Great Moments in Bad Cover Artwork

Inspired by the hideousness that is Lionsgate's cover for John Huston's The Dead, I've been tempted to possibly start a new feature on the blog which will highlight some of the worst DVD covers to surface in the twelve or so years the format has existed. Anyone who has ever worked at a video store or a movie theatre (as I have) could probably spot off at least five awful clichés that plague the world of poster and DVD artwork ("Floating Heads" being the most pervasive, irritating offender). If this does turn into a regular thing on my blog, expect themed posts, such as "Good Films, Bad Covers," "Did you hire your brother to put this together on Microsoft Paint?," "Ethnic Girl Shrugging Her Shoulders," "Offensive Photoshopping," "From Asia, With Love," "Just Because Julia Roberts' Head on a Model's Body Worked on the Poster for Pretty Woman Doesn't Mean It Does Here," as well as a few tributes to the studios who've consistently released ugly covers (Lionsgate, Sony, Koch Lorber, The Weinstein Company/Miramax) and to the gay direct-to-DVD market, who've never ceased to amaze me with their contributions to bad package art. So here are 10 dreadful examples of DVD cover "magic."

1. Repulsion, d. Roman Polanski, Koch Vision, as part of their "Cinema Sirens" Collection, 2001

Probably the most notorious of Koch's "Cinema Sirens" series, which also includes some former public domain flicks starring Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Ava Gardner, Jayne Mansfield, Elizabeth Taylor and Brigitte Bardot. With a simple cut and paste, Koch rendered Roman Polanski's terrifying, claustrophobic nightmare into a bargain-bin clunker. One of the worst parts about this cover is that they obviously recognized that what they were releasing was a quality motion picture ("Roman Polanski's psychological masterpiece"), but unfortunately the best way to sell it was with Catherine Deneuve's head on a blurry, purple with polka-dot bikini with matching towel(?) and high heels. Remember that great scene on the beach in Repulsion? Neither do I, but as any fashionable woman knows, never break out the bathing suit without your matching heels.

2. Beatific Vision, d. Sountru, Ariztical Entertainment, 2009

Oh boy! Keep in mind that Ariztical, who specialize in no-budget, nudity-filled gay flicks with the exception of the unfortunately popular Eating Out series and a pair of exceptional films from Tennessee-based filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox, has released Beatific Vision with two different covers: "Mainstream Art" (for Blockbuster, I'd assume) and "Alternative Art" (for the online buyers). What you see above is the "Mainstream Art" (the "Alternative Art" has a pair of male lovers locked in embrace with a sliver of an ass crack), and it is certainly the preferable of the two. The floating image is featured on both covers, but this version really caters to a tamer crowd, who enjoy wearing scarves that match Catherine Deneuve's bathing suit and dressing their pug in leather harnesses. If you were wondering what sort of people were still keeping Blockbuster in business, look no further.

3. Don Juan, d. Jacques Weber, Koch Lorber, 2005

It would seem a difficult task to make an aesthetically displeasing cover when you have Penélope Cruz and Emmanuelle Béart in period attire to work with, but leave it to Koch Lorber to prove me wrong. There's a storm brewing on the beach as Don Juan, played by the director, rides his horse across the tide, but as we all know, Ms. Cruz's beauty can part the most treacherous of cloud formations for the sun to shine upon her. Sadly, Ms. Béart's looks do not have the same powers. Both actresses' eyes are drawn outside of the frame, which would make sense as there's nothing striking going on inside of it, but I get the feeling Cruz's disheveled dress is revealing a little more than just her bare shoulders. Just look at the way Béart gazes downward, lips pouted and hair tussled. As if we needed any indication that what we want to be looking at can't be found in this cover.

