Be Kind, Rewind

In what looks like a scene of a creature from the depths of the ocean trying to seduce a woman, we have the cover for Island Claws, another VHS classic steeped in genetic experiments gone awry leading to the growth of what the back blurb only describes as "a man eating creature, beyond all parameters of science and evolution". But, like, it's a crab. Like look at the front cover artwork. That's a crab, my dude. I don't usually just jump right in like this, but I'm sorry, I will not let a movie try and purposefully mislead me into thinking there's something grotesque and monstrous in it, when even the movie itself shows me on the front cover what its creature actually is. It's a giant fucking crab. This is a truly basic cover design, so basic even that I'm not sure it warrants a discussion. There's not much of note outside of the fairly well done pencil sketching on the front. The single non contextual screenshot we're given on the back is n...

So, I guess I'll start off by saying that this cover looks a rainbow vomited onto a fart. Like, visually, that's the first thing I think of upon seeing this color palette. Now, while at first glance this may appear not all that interesting to look at, there's actually a lot more going on here than you'd think. Let's start with, once again, these companies hiring the absolute lowest tier artist possible to draw their horrifying humanoid creatures they've plastered on the front of this monstrosity, that I sincerely hope aren't actual representations of the people in the movie, because if they are, then god those poor ugly people. Again, if you're going to through all the trouble of financing and producing a filming a picture, why would you drop the ball at the very last part of that? Why would you hire the worst people to create the thing that's going to be the first visual representation of your finished product on a shelf somewhere? Makes no se...

  Have you ever gone to a museum, whether via a field trip as a child or of your own volition, and you're standing there admiring the artwork, slowly moving from piece to piece, and then you come across a piece that you wholly abhore and cannot imagine anyone ever considering hanging in a fine art museum. That's kind of what's happening here. You can see glimpses of an amazing work of art, but it's all so bogged down and covered up by the crap someone smeared over it that you just can't see it as it should've been. Let's discuss some positive points, like that font. That font is downright incredible. It's just plain cool, man. Like, if you were thinking of making, specifically a B-Horror movie, that's the font you'd look at and go "perfect!". That is A+ grade b-horror movie font, right there. But that's about where the positive points end, sadly, and it quickly devolves into a collage that looks like it was put together by ...

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...

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...

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 ...