Badmovies.org Forum

After reading my post on the 36 crazy fists I came upon another "great" topic.  I had purchased Trick or Treat from WalMart a while back and I was a tad bit confused because when I had seen it earlier, about ten years ago, I did not know that Gene Simmons and Ozzy were the stars of the movie, like the DVD showed on the front.  Al I remembered was the guy from Family Ties.  So I was afraid that I had purchased the wrong movie.  So I went and sat down adn watched it and Lo and behold it was the right movie.  They had switched the DVD case to capitalize on the fame of Simmons and Ozzy.  And to make things worse the pictures on the case don't even match how the guys look in the movie.

I noticed a similar thing wth Action Jackson how the cover has starring Carl Weathers, Vanity and Sharon Stone and a huge picture of Stone in the background, yet she's gone almost half way through the movie.  

And 36 Crazy Fists, well my version, has a gigantic pic of Jackie Chan   on the front,  And a pic from what looks like Rumble in the Bronx on the back with a sumarai at the bottom.

So after writing that exceedingly long description I ask you guys to think of any DVD (or video) cases that lead you to believe something that wasn't true about the movie.

That's a scam that's been going on forever...I remember a lot of softcore porn videos that would have contemporary looking box photos--but when you rented the movie you found out that it was from the Sixties or early Seventies.  I've seen this happen with horror films too...retitlings, etc...I've rented some stuff that seemed fairly new only to find out that it was Seventies exploitation with a new title.

Wal Mart in particular seems to be guilty of this.

Just recently someone wrote a similar thread about those old "Hulk" episodes and Wal Mart changed the box art to fool people into thinking that it was the new film that's out in theaters.

the prisoner "staring " Jackie chan. well jackie is in it, but hes not the main character.

"revenge of the street fighter" the synopsies in the back of the box is bull.

I doubt Wal-Mart designed that Hulk box art, but I guess I could be wrong.  

I don't see what the big deal is...all of it is just part of the bad movie game, as anyone who has been watching these movies for very long can attest.

I don't know if they did this with the video or DVD, but when one of the networks played the movie Satisfaction a few years ago, the ad for it stated that it starred Julia Roberts. She plays a minor character.

i seem to remember a couple of years back a film with steven seagal supposedly starring in the film [his name flashed all over the credits and such]

he was killed in the first half hour [not that i'm complaining though]

can't remember the name, but it was a plane-hijack film that i think may have had halle berry and perhaps even kurt russel in it [although i might be mixing my movies up]

but nevertheless it was damn satisying seeing stevo sucked from a plane.  


damn satisfying

Yeah Dean, Executive Decision I think. The one where Stevo fell of the plane. And everyone was thinking....nahhh he's gotta be holding on to a wing, or maybe he's wearing a bungee...he'll be back.

Also a few years ago there was a film called A Good Man In Africa that was advertised as a Sean Connery movie. He basically entered, said hello, then p**sed off out the back door.

The Jim Carrey video, Rubberface, which promises non stop hilarity. Carrey has a small role, but it's mostly an early 80's "I'm okay, you're okay" movie about a chick named Janet who wants to find self esteem through lame ass stand up comedy.

There is another Jim Carrey video floating around(I forget the video titile) that is described on the box as a touching family comedy. It's actually a depression festival called Doing Time On Maple Drive, that was a Fox channel tv movie when I was a teen. Jim Carrey has a small, decidedly non comedy role as the F-up brother whom nobody likes.

thanks deej,

i hate it when you have the film on the tip of your tongue and you can't remember it.  that was going to bug me all night.

but on a similar thread of misleading viewers, don't you all hate it when producers think that by adding a big name at the start of the credits of a movie, despite their involvement being minimal, will mean more people go to see it?

although it doesn't change the film itself for me, it just annoys me that big names who barely appear in a film [such as julia roberts in oceans 11] are one of the first to appear in the credits and go on all the promo tours and such.  its just damn annoying and frustrating!