4. Federal Protection, d. Anthony Hickox, Lions Gate, 2002

Hello, sexy! Glamourous girls with guns has always been an eye-catcher, but none have gotten my attention as strikingly as the headless, diamond-neckless-wearing lady in Federal Protection. Was this cocktail dress a part of Alexander McQueen's fall collection? I would die and go to fashion heaven if I ever saw Victoria Beckham in this number. With his lips puckered just a little bit and his hair slicked back, Armand Assante's face will be the wave of haute couture fashion, mark my words.

5. Poker in Bed [La signora gioca bene a scopa?], d. Giuliano Carnimeo, Televista, 2009

While one can find plenty of reasons to bitch about Televista, a company who issues unauthorized, VHS-to-bootleg-quality versions of Euro flicks, their cover artwork is especially noteworthy. While I typically wouldn't be the person to ask about which of Edwige Fenech's erotic farces are the best, I'd be silly not to at least mention Poker in Bed, which, if we're going by the cover, features a naughty scene in which Fenech wins the game with her Royal-Flush-from-between-the-legs trick. I also had no idea the Algerian-born actress was blessed with upside-down heart-shaped nipples, and that alone makes Poker in Bed a must-have!

6. Spooky House, d. William Sachs, Studio Works, 2003

Another possible theme for bad covers: Slumming Actors. Featuring not one, but two Oscar winners (Ben Kingsley and Mercedes Ruehl), Spooky House could never be mistaken for simply a bad DVD cover; it is refreshingly honest about everything you need to know about the film. Check out VideoDetective to see the official trailer and marvel at the accuracy in which the cover flaunts its state-of-the-art visual effects. If The Pagemaster was too animated for all you Ben Kingsley fans, Spooky House is the film for you. Side note: Someone needs to teach me how to rip scenes from movies off DVDs, because I searched far and wide, with no avail, for a clip of the theme song that was composed for this gem's title sequence.

7. Partner(s), d. Dave Diamond, Lions Gate, 2005

There's not much more to say about the cover for Partner(s). Just look at that photoshopping! Do you think Michael Ian Black is playing a homosexual? If a picture tells a thousand words, this one lays out the entire screenplay. Why would you even need to rent it? Is it just a coincidence that the film sort of shares a title with one of Hollywood's most notoriously homophobic ventures, which also has winning package art?

8. The Lost Steps [Los pasos perdidos], d. Manane Rodríguez, Agua Verde Audio Visual/TLA Releasing

This might be acceptable for the cover for a slideshow your cousin made for his parents' 50th anniversary, but not for anything else. In fact, I may even compliment your cousin if his skills had advanced to this level, but for a movie studio of any level, this shouldn't even suffice for the cover sheet of a press kit.

9. Five, d. Arch Oboler, Sony Pictures, as part of their Martini Movies, 2009

Thanks a lot Seven for making every film with a number that could maybe pass as a letter in the title the standard. While every single one of Sony's "Martini Movies" are the victims of heinous packaging, 5ive is my favorite offender. You've got a Mount Rushmore line-up of the actors, a screaming baby in one corner and a skeleton's face appearing in some sort of mushroom cloud explosion in the other. Mad props!

10. Thunderpants, d. Peter Hewitt, The Weinstein Company, 2007

Speechless.

Kill the Teenagers for Their Insecurities

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane – dir. Jonathan Levine – 2006 – USA

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The Wackness – dir. Jonathan Levine – 2008 – USA

Oh, teenagers. Their woes will always find a way onto the screen, particularly from directors trying to figure out what those seven or so years of post-pubescent angst actually signified. For director Jonathan Levine, the answer is “not much.” In his first two features, the insecurities of teenagers find a home in two different, but equally contrived genres. For All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, a virginal orphan, perfect in every way, named Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) is the object of carnal teenage conquest, only to result in the graphic deaths of a handful of her inferiors. For The Wackness, your average wigger kid/drug dealer who can’t get laid (Josh Peck) finds his eyes opened by a psychiatrist with a mid-life crisis (Ben Kingsley) and his step-daughter (Olivia Thirlby of Juno). Both films revel in their own clueless insincerity, only peeping out from their genre walls for the sake of “cleverness.”

