OK, so the first few posters shown below are for actual scary movies—Rosemary’s Baby, Poltergeist, Alien, and The Birds all get grotesque posters, and completely appropriately so. But while I’m not denying the utter coolness of all these designs, most feel, if not misleading, totally out of left field.
First of all, Planet of the Apes has a spoiler right there in the damn poster—enraging? Yes. Allusive to the tone of the film? Not so much. It could also be argued that the Star Wars poster has a spoiler as well—if this is for Return of The Jedi, it’s definitely alluding to the Death Star’s explosion. Not cool, Poland! So not cool! (Though I do appreciate the decidedly Hebraic font on the use of the word “Jedi.”)
But the Cabaret poster looks like a fucking Cronenberg film, and can you guess what the next one is? Young Frankenstein. That is a poster for the Mel Brooks comedy classic Young Frankenstein. After that we have the 1980s pseudo-feminist love letter to Wall Street finance, Working Girl, which again, looks more than a little Cronenberg if not Kafka. And Tootsie has shades of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. But in my opinion, it’s the final poster, for a Charlie Brown movie, that really takes the cake. I know Charles Schulz’s brand of kiddie entertainment wasn’t candy-coated, but—based on the poster alone—I get the distinct impression that this movie is about a bunch of children who drown.
Via The Wall Breakers