Funny thing about "Executive Decision". I first saw it on St. Patrick's Day in Washington DC while half drunk after leaving a street party. When Segal's exit from the film came, it got gasps of surprise and cries of "He ain't dead!" from the audience. I remember thinking that if he did turn up alive I would lose all respect for the movie and walk out. He didn't, and I didn't. But you would still hear someone saying that he was coming back to save the day. Even once the credits rolled and people  were standing up to leave the theater, there were still a couple of true believers expecting him to turn up alive. Sheesh.

I think the best example would be the 15 minutes of footage of Eddie Murphy added to the 1980s Dudley Moore stinker "Best Defense". After Murphy hit big with "48 Hours" film executives wanted to get another movie out with him as soon as possible but couldn't wait on the projects he had lined up to be done. So they added him into a movie in production and gave him star billing along side Moore. He took up most of the clips in the trailers, which just happened to be the only good bits of the movie, so once you went to see the film, you had seen the best parts of Murphy's brief appearences in the movie.

Misleading? take "Laser Mission". Crappiest film, and they took Brandon Lee off the cover of "Rapid Fire" and spliced his picture onto Laser Mission. How cruel.

Then there's Leprechaun, which now has a prominent pic of Jennifer Aniston on the cover. Amazing what some folks'll do to sell old film....

ASHTHECAT wrote:

> Wal Mart in particular seems to be guilty of this.
>
> Just recently someone wrote a similar thread about those old
> "Hulk" episodes and Wal Mart changed the box art to fool people
> into thinking that it was the new film that's out in theaters.

That's hardly Wal-Mart's fault....I've seen those dvds in other stores with the box art resembeling the new HULK movie. That's the video company's doing....not Wal-Mart....and I don't think they were trying deliberately "to fool people into thinking that it was the new film that's out in theaters". If people are too STUPID to read the dvd case to see what a film is instead of just grabbing it and running to the cashier, well....

There's several Bela Lugosi movies from Alpha dvd (mostly Bela's poverty row films, and a couple of name studio films), which feature HUGE images of Bela on the covers but also BELA LUGOSI in large print across the tops....and in virtually every instance in these films, Bela is relegated to a supporting role or even a minor one. They're obviously doing this sort of artwork to capitalize on Bela's name.....not that I mind that much, because these are all entertaining movies, but....as I said....Bela is really second banana in most of these, and is NOT the leading star.

Go figure.....



Post Edited (08-04-03 08:55)

Misleading? take "Laser Mission". Crappiest film, and they took Brandon Lee off the cover of "Rapid Fire" and spliced his picture onto Laser Mission. How cruel.

Well, at least he was the star of the movie....


"The Guyver" - based on the cover, Mark Hamill is the Guyver.

"American Vampire" - You'd think Carmen Electra is the star, but she just has an almost non-speaking side role.  Actually, the movie is a horror/comedy (I mean, you have Adam West playing a beach bum vampire hunter named "The Big Kahuna", how seriously can you take it?) so the cover misleads on the style as well.

"Alien Terminator" - one of the actresses (Maria Ford?) is on the cover in lingerie, from another movie, I guess.

Wal Mart did not change the HULK box art . . . the distributor did. I have seen the same boxes in many stores, including Best Buy and Circuit City.

I think it is hilarious when they take old movies and place recent pictures of famous stars on the box cover. Movies like THE SWAP and BORN TO LOSE (aka ADDICT) have been in circulation for years. Robert DeNiro was in both movies when he was much younger, but the box covers have pictures of him that were probably taken when he was in his 40s (or older).

The Burgomaster wrote:

> Wal Mart did not change the HULK box art . . . the distributor
> did. I have seen the same boxes in many stores, including Best
> Buy and Circuit City.

Yeah....I said the same thing above three hours before. Where do people get these ideas that it was Wal-Mart's fault?

kriegerg69 wrote:

> Where do people get these ideas that it was Wal-Mart's
> fault?

I think Wal-Mart would be in a lot of trouble if they decided to create their own packaging for copyrighted material.

Just for the record, I bought the HULK DVD, but I knew what I was buying, so I'm not upset about the packaging.