Thankfully, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane proves to be so relentlessly amoral and blind of the political and cultural can of worms it opens that its dishonesty becomes inconsequential. For those who haven’t heard of it, you aren’t alone. The Weinstein Company shelved the film two years ago, perhaps as a result of Virginia Tech, or because they had no idea what to do with it. On the surface, it’s an acceptable throwback to 80s slasher flicks (Levine loves throwbacks) in which teenagers do a bunch of coke, get loaded, fuck each other and die for their sins, but second and third act twists unleash the worms that make Mandy Lane considerably more cringe-worthy and close-to-home than your usual cut-‘em-up. It ends up being both refreshing and contemptible, which are the only results Levine could have hoped for.

The Wackness, however, drips with the same insincerity, which one can quickly spot in both films’ Super-16, sped-up, music video grainy cinematography and which is annoying to say the least. Set in the early 90s for cute factor (check out the soundtrack and Nintendo and 90210 references), The Wackness wants to be authentic, another “throwback” to cheeseball coming-of-age tales, yet its dishonesty rings more disreputable than Mandy Lane if only because the latter’s genre doesn’t leave much room for authenticity. Kingsley phones in a performance that I’m sure Robin Williams would have been proud of, stoically hitting a bong without a wink and grossly making out with Mary-Kate Olsen.

I don’t hold many films to a social responsibility, so I can let Mandy Lane slide more than some might be able to. And yet, is it my own preference toward shallow teenagers getting hacked up toward white, English-speaking teenage boys coming of age that lets this slide? I don’t think so. With Mandy Lane, Levine places himself as the metaphorical razor-blade or bottle of pills for which the teenagers, each of which equipped with body issues and non-existent self-esteem, and yet in The Wackness, he uses the same teenage qualities to look for something a bit richer, more poignant. He may let his Wackness teens see the next morning, but at least he doesn’t put the Mandy Lane kids under some silly sympathetic pretense.

France et la mort

Private Property (Nue propriété) - dir. Joachim Lafosse - 2006 - France/Belgium

A friend of mine and I have a little ongoing gag that we use to sound more clever than saying “well, that’s obvious.” Our go-to is usually, “that’s like saying Isabelle Huppert is playing frigid!” Other staples include “Louis Garrel shows his cock in that film?” or, the less clever of the bunch, “Tilda Swinton is amazing in that film?” Well, Madame Huppert has decided not to throw us a bone with Private Property, a ravishing Franco-Belge production of a warring family and their house. Huppert plays the mother of adult twins, François (Yannick Renier) and Thierry (Jérémie Renier, real life brothers, though not twins). The three live in the house together, which Huppert’s ex-husband (Patrick Descamps) has left to his sons. Huppert wants to sell to open a bed and breakfast with her Flemish boyfriend (Kris Cuppens), but it appears to only be over stubborn Thierry’s dead body. The family clashes, naturally, as the close-to-the-point-of-homoeroticism twins differ in their parental relations. Private Property runs nearly ninety-five minutes, and for a film to please for nearly ninety-three of them, it’s no small feat. It’s especially French, but hardly maudlin. In fact, Huppert makes her Pascale rather endearing. How many films can you mention where you see Huppert ironing clothes?? Or getting fucked in the back of a jeep? Or yelling at her ex-husband? It would seem that she would do the latter quite often, but as I said before, her usual frigidity makes her more of an interior actress than her volatile roles might suggest. The ending of the film is questionable as it relates to the rest of the wonderful film, as it somewhat succumbs to the notion that French films must end in some sort of ambiguous tragedy. Instead of any of the characters paying for the sins of the rest of the family, Private Property concludes with mistaken agony. For a film to not beg me to fast-forward through it, I’m more than pleased (especially lately).

