Damaged Brain) where the killer is slitting his victim's throat and the warning crosses diagonally over the bleeding throat. I've tried to find that one online to no avail. But my first memory of videos was seeing Frankenstein vs. the Wolf Man, and then the legendary Silent Night Deadly Night box. I was probably four years old. Hook, line, sinker -- most of my favorite memories of childhood are wandering in local mom and pop video stores scanning the horror section.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted Image

 

I don't really need to explain to you why 13-year-old me slowed down every time I passed this box on the shelf.  Let's just say this is what I imagined high school was mostly going to be.  Studying by day and hooking by night.  Again, I had a lot of preparing to do.

 

STATUS: It's on Youtube.  I think I'm ready.  I'm probably now close to the original target demographic anyway.  Me and Jerry Lawler.  @sep9lawlerjoke

 

Post yours!

 

Hey, don't forget the sequel:

 

Posted Image

 

 

I've actually seen that one and it was pretty decent.  Haven't seen the original though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seeing this VHS cover in a Crazy Eddie's as a kid gave me nightmares and is probably the reason for my lifelong fear of bugs

 

Posted Image

 

I don't know if the weirdest thing about this movie is that

 

1. they took a Dario Argento giallo and repackaged it in America as a killer bug movie

 

2. Jennifer Connelly's first starring role was in a Dario Argento giallo

 

3. The early survival horror game Clock Tower is heavily based on this movie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm trying ot keep myself honest here and only include boxes that I actually obsessed over as a kid and not cheat and put just some other crazy ones.

This one wasn't at the Blockbuster but at the local grocery store, in St. Louis that was Schnucks...where I would eventually find some temporary gainful employment in my early 20s.  They had a little video tape section in the front of the store that was wild.  It never had any copies of the new big hits (no ROMANCING THE STONE for you here!).  But they had all kinds of weird low-budget crap for like $.30 a day, if you could somehow get your parents Schnucks video card...which you couldn't.

Posted Image

Dig that...just sit and look at that for awhile.  How many ways is this great?  From the word "bloody" being spelled in blood, and the "New Year" using the New Yorker font.  He's so sad!  There's a FUCKING DISCO BALL!!!!!  I'm pretty sure this is not a movie about a living skeleton's sad New Year's party that none of his friends showed up to.  I'm 100% certain that the movie is not a long monolog and torch-song medley where he takes us through all the mistakes in his un-life that led him to be alone on Skeleton New Year (which I'm guessing is Nov. 1).

But dammit I wish that's what it was...and every time I passed this box I imagined what that party would be like with just me and my depressed skeleton friend.  I would tell him that he doesn't need friends like that and that he and I are fine on our own.  That would cheer him up enough that he would murder me and drink my blood.  Win-win.

 

This is a photograph I think.  Just imagine right now that you are the guy staging this shot and taking this picture?  Do you see yourself?  Are you awesome?  Yes, you are.  Because you are a guy who spent a Saturday afternoon setting up a plastic skeleton with a noisemaker and a party hat...and then SOLD THAT picture to a distribution company FOR MONEY.  $$$$$$$$$$$  At one point, you stopped to draw eyebrows on the plastic skull with a black marker.  You probably tried five or six different party hats to see which one "popped."  And then you captured that little flare off the disco ball.  Best day in the history of photography?  I am certain of it.

STATUS: I can't bring myself to watch this.  The dream is so much better.



 

Posted Image
This always looked like a potentially amazing mashup of DEATH WISH and RAMBO II.  I was kind of freaked out as a kid at how rough the art looked.  It looks like a court reporter's drawing or a sketch you would get in the newspaper before there were cameras everywhere, which added to the mystique...like when the Bernard Goetz thing happened you would get these rough sketches of the guy in the papers back then.

Also the idea that a dude could go crazy and start taking people out in the park freaked me out a little.  I was convinced by this box that even at my own little local park, there must be at least half a dozen vietnam vets ready to lose their shit on me lurking in any small clump of bushes. I was on high alert during every kickball match.  It seriously affected my fielding %.

STATUS: This was actually a t.v. movie, starring a young Tommy Lee Jones.  Turns out a young Tommy Lee Jones looks and sounds exactly like super-old Tommy Lee Jones.  The trailer looks pretty awesome actually and there is a girl in it that looks exactly like Christen Schaal...so bonus.  This may actually be as good as the box implies.




Posted Image
For years as a kid I was haunted by this box. I would just stare at it in disbelief.  Going to that corner of the store to look at this was a Rain-Man-esque ritual.   So simple...it really puts you into that space and gives you the feeling of creeping up on something horrible and you are compelled to move toward it even though you don't want to...like in a dream.

