The official WORST STUDIO COVER ART thread. Post your worst covers! (1 Viewer)

[Charles Smith]

Looks like a SyFy Channel ad. Or something, I don't know. It's sad. There must be a dozen recent releases out there right now that the WOMAN IN BLACK cover art blends right in with. In Costco today it was displayed next to THE GREY, and it was amazing how mindnumbingly similar they were.

 

[Ruz-El]

I forgot about The Grey. Another giant head, but looks less cheap somehow then the Woman In Black One. A terrible trend to be sure:

Sadly, it's poster art:

Even bigger head for the poster ha ha

 

[NY2LA]

As much as I love the original Charles Adams artwork, it wouldn't show up well on a store shelf to the average person. Add to that, with out an advertising campaign to back it up, very few people would remember this film or know what it was about. The new cover, as horrible as it is, at least gives someone an idea of who is in the film if nothing else.
Doug

Now let's consider just how few discs are actually sold off a store shelf these days, and how much more time they'll spend on the owner's shelf. Also if they want retail shelf-specific art that's what O-Cards SHOULD be for, instead of duplicating the same thing that's on the actual cover. And again, how often do people buy a movie on disc they haven't already seen, so the cover doesn't have to spell out the plot - there is a blurb on the back for that. The current art is just cheap, tacky and awful - and fails on every level.

 

[Charles Smith]

Unfortunately, it's not just store racks dictating the supposed need for the utterly crappy dumbed down art and the wasted opportunity with slipcovers. It's the damned THUMBNAIL IMAGES online that they think have to attract people's attention in that same way.

Of course, thumbnails of DVDs and BLUs using elements of original poster art immediately attract MY attention. And when it's a film I don't know, it gets me interested in finding out what it's all about, to see if I'd want to acquire it.

Imagine that!

And on a store rack, just using my local Best Buy as an example...the "poster art" ones stand out equally well there, too. I can browse the same rows of BDs over a period of weeks or months, and something like the BD of Fort Apache STILL grabs my attention, thanks to the cover.

 

[Peter Neski]

Warners art dept must be on of the worst ,their new Blade Runner book looks pretty bad

 

[Lord Dalek]

Originally Posted by Peter Neski /t/312686/the-official-worst-studio-cover-art-thread-post-your-worst-covers/180#post_3954246
Warners art dept must be on of the worst ,their new Blade Runner book looks pretty bad

Eh compared to some of the other covers in this thread, I kinda like the unicorn on the digibook. Would have made a much much better cover for Legend though.

 

[WinstonCely]

Eh compared to some of the other covers in this thread, I kinda like the unicorn on the digibook. Would have made a much much better cover for Legend though.

Damn, add me to the I-kinda-liked-the-unicorn-digibook cover, too. It's a key symbol in the film, and simple yet dramatic image in the cover art. Although, I can see how it comes across as trite.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Little Shop of Horrors, on the other hand, looks to be an abomination, though I do like the artwork choice for the new Deliverance digibook.

 

[JohnS]

Here is Hunt For Red October one sheet.
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpYDxhhGxmhKhyn0gKQ_xYZUZ7RjOhi90adb_zr0VHZRK3jz_fVmH1Pksm0w
Here is the Blu-ray (what's up with Baldwin and Connery both looking up?)

 

[t1g3r5fan]

Here is Hunt For Red October one sheet.
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpYDxhhGxmhKhyn0gKQ_xYZUZ7RjOhi90adb_zr0VHZRK3jz_fVmH1Pksm0w
Here is the Blu-ray (what's up with Baldwin and Connery both looking up?)

Which makes me glad that I found a blu-ray with the original poster art for the cover.

 

[Peter Neski]

pretty bad ,doesn't even look like Baldwin

 

[Deepak Shenoy]

Warners art dept must be one of the worst ,their new Blade Runner book looks pretty bad

Unfortunately Warners has gone from one of the best (during the heyday of DVDs) to one of the worst (if not the worst). In the past they were one of the few studios that always used the original poster art for their DVD releases. But now in a misguided effort to make classic films more appealing to the mainstream they have discarded the original classic cover art and come up with something more modern. In most cases the so-called modern cover art is terrible and just doesn't convey what the movie is all about. Examples are Mean Streets, Strangers on a Train and Singin' in the Rain (to some extent).
-D

 

[ijthompson]

This one really gets up my nose...