A Few Days in September (Queleques jours en septembre) - dir. Santiago Amigorena - 2006 - France/Italy/Portugal

I don’t know if I’m in a cinematic rut or if watching so many tepid films has turned me sour, but sitting down a watching an entire film without pause has really not thrilled me lately. As stated above, Private Property had me in rapture for its running length; A Few Days in September kept me in my seat as well, albeit for different reasons. I read a stimulating interview with Juliette Binoche, the famed French actress and Oscar winner for The English Patient, in which she discussed the choice of roles in her rather luxurious career. As a forty something and with the respect she commands, she pretty much has the pick of the lot; she’s fluent in many languages, perhaps more beautiful now than she was at twenty, and literally has directors banging at her door. She said in the interview that she chose A Few Days in September because, for once, she was offered a role in a pseudo-action film where the woman held the gun (a damsel in distress, she certainly is not). One could see also the appeal of A Few Days in September as it considers itself filled with historical importance. The film takes place in France and Italy several days before the attacks of 9/11, depicting a newly-unified Europe in the dawn of Al-Quida terrorism. Binoche escorts two youths (Sara Forestier and Tom Riley) around the streets of Paris and Venice in a search for her former business partner (a surprising Nick Nolte), and father and step-father, respectively, of the two, all while being tailed by a neurotic hitman (a French-speaking John Turturro). A Few Days in September is a bizarre failure that somehow manages to captivate while puzzling. With the exception of the attractive Forestier (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), the acting is particularly bad. Binoche has become an actress of extreme confidence, and it’s strangely admirable that she’s so self-assure when she seems so misplaced here. Turturro’s performance is weirdly uncomfortable, a hitman who phones his analyst at all hours of the day to discuss his interior confusion. And Riley, a Brit, delivers a shaky American accent (one that rivals the horrible casting of Brits Juliet Stevenson and Kevin Bishop as dorky Americans in Ventura Pons’ Food of Love), though he does have wonderful chemistry with Forestier. It came as no surprise to me, when researching the film, that the director, an Argentine working in France, made his directorial debut with this film (he’d previously co-wrote screenplays for Post-coïtum animal triste, Peut-être, and Ni pour, ni contre (bien au contraire)). He has no idea what to do with his actors, gifted as they may be, nor does he exude an subtleties in dealing with any of his characters and their bonds with one another. Ultimately, A Few Days in September feels more self-important than it does actually important, but I’ve got to hand it to Amigorena for making this mess curiously alluring.

You Kill Me - dir. John Dahl - 2007 - USA

Call me crazy, but when Téa Leoni is the strongest facet of your film, I get a little scared. Coming from John Dahl, the underrated director of The Last Seduction and Joy Ride, I expected more. You Kill Me is the sort of film that you “get” without actually seeing it. The film follows Frank (Ben Kingsley), a Polish-heritage hitman working in the family business in Buffalo who happens to have a drinking problem. His uncle (Philip Baker Hall, who looks more like Kingsley’s brother than uncle) spots the problem and sends him to San Francisco to clean up. Frank doesn’t want to stop drinking, but he understands that if he’s not part of the business, he’ll get axed, literally. So, off to San Francisco he goes, working in a funeral home while half-assed attending AA meetings with his sponsor (Luke Wilson). At the funeral home, he meets brutally honest Leoni, whom he falls for. Dahl’s handling of Frank’s alcoholism is lousy; during the credit sequence, we figure out he has a drinking problem by tossing a bottle of vodka ahead of him as he shovels snow, making a swig from the bottle his prize for getting to the sidewalk. In fact, I’m not sure whether it’s the obvious humor or the timing of it that makes You Kill Me fall flat. In an unfunny bit, Wilson says that AA is a great place to pick up men, which causes Kingsley to respond, “Oh, I’m not gay.” “I’m sure I’ll get over it,” is the response, and maybe the line might have worked if Wilson wasn’t on his typical autopilot. I suppose we’re supposed to be amused when Frank finally gets in front of the AA group and admits that he’s a contract killer. I suppose we’re supposed to be amused by all of this, but instead, You Kill Me is sour and silly, which is never a good combination.