If I had no soul, I would open this article with something like “they say you can’t judge a book by its cover…” But I won’t do that to you. It’s just sick and wrong. You deserve better.

I’m here to talk about the world’s worst DVD covers. While digging through discount bins at local media stores, we’ve all encountered some really bad designs; yellow text on a pale background, for example, or typos on the back cover that nobody bothered to fix. Crappy pictures that were cut out of their natural environments and set to “glow” in Photoshop. All that stuff.

The scope of this article will be limited to examples that I can find online. I swear I once saw an awesome cover to Halloween III: Season of the Witch in the “lightly used” rack at Blockbuster, and it had the most ridiculous back cover ever made. Like someone had literally just typed up what they could remember from the movie, misspellings and all, then printed it out and shoved it in the back cover. Except it had screen captures and studio logos and an orange background, so it was the for-real cover…it was just terrible. 12-pt Arial terrible. But I can’t find it, so you’ll just have to trust me.

On with the show. (With all images, click for bigger.)

Ultraviolet

This one may seem tame, until you begin to examine Milla Jovavich’s midsection. I suppose it’s possible that, somewhere out there, there is a human being who looks like that and does not have a severe eating disorder and/or a recent imprisonment in a POW camp. But I hope not.

The photoshopping itself is pretty good, but the result is more than a little disturbing.

(For extra credit, compare to the DVD cover of Aeon Flux. While you’re at it, compare the trailers, plots, and themes. It is time to end the charade!)

Alaska

When I was a kid, I loved the movie Charlotte’s Web. I had a recording of the soundtrack, on actual vinyl, mind you. It came in a very thick sleeve that was filled with little paper dolls of the characters. When balanced open, the cover became a farmyard background for all the characters, and you could set up a little panorama. But because they were cheaply-made paper dolls, they never quite stood up straight, and no matter what you did, they still looked like crooked cutouts set against a background where they clearly didn’t belong.

I don’t know why I thought of that just now.

Pulse 2

I honestly have no idea what this movie is about, other than the fact that it’s EXTREME! I guess there was a Pulse 1 that nobody liked, so they decided to fix it with a sequel. But if the cover is any indication…I mean, seriously, what is going on here? Giant zombie heads? A woman who is coming out of/falling into a crack in her kitchen floor? Is she bleeding? What’s with that facial expression? To me, it doesn’t indicate unimaginable horror, it indicates bad gas. Possibly heartburn. Get that woman some Tums.

So, hey. If you’re going to bother making a movie, go ahead and hire a decent graphic artist to put your cover together. And maybe an impartial focus group. If you approach people at the mall, they’ll probably view your prototype for a free donut or something. You owe it to your movie. Even Ulli Lommel has some nice covers once in a while.

Tags: recreation, life, web

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