I worked in a video store back in the 1980s. People used to come in all the time and rent movies that LOOKED or SOUNDED like current theatrical releases. Then they would come back and complain.

  Ha, I'm happy to see jackie Chan movies listed.


  There were a whole bunch of them that came out at once trying to sell you on Jackie Chan in movies he wa sonly in for about 5 or 6 minutes.

  Rumble in Hong Kong: Jackie Chan is featured on the cover and touted as the star of the flick when he's really just a thug who is in the movie for about 2 minutes.

  Killer Meteors: Same crap, except he's a villain ina  wheelchair who doe snothing the whole movie,never fights, then dies. Amazing!

  Fantasy Mission Force: Same story, though he's in this movie for 15 minutes.

  Theres a bunch more as well.

  Dun forget all the Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Dragon Lee etc.. movies which all featured the real Bruce Lee on the cover, even in their US theatre releases(Few of which got any).

Yeah, but Fantasy Mission Force makes up for it by being the best war movie EVER. :)

LOL, if Seagal came back to save the day in Executive Decision, it would automatically catapult the movie into classic status.  C'mon, every one of you knows that you would've gone crazy in a good way if it turned out Seagal somehow held on or landed on a huge mattress which saved his life.  And then at the end of the movie, Seagal comes back and whispers some one-liner before saving the day.  From a b-movie perspective, this would've been tremendous.  Unfortunately, the makers of the movie didn't seem to think so.  

Notice the trend of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies on these lists.  Just goes to show that you really have to research and know what you're looking for before buying Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan DVDs.  Otherwise, you'll buy a DVD entitled 1000 Ninjas with Fingers of Extreme Death, starring JACKIE CHAN, only to realize that it actually has Jalal Merhi in the starring role, and it's directed by Albert Pyun.  And it was only purchased because it had the word ninja on the cover.  I can't count how many times this has happened to me.

Nick

Then there's always the 1979 Screamers. The cover has a big red zombie on the front and there is no sight of a zombie in the flick.

Along these lines, has anyone ever picked up a movie and popped it in only to find it's a TOTALLY different film from what's described on the packaging? Some years back, I snagged a copy of Regal Video's "The Revenge of DR. X, " which, according to the description and credits on the box, made it out to be a retitling of "The Mad Doctor of Blood Island" (it made sense since Regal had issued "Brain of Blood" and "Brides of Blood" from the same studio under new titles.) I was pretty excited, having not seen this movie for years. I put it in as soon as I got home, and prepared myself for a real viewing treat. Imagine my surprise, when following some newly created video-generated credits (which WERE the correct cast and crew for MDOBI!) and some cheesy synth music, the actual movie turned out to be "Venus Flytrap" or "The Double Garden" or whatever it's called (the Ed Wood-scripted venus flytrap monster movie that takes place in Japan.) I sat there dumbfounded for about two-thirds of the film (which is as slow moving as they come) before I just got so enraged I shut it off. It was several years (and my acquisition of an actual print of "Mad Doctor") before I could even bring myself to pick up that tape. Man. Anybody else have a similar experience?

I think the most misleading film I ever rented was "Naked Killer 2" - she wasn't naked and she wasn't a killer.

Similar things to what darkautumn posted about different movies under the title of a better known flick.

The box to my VHS copy of "My Name Is Nobody" lists the cast of the supposed "sequel" film "Nobody's The Greatest/The Genius/multiple other titles" including Miou-Miou, Patrick McGoohan, and Klaus Kinski rather than the cast of the real film. When I bought it I hadn't seen the film in probably ten years but was sure that none of these people were in the first film. I ws right but it threw me for a few minutes. Still haven't found the second one which I want to see since I love spaghetti westerns.