 

[SilverWook]

The HD DVD release fared better.

 

[ijthompson]

You're right... and it even shows a little more art than the movie poster did! I can get behind that. Hope we get a blu of this one 'fore too long... and that they use the proper artwork.
And to be fair, I can think of one -and only one- instance when a (in this case, dvd) cover actually did a better job of being an official poster than the official poster did:

Though a newly-commissioned work, it looks like it actually came from the early '70s. Somebody deserves a major high-five for that.

 

[SilverWook]

Interesting the single disc got a better cover than the two disc set, or the Blu for that matter.
There are some pretty cool foreign posters for THX I've seen.

 

[ijthompson]

Interesting the single disc got a better cover than the two disc set, or the Blu for that matter.

I agree! I kinda want to buy it just to have it, even though I don't need it. Maybe it'll be the cover for the BD of the Theatrical Cut (yes, I'm delusional ).

 

[Ethan Riley]

The original movie poster:

A later movie poster. This is the one I actually recall seeing back in 1970:

Now on to home video. The old vhs version:

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. The blu-ray:

Okay. A couple of things wrong here. First--the views of "old" Barnabas and the fanged version of Carolyn kinda of give away part of the movie. Notice how coy about the horror antics the photo poster was in comparison. You know it's some kind of spooky gothic movie, but surprises still await, right?
The original painted version obviously tells you what's going on in that movie, in full gore, as was the style for horror movie posters of the time. But DS was never supposed to be like a Hammer Horror film. It turned out that way, but the original tv show wasn't like that at all.
I do like the vhs cover. It's very simple and gets to the "heart" of the movie. It's reflecting on that brief, uplifting moment of the movie in which Barnabas was nearly cured of his vampiric affliction and was able to walk with Maggie in the daylight. But you notice, also, that it's sundown and that there's something menacing about the mansion in the background. That too, is the real Dark Shadows. Whoever prepared that art understood the movie pretty well, I'd guess. As for the blu-ray, I simply am not a fan of the ongoing "disembodied heads" style of home video packaging. I think it's unimaginative.
But if you don't like "disembodied heads," at least they didn't use the original Japanese film poster, which looked something like:

 

[Ethan Riley]

Onto "Night of Dark Shadows."
The original theatrical poster:

And your vhs:

And oh, yes, there is a blu-ray:

If anything, I think it looks stupider than the HODS blu. I think the poster art was campy; the vhs was just "okay," but the blu is more boring than anything. Do these blu-ray producers really think this is good artwork? Sheeoot. They couldn't even manage to get Kate Jackson's name on that cover. Or Lara Parker's. I guess it's just another entry in the "David Selby Film Collection" or something now. Not...good!
I'm not getting it anyway. If they can't see to it to spend a little time and money restoring that film, then there's no reason for me to support this blu. They found most of the footage--the footage was re-looped by the surviving actors--it should be a go. Such a great opportunity. But they just re-released the same flick that's been bugging fans for FORTY YEARS. Sigh. What a waste of time. And don't sit there and tell me it's not going to happen. It will happen. I know it will, because it's not like Dark Shadows fandom is going away. If that stupid Johnny Depp movie couldn't stop them--then nothing will!!! DS fandom is still going strong, and the studio owes it to them to release a collector's edition of these films--not just treat them like generic catalog releases.

 

[Keith I]

I just got Catch Me If You Can on Blu-ray today and when I saw the cover art (and realizing how drastically different it was from the DVD art), I remembered this thread.
DVD Cover
Blu-ray Cover
It was bold for the studio to not show Leo's and Tom's faces for the DVD (movie poster?) and it conveyed the urgency of the chase. But with the Blu-ray cover ... ugh x thousand.
Sorry, I didn't want to embed the images because they're not mine (i.e., copyrighted) and I'm following the notice on the upload page.