Misleading Films

[Philosophiczombie]

I'm sure everyone here has purchased or rented a film that you were lead to believe would be good and instead you got ripped off. What was the movie, what did you expect from it and how did it let you down?

The worst film I was ever subjected to was an italian movie called Revenge of the dead. The box cover showed zombies busting out from a city street, after watching it however, it was a bad mystery story that copied the idea from Pet Semetary. There were 2 re-animated bodies and there was no revenge. This movie also goes by the name Zeder. Not funny, not gorey merely boring. Two hours of boring. Avoid it like the plague.

Another more recent movie was called "Vampires vs. Zombies."  One would think that this title would be rather simple to live up to, but never in the course of the film do vampires EVER go head to head with zombies. Plus unless you're tripping on chemicals not found in the continental united states since the 60's this movie's "plot" will have you holding your head to keep your brains from leaking out of your ears. 30 seconds of nudity is good, but it wont salvage 85 minutes of bad movie.

By all means share your horrors so that we may learn from each others mistakes.

[Fearless Freep]

I'm sure everyone here has purchased or rented a film that you were lead to believe would be good and instead you got ripped off. What was the movie, what did you expect from it and how did it let you down?

Nope.  Check the url.  'badmovies.org', I assume everything I rent is going to be bad and occasionaly I get lucky and its actually ok or even 'good' :)

[Eirik]

Freep's right.  It's actual good ones (Dog Soldiers being an example) that come as surprises.  

I will say that a lot of box covers lead me to believe there will be more attractive and nakeder women in a movie than are actually delivered...  Sorry I can't come up with an example.  Still, I know there are top shelf models who pose for video covers when it's really their semi-attractive little cousins in the actual flick.

[Menard]

I found REVENGE OF THE DEAD/ZEDER to be one of the better horror films I have seen. I of course did have the advantage of seeing it at the drive-in without the disadvantage of the movie poster. I can understand your disappointmtent in looking to see a zombie movie, but instead finding a well done mystery with elements of gothic, giallo, and even zombie movies mixed into a tale of resurrection. This was the marketing ploy of the U.S. distributors, and not the filmmaker or the european distributor.

Unfortunately, all negative reviews I have read are also based on the Creature Features VHS or DVD release, which is missing ten minutes of the film, including two very important scenes. The Lightning Video release on VHS is complete and of better quality. There is also a release as ZEDER on DVD and VHS (now out-of-print) which is complete, but not very good quality. The best release is on a region 2 PAL DVD as ZEDER.

I am curious how REVENGE OF THE DEAD accomplished copying PET SEMATARY when it was made eight years before PET SEMATARY.

Here is my review of REVENGE OF THE DEAD/ZEDER

[Mr Hockstatter]

The Opponent fits that bill perfectly.  It stars Erika Eleniak (woo-hoo, Playboy playmate and Baywatch babe) as a boxing babe.  On the cover she's wearing this hot little boxing outfit.  Imagine my surprise when this thing turns out to be a Lifetime movie of the week type thing, all about feelings and emotions and crap.  Eleniak looks like she got her wardrobe out of the free bin at Goodwill.  All flattering size X-large stuff too.  Just imagine the amount of effort it would take to have a Baywatch babe boxing and stuff, and have it be utterly un-sexy.  

Why?  Why?

[Scott H]

This movie has in fact nearly nothing to do with zombies. It is a low budgeted movie shot in a big budget way, black and white, where aliens come from outer space and turn some people into what the box describes as zombies, but what I know for a fact are NOT zombies. They are mindless creatures employed by the will of aliens.... not bodies of the dead whose soul is rejected by hell. Nevertheless, I was still impressed by the overall quality of such a small film with a misleading title and no big names. The only other thing the director did was make a ZZ-Top video. Too bad really. I liked the stop motion ball of white that floats through the movie.

[Philosophiczombie]

Just to clarify I don't mean bad movies in general, I mean movies that are completely opposite of what they are built up to be. Movies that you had your hopes built up for, only to have them shattered.

