Be Kind, Rewind

Hello folks, and welcome back, to Insect Horror Theatre, where we cover only the absolute finest feature films from the horror genre that solely focus on insects as the villains. I'm your host, and tonight, we will be looking at this spectacular masterpiece, "SLUGS". Before we dive any deeper, let's focus on the first major sin of this box art, which is that the title of it, in big bold font, lacks a goddamned exclamation point. You can't just have a single word title horror movie, especially one named for the villain of the movie, and then NOT have an exclamation point. That's just box art 101, man. Honestly, I'm always a bit torn when I go into doing one of these and legitimately cannot make fun of the art itself, because that slug right there? A+. That's an A+ slug. Can't deny it. Shit, even if the person in the, inexplicable, hazmat suit about to face off with Slugzilla here looks fairly good. But that's okay, because there's still...

  I don't know about you, but this thing scares me. When I shut my eyes at night, all I see now is Beezbo's face on the black of my inner eyelids. He haunts me everywhere I turn, and there is no escape, no reprieve from the ethereal horror that is goddamned Beezbo the...whatever the living fuck he is. Bear? Space bear? He kinda looks like a bear right? But like a mutant space bear, or like a bear from the Ferangi homeworld. Now, I'd like to be clear here, I always take the time to try and find full box art for you guys. Unfortunately, or in this case perhaps fortunately, I could not track down the back box art of this thing, and maybe that's for the best, because who the hell knows what was on it and if it's even safe to view. I honestly, upon seeing this thing, expected my face to melt like in an Indiana Jones movie. There's not a lot going on visually, exactly, and it's not necessarily horrendous. It's no Invisible Strangler, that's for su...

"Well, did he leave any finger prints on the crime scene at least?!" "Chief, how do you not understand this completely simple concept." Guys, I'm gonna be honest right out the gate, there's a whole hell of a lot to unpack here. Like, let's begin at the concept itself, alright. Somebody went into a room in Hollywood, walked up to their boss who had his shoes on his desk, his suspenders strapped on, big ol' sunglasses and a cigar hangin' out his mouth (I'm describing a very specific seedy place in LA where only these types of movies can come from), and went "Sir! I've got it! It took me hours but I finally got it! Okay, it's about a murderer...and he strangles people...BUT THEY CAN'T SEE HIM!" His boss then leaps up from his desk, fist pumps the air, points his cigar hand at his employee and goes, "God dammit, Greg, you're a genius! This is why you're the highest payed screenwriter in the field today!...

    Man, fads used to be so strange, right? Between marbles and pogs, we used to just think, "You know what kids will like? Weird shit with goofy names!" and it was true, we ate it up, man. We didn't know any better, we were nothing but classless swine, told by the system what was cool and appropriate to enjoy, which is why when people finally started having sex as a teenager and didn't immediately go to hell, they realized, "Hey, adults have been lying to us forever!" and everything changed. But that's a different subject for a different blog. A much better blog. Not this blog. This blog isn't about the bullshit propaganda that our parents and the establishment fed us to turn us into unquestioning subservient drones for their 9 to 5 minimum wage slave jobs. No. This blog is about bad box art. So let's talk some bad box art! The weird thing about both marbles and pogs (and anything like them that fell into the ever expanding category o...

There's only going to be two things left when the bombs finally drop, and those are plastic and bad horror movies about spiders. This is one of the worst covers I've ever seen, just outright. First off, leopard print wearin' Rocky Horror Show knockoff on the front there doesn't look so much scared as they looked excited, like they're about to have a night out on the town. Meanwhile, their friend right behind them, who doesn't seem to be looking at anything in particular, has absolutely NO reaction on his face and thus it's hard to exactly understand what he's trying to convey other than the feeling of, "I really need to use the bathroom right now." That's how people who try to hold it in look. Prove me wrong. Then you've got the spider, which is a pretty good spider, I'll admit. I've seen worse spiders, let's put it that way. This spider's got nice big scary mandibles and some wicked eyes. That's a pretty good s...

Oh boy, if there's one thing that I love more than horror movies, it's BAD horror movies. In all honesty, taking this at face value, it's not the worst VHS cover I've ever seen. In fact, the art on it is actually pretty decent, and the fact that they somehow managed to create a skull type face on a fucking boat is pretty impressive. But, it's still an old VHS box, and that means it's going to be subjected to my personal brand of hell. Let's talk about some smaller things first before diving into the artwork itself. I personally find it absolutely hilarious that on the back of the box they have the big bolded letters VHS, as if you somehow could mistake this for any other form of media, or there was any other form of media to mistake it for at the time, other than perhaps Beta. Maybe it was put there specifically for stupid people, and if so that's awfully nice of them, but either way it makes me laugh. The back of the box also gives the possible wa...

I think it’s fair to say that the only thing intriguing and suspenseful about this is the movie posters itself. Intriguing for why it was made to look like this, and suspenseful until you come to the bottom of that, which we will attempt to do right now, and boy lemme tell you, there’s SO MUCH MORE to this poster than meets the eye! Endplay was an Australian film released January 1st, 1976, and was an adaptation of the 1972 novel of the same name. Ah, January 1st. Nothing like starting the new year with an amazingly bad movie, you know? It just sets the tone for the next 12 months! Actually, despite the box art and premise, which we’ll get to in a second, this film did surprisingly well in Australia! So let’s talk box art, yeah? It’s minimal, like the last post, but surprisingly has a lot still going on in it. I mean, for one thing, we have a basically naked chick laying on the floor, bleeding to death. I’m assuming, judging by the nearby knife, that she was stabbed...

What is it with women and wanting to fuck monsters? Is there just something wrong with us? I don’t know, but what I DO know is this: This is a movie that exists, and this cover is as bland as it gets for a movie that sounds as ridiculous as it is. It’s written AND produced by a man named Pierre Brousseau, who doesn’t have his own wikipedia page for, what I considering to be, VERY obvious reasons. In fact, the mere acknowledgment of “writing” and “production” on this is funny on almost every level, since it sounds like something a teenage girl would come up with at 3 am. There’s not much really to be said about the movie, and this isn’t really a film review blog anyway as much as it is just as box art blog, so let’s talk some box art! First and foremost, you got what EVERY single box art in the 80s/90s needed; scantily clad hot chick! And right below her? The most seemingly generic title in the world! How could you miss?! Aside from her beads, which she apparently co...

There’s SO MANY horror movies about insects that it’s ridiculous. At some point, I’ll have to make a masterpost containing them all. SQUIRM was shot in 24 days, which basically screams masterpiece in my mind, and the original composer, Bernard Hermann, who also composed classics such as The Day The Earth Stood Still and Psycho, died before he could begin work on it, which I guess is one way to get out of having to be associated with this thing. Supposedly, the worms are meant to be “carnivorous”, as if that makes them anymore dangerous because, come on, it’s a fucking worm. How carnivorous could it be? They just went, “You know how worms only eat you AFTER you’re dead? What if they did that when you were ALIVE?!” and thought that that was the basis for a wholly great horror film. Look at the cover of this thing, man. Besides having a title that basically begged for a porn version to be made featuring guys in giant worm costumes (don’t lie, you wanna see that), this ...