Misleading DVD (and video) cases

[kriegerg69]

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?

[The Burgomaster]

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.

[Chojin]

  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).

[Vermin Boy]

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

[Dolph Lundgren]

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

[Matt Hill]

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.

[darkautumn]

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?

[ad]

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

[yaddo42]

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.

[Scott]

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.

[Evan3]

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.

[NEC]

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.

[AD]

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.

[Gerry]

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.

[Ozzymandias]

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