Be Kind, Rewind

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the video rental store... We're back with yet another monster fish movie, because that is just such a super viable subgenre on the horror world for some reason. And I guess it's not that surprising, in the end. The ocean is endless, vast and practically unsearched, so we don't know what horrors lie in wait, and that's pretty terrifying. That being said, this is one of the more mixed box arts I've covered, because it's both awesome and terrible, somehow. Before we move on, let's just state the obvious...DevilFish is a TERRIBLE title. There's no getting around that, alright. It makes it sound like Satan possessed a giant fish and is now causing havoc off the shore of a beach, and that's just lame, man. Satan's got better things to do. Also, the tagline, while not terrible, is actually pretty bad in this context, as it implies the viewer is the DevilFish, seeing as humans don't sink their teeth int...

As I was preparing to do my first post - on a film I will do next week titled "A Quiet Place To Kill" - since the end of June before my hiatus, I came across something far more worthwhile. For those in the know, this one may not be one of the more unheard of "gems" (and I use that term extremely loosely) to come across this blog but I felt it warranted a post nonetheless, especially since there's so much to talk about not just in regards to variants but in regards to the opening image itself. So let's talk about Driller Killer. How about we begin with the fact that the name of the movie is Driller Killer, because that alone is rife for the joking. It's good to have onomatopoeic for the sake of catching a publics attention, but it's especially good when they literally rhyme like poetry. And it's not a bad title, to be perfectly honest. That isn't to say it's not ridiculous, because it's absolutely ridiculous, but it also isn't outr...

Man, what is it with low budget flicks and chopping up then devouring women? I swear to god, how many times have we covered some variant of this concept on this blog thusfar? It's a genre unto itself, at this point, I reckon. Whether we're talking about The Mad Butcher or Crazy Fat Ethel 2 , it's pretty common for cannibalism and murder to go hand in hand in a sub genre all its own, but this is getting ridiculous. At least this time around it's more comedic than just comically bad, which I guess is a step up in the same way that getting punched in the dick is a step up from getting kicked in the dick. One hurts less than the other, I assume. Either way, we have some excellent cover work for a change, despite being tied to a movie called Microwave Massacre which sounds like something a group of college kids would come up with after their 4th joint on a Saturday night. And that isn't an insult, for the record, I think it's hilarious, and the art is tremendous. No...

It's not often something like "Night of the Strangler" would be the kindest title given to a film, but here we are. I'm not even kidding, you guys. You wanna know what some of the other titles for this film were? The Ace of Spaces, which sounds like a scifi movie, Dirty Dan or Dirty Dan's Woman, which sounds like a Western about a lone gunman hunting down a woman who did him wrong for revenge, Vengeance is Mine which is...just...so very vague and, quite possibly the worst of them all has to be Is The Father Black Enough? Because wow, that's just...that's a hell of a title. Even better than the title, however, is the tagline for it, which read thusly, "A racist wind blows the dust from a Black man's grave to choke the honkies to death!" Absolutely magnificent, honestly. The film is fairly poorly produced it seems, with boom mics being notably visible in multiple shots, and, even weirder, despite both a lyricist and vocalist being credited, abs...

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...

This is a hard one to be mad about, because, if we're being totally honest...I genuinely kinda love this. It's one of those "so ridiculous it's great" examples, because there's not really anything super outstanding or downright original about it, design wise, but it's also so out there that I can't help but appreciate it on multiple levels that even I, quite frankly, don't fully understand. The cover is what it is, an attractive young woman covered in blood - a visual that a demented horror loving lesbian like myself can't help but adore - and the back has her in short shorts and a hawaiin-esque shirt while brandishing a pistol, ready to smoke anyone who comes near her. Clearly, a woman after my own heart. She might eat that heart, but hey, that's the price you pay for love I guess. Then we've got the screenshots which, aside from the first and third, are pretty spectacular in and of themselves because for once, even outside of context ...

I have, like, so many questions. Every now and then I'll come across a box art that doesn't disgust me as much as it bewilders me, and this is one of those times. I can't really talk shit about the art itself, because - quite frankly - it's not all that bad. It's well drawn, it's detailed, and what colors do exist are very appropriate for the subject matter. But it's just so god damned confusing that it warrants a discussion no matter what. Let's first ask why, perhaps, this man appears to be butchering shrunken women. Does his kitchen have an infestation of small fairy like ladies that's gotten out of hand? What did these poor tiny women ever do to this man to deserve such a brutal end? And also, why is he attacking her with a butcher knife when she's so clearly already inside of a meat grinder? Just crank it, dude. You don't need to stab her. Maybe it's cause she has bones, and that's harder to grind, maybe that's why he needs t...

This is...I don't even know how to start this one, quite honestly, you guys. I guess I'll state that it only makes sense that there's a sticker on it from a place called Movie America, because only Americans could make something so absolutely fucking awful. The colors, the layout, the fonts, everything about this shits the bed. The title of the fucking thing is on the front, the spine AND the back, ya know, just in case you forgot in the last 30 seconds or something. Thanks for the constant reminder. God forbid I might've forgotten what it was called otherwise, without your incessant reiteration! And while the layout of this case is nothing particularly awful - in fact, regular readers will recognize at this point that it's fairly standard, honestly, for the time period - it's also somehow even worse than others that follow the same design. First of all, and I really wish I could stop saying this but apparently enough people disagree, but the font on the spine i...

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat. This movies title is WILDLY misleading. Those are NOT hands of steel. That's an ARM of steel. Do you people even know what a fucking hand is ? Why didn't you just call this movie "Arms of Steel"? Because it would've worked, because guess what, guns, which are clearly used heavily in the film, are also called "arms". You would've had a double entendre movie title! But instead, you chose to stick with "hands". Which makes even LESS sense when one considers the blurb on the back cover that states "he is a superstrong half man, half machine cyborg", because guess what, if he's a cyborg, and half machine, more than just his fucking hands are steel. You could've called this thing literally ANYTHING ELSE and it would've been more appropriate and accurate to the movie. And let's not even go into the fact that the blurb also states that this movie takes place in the wildly...

If there's one thing in the world you should never be scared of or feel threatened by, it's a severed limb, even if that limb is sentient. Like, this is the single most unterrifying concept I could've ever conceived of, and it's just so gloriously stupid. What the fuck is an arm gonna do to you? Gesture at you menacingly? At worst, it's gonna give you the finger. I will give this box art this much credit: I've never seen anything so simultaneously awesome a concept and hideous an execution, so, kudos, I guess? Like, when you look at this picture, the image you see is an arm on the front, but that arm is extending from the back of the box cover and is attached, very un severedly might I add, to a human man. There's also the obligatory terrible screenshots, a weird unholy yellow stripe across the bottom giving us the cast, and why this has to be "uncensored" is beyond me, because unless that arm is going to get up to some rather unfamily frie...