Movies
It’s Trickery! 10 Cool Posters for 10 Very Bad Movies!
Movie posters have always been underappreciated as pieces of art, dismissed by virtue of the fact that they’re advertising a “product” for consumption rather than made expressly to be looked over and discussed by discerning members of the artistic community. Luckily, a few savvy collectors early on managed to look past all the upturned noses and recognize some of these posters (also called “one-sheets”) as genuinely inspired creations in and of themselves. In fact, throughout cinematic history posters have often transcended their source material entirely, living on past the run of their respective films to become something lasting and worthy of aesthetic reconsideration. This is especially true of posters advertising horror films, a genre that through the decades has been the home of arguably the greatest amount of artistically stunted, cookie-cutter material ever to grace the silver screen but has also inspired a treasure-trove of memorable one-sheets. Some of these one-sheets are hand-drawn masterpieces; some are artful photographs; more recent ones are often marvels of digitally-enhanced innovation. All of them have the distinction of communicating something above and beyond what was required, be it through a deceptively simple central image or a richly detailed visual landscape. Following, then, are the Ten Best posters inspired by lackluster horror films. It’s beauty and the beast….
Note: I apologize in advance for my use of groan-inducing words such as “exquisite”, “dazzling”, and “sumptuous”.
Tagline: “Whoever wins…we lose.”
All the one-sheets for this (shitty) movie were cool, but this one is definitely the best – highlighting the striking forms of the respective monsters in all their seductive and elegant detail.
Tagline: “Some frequencies we were never meant to find.”
This ingenious poster, with its sea of reaching hands and eerie silver light, is like a bad dream come to life; the movie itself was just a nightmare to sit through.
Tagline: “They feast on your fear – and it’s dinner time.”
This written-directly-for-the-screen Stephen King effort is absolutely terrible – but the poster is a sumptuous marvel, with those slinking cats and ominous dusky backdrop.
Tagline: “Turn up the volume, turn out the lights, but don’t watch it alone!”
The one-sheet for heavy metal horror movie Black Roses is an exquisitely-rendered feast for the eyes; the film is just cheese.
Tagline: “And a child shall lead them…”
Those who consider Children of the Corn a classic of the genre probably haven’t seen it since they were, oh, twelve years old – but the theatrical one-sheet is iconic, and loads more suggestive and horrifying than the actual film.
Tagline: “Dismembered bodies…transplanted organs are used to create the Astro-Zombies.”
Obviously the creative inspiration for Astro-Zombies was all used up on the poster; the eye-popping color scheme and unique hand-drawn artwork is dazzling, but the movie isn’t, shall we say, up to the same artistic standard.
Tagline: “Check in. Relax. Take a Shower.”
The marketing campaign for Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake was ingeniously simple, with that brilliant tagline and its sensual central image of a woman behind a shower curtain; too bad the movie was a derivative bore.
Tagline: “The man of your dreams is back.”
While the theatrical poster for Part 2 is as beautifully-rendered as the rest of the Elm Street one-sheets, I chose this one in particular because it’s the one entry in the franchise that can genuinely be called a cinematic stinker.
Tagline: “Death was the only living thing…”
This movie about murdered chain-gang convicts who return from the dead in order to get high off of formaldehyde one last time (don’t ask) was blessed with this beautiful, morbidly atmospheric poster that makes you want to reach out and feel the texture of its gloomy world.
Tagline: “This was the night of the CRAWLING TERROR!”
Squirm the movie is a dreadful piece of garbage about killer earthworms (seriously) and has been long-forgotten for a reason, but the one-sheet is a genuine work of art that should be hanging in a museum; never has the chasm of quality between a film and its attendant poster art been wider.