[Mofo Rising]

Philosophiczombie wrote:

> Just to clarify I don't mean bad movies in general, I mean
> movies that are completely opposite of what they are built up
> to be. Movies that you had your hopes built up for, only to
> have them shattered.

Well, I don't think I'd really term that misleading.  Every movie is going to put out as much hype as they can, they just don't all deliver.  The movie is just bad, not misleading.  But for that definition, I nominate UNBREAKABLE.  I was coming off a SIXTH SENSE high, and Shyamalan puked that pile o' crap into existence.

As far as deliberately misleading, I would go with a foreign film called CANNIBAL MAN.  You would expect a movie about a cannibal, right?  Nope.  The guy is just a killer who disposes of his bodies in a meatpacking plant's meatgrinder.  That makes other people cannibals, not him, and the other people eating the meat is never really shown.  So no cannibalism.  There is however an alarming amount of homoeroticism.  Not a recommended movie.

[dean]

Had plenty of Misleading films, both good and bad, though none really come to mind now.

But recently I saw in the paper an article on a billboard ad for "Macloed's Daughters'' that is in the US.  This Australian TV series, according to the billboard, is one sexy damn show, claiming that ''a ride in the saddle takes a new meaning'' or something to that effect, then showing to extremely good looking people pretty much getting jiggy with it.

These two people have nothing to do with the show, and seems incredibly misleading, considering the tv show here is rated PG and this ad seems to imply it is M rated. [sorry, don't know really what the equivalent rating systems are in the US; PG is pretty much the rating a Disney film will get, M is something a bit more risque.]

This is pretty damn misleading I must say!

[Menard]

In case you were interested, here is our rating system in the states:

G General Audiences-mostly cartoons and some family (child) oriented films.

PG Parental Guidance- Generally family friendly with no restictions.

PG-13 Parents strongly cautioned and advised to attend with children under 13- More adult oriented material without being classified as an adult film.

R Resticted- Adult oriented. No children under 17 without a parent or guardian.

NC-17 No children 17 or under allowed. An adult only movie. Used to be our X rating.


Here is some more information on our MPAA rating system

[Ozzymandias]

We used to use "M" for PG.

A classic misleading title is The Gorilla Man , which is a WW2 adventure movie.

IMDB listing for The Gorilla Man

[Neville]

I think I've heard this one commented before in this board: "Island of the dead", starring Talisa Soto and Malcolm McDowell. From its title and its eerie atmosphere, evrything seems to point at a zombie film, but it actually is a mutant flies film, and quite a dull one, despite some neat flourishes and Malcolm McDowell.

[AndyC]

Probably the single most misleading film I know would be Screamers. Not the one with Peter Weller, although it was misleading in that I expected a good adaptation of a Philip K. Dick Story. No, I mean the older one that has a poster and tagline about men turned inside out, but is really some period piece about a mad scientist creating fish men to retrieve sunken treasure.

We've talked about this one before, and there have been some explanations for the poster, but it still has nothing to do with anything in the movie. For sheer misrepresentation, it's hard to beat.

[Menard]

I remember SCREAMERS with its trailer that stated, paraphrased, 'You will actually see a man turned inside-out'. I am still waiting for that.

It was originally an Italian production called ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. Roger Corman bought the rights to it and added about 11 minutes of new footage to the beginning, which was actually the best part.

In some ways though, it was still fun, if not littered with some of the hokiest (an actual word?) fishmen costume to ever appear on screen.

[The Burgomaster]

Back in the 1970s, Sunn Classics Pictures released a lot of cheap documentaries that were full of very questionable "facts" and "testimonials."  I remember seeing the TV spots for their movie SASQUATCH.  They made it look like an adventure/horror movie rather than a documentary.  When I saw it in the theater, I remember that the audience was interested for about 10 minutes, and then everyone was talking and not really paying attention to the movie.  It turned out to be a very boring documentary, and some of the scenes they showed in the TV ads weren't even in the movie!