Movie with the most misleading ad campaign

[Vermin Boy]

Ooh, good one. When I saw the trailer, I thought it looked like the dumbest movie imaginable. "It's a club where-- get this-- guys fight each other!" Fortunately, it turned out to be much, much cooler.

[Lee]

Formula 51. I thought it was going to be a cool little action movie. I got Samuel L. Jackson in a kilt! ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGG!!!! Dissa-freakin-pointing!!!

[Keeleon Ohms]

I totally agree with you!  I never wanted to see it because it looked stupid.  But then my brother's teacher was raving about how cool it was and how it had a twist ending kinda like the sixth sense and I was like "what"? So I ended up seeing it and I feel that it made me a better person on the whole. cause that movie kicks!


Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a bannanna.
     - Groucho Marx

[AndyC]

I have to agree with Chadzilla. Screamers is the most misleading. The ads, the poster art, the taglines are all for a completely different movie that does not, to my knowledge, exist.

I remember the newspaper ads scaring the crap of me as a kid, then being disappointed when I finally got my hands on a copy of the movie years later.

The box shows this vascular, skeletal, screaming zombie thing, with a tagline about inside-out men. The movie is some 19th-century adventure tale about a scientist using fish men to recover sunken treasure. What the hell happened? Did they decide to go with a different script after the publicity was already in the works?

[Damien]

H2O... Where is the water in this movie... oh... maybe the script was water down...

[Chadzilla]

What happened was that Roger Corman's New World Pictures bought the distribution rights to some Italian Fantasy movie.  The head of the Marketing Dept. at the time, who was none other than Jim Wynorski, fabricated a completely false ad campaign.  The movie made money, lots of it (from an exploitation perspective that is).  But lawsuits were threatened and Wynorski quit to go make his own movies.  Or so Urban Legend has it.  Wynorksi was also a reporter for the Starlog Group at one point, and the honesty of his reporting came under a cloud of suspicion as well, then he left to go work for New World.  Hmmm.

[Chris K.]

Chadzilla wrote:
>
> What happened was that Roger Corman's New World Pictures
> bought the distribution rights to some Italian Fantasy
> movie.  The head of the Marketing Dept. at the time, who was
> none other than Jim Wynorski, fabricated a completely false
> ad campaign.  The movie made money, lots of it (from an
> exploitation perspective that is).  But lawsuits were
> threatened and Wynorski quit to go make his own movies.  Or
> so Urban Legend has it.  Wynorksi was also a reporter for the
> Starlog Group at one point, and the honesty of his reporting
> came under a cloud of suspicion as well, then he left to go
> work for New World.  Hmmm.

Actually Chadzilla, their is more to the U.S. release of SCREAMERS than meets the eye.

Originally released in international theatres as ISLAND OF THE FISH MEN with English dubbing done by the production company Medusa Distribuzione and Dania Film, the Italian film was picked up by American production company United Producers Organization. The American company basically hired director Miller Drake and effects technician Chris Walas to shoot a new beginning sequence with Mel Ferrer and Cameron Mitchell. Also, some additional effects scenes were added in with the assistance of Walas, the international English dub was replaced with a new English dub, some music was added in with small cues from Sandy Berman, and the title was also changed to ISLAND OF MUTATIONS.

The film was compleated and United Producers Organization needed a more experienced distributor to handle the release and thus went to Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Corman was indeed impressed with the re-worked film and struck a deal with the American company. With that, Corman added in some additional music cues of Pino Donaggio from PIRANHA (1978) and changed the title to SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK due to trying to capitalize the early slasher genre at that time despite the fact that the film itself is NOT a slasher film. The film's release bombs and Corman could not figure out what to do with it. Enter Jim Wynorski who claimed that he could make the film marketable. Corman let's Wynorski take the film and re-title it SCREAMERS, creates a trailer that shows a man being turned inside-out, and gives it a misleading ad campaign that claims you will see the man turned inside-out scene in the film. The film is released and made money, but due to the misleading camapigns and the audience being let down with a false promise riots broke out at a few drive-in's. This resulted in New Word taking the prints back and, by making a few copy prints of the man turning inside-out scene from the trailer, added in the scene. And because this scene was added in the prints and not the original 35mm neagtive, most recent video releases don't have the scene due to being transfered from the original negative itself.

I would really like it if the original ISLAND OF THE FISH MEN and SCREAMERS would be released together on DVD, it would make a great viewing.

[Chris K.]

The U.S. release of THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES. The American release was titled THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA when in fact the seven brothers DON'T meet Dracula but instead fight his vampire henchmen. Hell, the U.S. title is even more misleading due to the fact that their are seven brothers and one sister in the film (which, in the U.S. trailer, the announcer claimed "See the Seven Brothers and their One Sister Meet Dracula!").

Another one is THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. It was released in America was COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE with the ad campaign saying "The Prince of Darkness marries the Queen of the Zombies" (and this NEVER HAPPENS). And the U.S. title is also misleading as Count Dracula has NO vampire bride.

And the fact that these two were released by the same distributor is more unbelievable.

[The Burgomaster]

Chris K wrote: "The U.S. release of THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES. The American release was titled THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA when in fact the seven brothers DON'T meet Dracula but instead fight his vampire henchmen. Hell, the U.S. title is even more misleading due to the fact that their are seven brothers and one sister in the film (which, in the U.S. trailer, the announcer claimed "See the Seven Brothers and their One Sister Meet Dracula!").

Another one is THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. It was released in America was COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE with the ad campaign saying "The Prince of Darkness marries the Queen of the Zombies" (and this NEVER HAPPENS). And the U.S. title is also misleading as Count Dracula has NO vampire bride.

And the fact that these two were released by the same distributor is more unbelievable."

I have these movies on DVD. THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES and THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA are on a two-sided disc with one version on each side. THE LEGEND . . . is the complete version. THE SEVEN BROTHERS . . . is the U.S. version, which is re-edited with about 15 minutes missing. The movies are actually fun to watch.

I also have THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, which is VERY 1970s ("mod" clothing and hairstyles). It is one of the more violent Christopher Lee DRACULA movies. I think the version titled COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE is also available on DVD, but I believe it is from one of the "cheapo" DVD distributors.

[Chadzilla]

Chris K. wrote:
>
>  
> I would really like it if the original ISLAND OF THE FISH MEN
> and SCREAMERS would be released together on DVD, it would
> make a great viewing.

This is so a Blue Underground concept, Mr. Lustig...you reading this?

And thanks for the info.

[Todd R.]

The first film that came to mind when I saw the title of this thread was Sam Raimi's DARKMAN. The film was released in 1990, when BATMAN was still a hot item, and the studio obviously wanted audiences to view DARKMAN as something in the dark superhero vein. The trailer really made me think that DARKMAN was going to be a superhero flick, and I had to see it several times before I could completely accept it as the gothic horror film that it is.

When I saw people posting about SCREAMERS, I initially thought they were writing about the Peter Weller film, which also had a misleading ad campaign. I was hoping that the entire film would feature Weller & Co. fighting those little spinning robots that scuttle through the ground, but those robots were dispatched with pretty early in the film.

[gammaray117]

BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES. Definitely. It's got two.