Editorials
‘Malevolence’: The Overlooked Mid-2000s Love Letter to John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’
Written and Directed by Stevan Mena on a budget of around $200,000, Malevolence was only released in ten theaters after it was purchased by Anchor Bay and released direct-to-DVD like so many other indie horrors. This one has many of the same pratfalls as its bargain bin brethren, which have probably helped to keep it hidden all these years. But it also has some unforgettable moments that will make horror fans (especially fans of the original Halloween) smile and point at the TV like Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Malevolence is the story of a silent and masked killer told through the lens of a group of bank robbers hiding out after a score. The bank robbery is only experienced audibly from the outside of the bank, but whether the film has the budgetary means to handle this portion well or not, the idea of mixing a bank robbery tale into a masked slasher movie is a strong one.
Of course, the bank robbery goes wrong and the crew is split up. Once the table is fully set, we have three bank robbers, an innocent mom and her young daughter as hostages, and a masked man lurking in the shadows who looks like a mix between baghead Jason from Friday the 13th Part 2 and the killer from The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Let the slashing begin.
Many films have tried to recreate the aesthetic notes of John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween, and at its best Malevolence is the equivalent of a shockingly good cover song.
Though the acting and script are at times lacking, the direction, score, and cinematography come together for little moments of old-school slasher goodness that will send tingles up your spine. It’s no Halloween, to be clear, but it does Halloween reasonably proud. The nighttime shots come lit with the same blue lighting and the musical notes of the score pop off at such specific moments, fans might find themselves laughing out loud at the absurdity of how hard the homages hit. When the killer jumps into frame, accompanied by the aforementioned musical notes, he does so sharply and with the same slow intensity as Michael Myers. Other films in the subgenre (and even a few in the Halloween franchise) will tell you this isn’t an easy thing to duplicate.
The production and costume designs of Malevolence hint at love letters to other classic horror films as well. The country location not only provides for an opening Halloween IV fans will appreciate but the abandoned meat plant and the furnishings inside make for some great callbacks to 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. All of this is buoyed and accentuated by cinematography that you rarely see in today’s low-budget films. The film is shot on 35mm film by A&E documentary filmmaker Tsuyoshi Kimono, who gives Malevolence an old-school, grainy, 1970s aesthetic that feels completely natural and not like a cheap gimmick.
Malevolence is a movie that no doubt has some glaring imperfections but it is also a movie that is peppered with moments of potential. There’s a reason they made a follow-up prequel titled Malevolence 2: Bereavement years later (and another after that) that starred both Michael Biehn and Alexandra Daddario! That film tells the origin story of our baghead, Martin Bristol. Something the first film touches on a little bit, at least enough to give you the gist of what happened here. Long story short, a six-year-old boy was kidnapped by a serial killer and for years forced to watch him hunt, torture, and kill his victims. Which brings me to another fascinating aspect of Malevolence. The ending. SPOILER WARNING.
After the mother and child are saved from the killer, our slasher is gone, his bloody mask left on the floor. The camera pans around different areas of the town, showing all the places he may be lurking. If you’re down with the fact that it’s pretty obvious this is all an intentional love letter and not a bad rip-off, it’s pretty fun. Where Malevolence makes its own mark is in the true crime moments to follow. Law enforcement officers pull up to the plant and uncover a multitude of horrors. They find the notebooks of the original killer, which explain that he kidnapped the boy, taught him how to hunt, and was now being hunted by him. This also happened to be his final entry. We discover a hauntingly long line of bodies covered in white sheets: the bodies of the many missing persons the town had for years been searching for. And there are a whole lot of them. This moment really adds a cool layer of serial killer creepiness to the film.
Ultimately, Malevolence is a low-budget movie with some obvious deficiencies on full display. Enough of them that I can imagine many viewers giving up on the film before they get to what makes it so special, which probably explains how it has gone so far under the radar all these years. But the film is a wonderful ode to slashers that have come before it and still finds a way to bring an originality of its own by tying a bank robbery story into a slasher affair. Give Malevolence a chance the next time you’re in the mood for a nice little old school slasher movie.
Malevolence is now streaming on Tubi and Peacock.
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