The Great Skycopter Rescue

For the holiday season, I bring you a gift. The #1 worst cover we've ever featured on the blog thusfar.

This thing is a goddamned work of art, if I must say so myself. Back in freshman year of high school, which would've been 2005, I was able to pick an elective class, and the class I chose was computer based, wherein we would learn basic photoshop skills and such. This thing absolutely looks like the jumbled messes I would messily make and try to pass off as "actual covers" to the "actual books" I was "actually writing" at the time. I could give you an example if I really wanted to dig through my physical archives, scan and upload something, but alas, I still feel great shame, so I won't go to that much effort. You'll just have to take me at my word.

This is a nightmare and a half though, and even I - budding young author and media creator I was - knew better than to ever name anything "the great shipwreck pandemonium" or some variant of that kind of ridiculous 70s naming scheme. Also, and I ask this with the upmost sincerity, what the fuck is a skycopter? Isn't...isn't that just a helicopter? A copter insinuates it's in the sky, and the word sky is in that word, so...what happened here? Why not just call it helicopter? I guess maybe cause skycopter sounds cooler or something. Certainly does have more of a ring to it than plain ol' "helicopter" does, I can't deny.

Either way, the director only has 4 films to his name, and those are "Night Force" (generic title), "Young Warriors" (generic title) and "Don't Go Near The Park" (stellar title, honestly). But none are so ridiculously named as this one, and frankly, that likely isn't his fault, I doubt he named this film. That was likely either the studio or the screenwriter. Except that Letterboxd tells me he's one of the 3 credited screenwriters, so who knows.

And honestly, this movie is likely entertaining schlock if nothing else, but the coverwork is so goddamned laughably awful that I can't imagine anyone actually dared to rent this thing. The tile font is too small and not centered enough, the imagery is simultaneously cluttered and contradictory, featuring something rough like bikers and explosions and then an adorable hot air balloon for some reason (which is featured once again on the back in one of the two screenshots we're given) and, best of all, a girl that I all but guarantee was added in as an afterthought, because she looks so visually disjointed in the midst of everything else that it's hard to believe she was actually photographed with everything else. In fact, all of this looks like multiple photos crammed together to try and make one coherent image, which is hilarious, because that attempt only made it all the more incoherent if anything else.

The back has two screenshots and a wall of text which all but explains every single piece of the plot, and the screenshots are contextually useless, as usual, but even moreso this time, honestly. A hot air balloon and a helicopter - my bad, a SKYcopter - in one of them and a presumably sexy woman on a motorcycle in another. Not my type of woman (or motorcycle, honestly), but definitely an image used to provoke men to rent the film. Explosions AND tits? You got it, son. According to the blurb, a "skycopter" is actually an invention of the lead male in the film, but still doesn't really tell me much about what the actual hell it is, so we're just left to our imaginations, which, let's be honest, is for the better, because I almost guarantee you that whatever they came up with will never match what you yourself can dream up in your mind. Presumably, that thing on the front cover with the balloon could be the skycopter, but I can't say for certain, so.

And, look, I understand that the "biker" genre is supposed to cock rock and over the top, I do, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they still could've put in even a small bit of effort to make their coverwork look remotely visually pleasing and not like photo collage vomited all over posterboard. There's no excuse for lazy graphic design, I don't care what era you're from, and I don't care what you're making it for. This is the sole selling piece of art that's being used to promote and move your product, and if you don't give enough of two halves of a shit to make it even somewhat aesthetically good looking, then you deserve all the outright silence from society that you get as a result of that.

So yeah, this thing is a mess, but it's an absolutely beautiful mess. Sometimes, even the biggest pieces of coal can still have signs of a diamond shine through.

Still want to know what the fuck a skycopter is. 

Not enough to watch the movie, though.