 

Plus it reminded me that I had in fact seen a commercial for it on t.v. that was just as sparse and terrifying and gave me serious actual nightmares.



It was so matter of fact.  And the back of the box laid it all out how this was our future in the most banal terms.  Like a little news editorial: "polluted air, foods sprayed with deadly chemicals, musused drugs and hidden radioactive substances.  Ever wonder what the results of all these poisons might be?  Well Davis is about to find out."

 

This was going to be the future after the 70s.  Demon babies everywhere.  I was 100% convinced.  That's just science, man.

STATUS: My best friend and I eventually scored a copy.  It was so stupid and bad that it became a running joke and we would doodle it on our trapper keepers.  the demon baby turned out to be pretty adorable.

But that commercial is still fucking killer and so is the box.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And now for a cheat.  I never saw this ever in a store, but it was on the site that was referenced by HumanChessGame.

 

Click this only if you are ready to die.  Save it for that moment.  It will make it a lot easier to let go of this life, knowing that this video box is one of the things you are leaving behind:

 

Posted Image

 

 

 

 NO SIR NO SIR NO SIR

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You didn't like It's Alive?! Seriously?

 

 

 

Oh, it was hilarious.  Don't get me wrong on that.  But it's hard to capture just how intensely we were prepped for the most terrifying thing ever.  Like, almost as freaked putting that tape in as I was the first time I watched THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

 

This was not that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted Image

I'm not going to hide this.  But apparently adolescent me had a serious fetish because I imagined that I was the dude holding that girl every time we stopped by the video store.  I was fully preparing myself to do battle with whichever ethnic gangs I had to in order to get with her.

 

STATUS: Never did see it.  Never had a letterman jacket or an asian girlfriend in high school.  Did eventually do battle with the Tongs.  But that story is for another thread.

 

 

I saw that movie back when I owned my video store. This was in the middle of my wanna-be auteur phase. I was digitizing the inventory and came across it and was like, "Wow, an Abel Ferrara flick I never heard of. Cool!" Sadly, as you may have gleaned from the box blurb, all it is is a NY-centric version of Romeo & Juliet. I do remember James Russo (a criminally underrated actor) and David Caruso (before he became a parody of himself) being pretty good in it and the China Girl was so cute I had dreams of casting her as Min-Mei in my big-screen adaptation of Robotech.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The trailer and the movie poster for It's Alive Scared the shit out of me as a kid.  I didn't blame for the movie being lackluster when I finally saw it, because I watched it as an adult when I was a much braver and more jaded horror movie afficionado. 

 

I did not have those wonderful raven colored glasses of fear that I wore as a teen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was intrigued by the Sleepaway Camp II cover, with Freddy's glove and Jason's mask in Angela's backpack

 

I saw that one so many times at that  same Schnucks grovery store that had BLOODY NEW YEAR.  That box was everywhere.  It was somehow comforting, given how scary and off-limits the FRIDAY and NIGHTMARE movies were, that someone was making fun of them. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wasn't a frequent video store visitor like you guys, and when we did it was probably common stuff like Gremlins or Ghostbusters. When our mother would take us, it was always on the way home from Mass where she would rent us something probably unsuitable and then left us alone in the living room to watch it. I do remember seeing Police Academy this way and Back To School (with little innocent me, some might say dumb, running into the kitchen saying "I don't think we should be watching this" at which point it was promptly returned)

 

Anyway, one VHS cover did stick out to me. It was always there. I remember the image, but could barely remember the title, so after some intensive internet searching, I've finally found it. (It's the DVD cover)

 

Posted Image

 

I knew nothing at all about the film, but for some reason it haunted me. Now I've just read the details of the true story it's based on, and I'm even more creeped out. From the initial kidnapping and abuse, to the possible later abuse of his own children, to his older brother becoming a serial killer, the whole thing is gruesome.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This reminds me of a Cracked article: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-8-most-misleadingly-awesome-movie-posters/

Because that's what I remember mostly. The ones that would look cool, but then I would turn it around and read the back and be uber-disappointed.

This one didn't look disappointing. Heck, I'm a chick, but it looked so hot:

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3620773120/tt0111205?ref_=tt_ov_i

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For Chuck

Posted Image

 

To this day, thanks to THE LADY IN WHITE,* I freak out when I see someone sitting under a sheet**

 

*At least I think it's LIW, can't bring myself to re-watch it

**Which, thanks to my wife's sense of humor, is at least once a year.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...