Weirder, once when I was still in high school, I came home early one afternoon and turned on the TV to Lifetime while looking for an afternoon movie. Now this was before they went to a firm "TV for women" format. Their choice of movies was broader, they had a nighttime talk show hosted by Richard Belzer, and they showed mostly unedited surgical films on Sundays. Anyway they claimed to be showing "Terrorvision" next, which I was looking forward to because I had seen parts of it on there before but never all of it. The film we all know and love (or loathe) started but in the middle of the opening credits the picture changed to very cheap video-generated titles for another movie called "Terrorvision" with a different cast. I thought it was a cool gimmick in the movie, but they showed a very bad anthology horror film shot on video that featured stories ripped off from old episodes of "Tales Of The Unexpected" "Tales From The Darkside" and the "Twilight Zone". Only without the wit, gore, talent, or charm. The only one I remember involved a man trappinging his adulterous wife and her lover in the meat locker of a restaurant and when he went in to gloat and savour his handywork after they froze to death the tampered with door trapped him as well. Oh ho, the irony. It wasn't clever the first time I saw it on "Tales Of The Unexpected" as a kid on late night TV. Lifetime aired regular commercial breaks so the signal wasn't hijacked or crossed. they never aired the movie again, and the IMDB has been a dead end in trying to find out what movie it was. No names from the credits stuck in my mind to look them up and horror anthology movie pop up like dandelions.

MY NAME IS NOBODY is one of my all time favorite movies and I would love to see THE GENIUS. Haven't seen My Name is Nobody in more than 20 years Yaddo.

I own the movie Crocodile done by Nu Image and on the cover is a girl who  is fleeing a crocodile.  The girl on the cover is not on the movie at all. It must be tough to get on the box of a B movie, but not in the movie itself.

yaddo said - <>

Cool to know that I'm not the only one that remembers when Lifetime would show those surgical films.

Anyway, there's this movie w/ Alan Rickman called 'An Awfully Big Adventure'. I bought the LD for cheap on a closeout several years ago, on on the back it's marketed as a comedy, and really it's this completely screwed up drama.

The worst midleading DVD/video cover I ever saw was for the movie:  "Naked Killer 2"

In my IMDB review I put simply this;
"She's not naked and she's not a killer".

Pfft.

The worst one I have is for Guillermo del Toro's excellent CRONOS.  On the cover you see the head and naked shoulders of a blond woman with her head cast back and the CRONOS device on her breast.  No such woman ever appears in the film, and the only person to use the device is an elderly Spanish grandfather. Not exactly the same thing.  Great movie...terribly misleading boxcover.

I wish I had a dollar for everytime I saw a video box with Jack Nicholson's face on it as the star of  Little Shop of Horrors .  You also see John Travolta's face on Devil's Rain .   Weirdest one is Roger Moore on a video of Last Time I Saw Paris . I guess Liz Taylor wasn't big enough of a star to be on the cover. LOL

One of these movies is called "Bela Lugosi meets a Brooklyn Gorilla." Bela has supporting role, but this film is a hoot! A great family film too! Get the $1 Digiview version that's on sale at Wal-Mart for $1 or even 88 cents. Worth every penny and great picture quailty too. I was really surprised at fun this forgotten film was...chris

As Jackie Chan pointed out in his autobiography, using the big name to sell the flick is a very old trick in Hong Kong. Part of how he got to be such a big name himself is that after Bruce Lee died, everyone was trying to sign up someone who looked like Bruce Lee, which he apparently did. (Of course, just like all the other Bruce Lee look-alikes, he could never actually be Bruce Lee, so he adopted his own comedy style instead.)

After Jackie Chan became famous, he was such a big name that not only did any film that had him in it get a new cover with his name prominently displayed on it, but some studios actually went so far as to splice footage of him into their films! Just as some films are star vehicles, some stars get so famous that they become film vehicles.

I am rather surprised to hear that Mark Hamill was actually famous enough to make the cover of the Guyver, though. (He wasn't on my version's cover.) He actually is a decent actor, but man, what lousy films they gave him after the big one! I'm glad to hear he's got steady work as the voice of the Joker in the animated Batman shows now, since that is definitely a more respectable work than much of anything he's had since Star Wars.

You want the best example?

It's called:
"Night of the Living Dead 30th Anniversary Edition"

From what I've read, it's s**t. Absoulute s**t. Even Mr. Harry Knowles hates it.