This year, Tobe Hooper, director of the classic grindhouse shocker The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, brings his bloody vision to a new venue: the cinema of the mind. Hooper, along with some help from Paul is Undead author Alan Goldsher, has released his first novel: Midnight Movie. A meta-fictional horror novel that’s one part pseudo-biographical documentary and one part horror movie mayhem, Midnight Movie is getting rave reviews from people like Rob Zombie and John Carpenter. The features Tobe himself as the lead character, invited to speak at the screening of one of his own long lost movies, Destiny Express. Soon Hooper and his fans learn that his old film comes with a body count, and the hunt is on to stop the deadly legacy before its too late.
Hooper and company took their mocumentary novel a further step this week, releasing an official Destiny Express poster. A crude and shocking slab of art – and I mean that as a compliment here – in a classic drive-in vein, the Destiny Express poster recalls some of the genre’s very best – and most shocking – horror films. Here’s a list of ten fantastically effective horror movie posters.
San Diego Comic Con 2011 Update: Meet Tobe Hooper at the Random House booth on Thursday from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m.!
Destiny Express (2011)
Your life is in his hands! Everything about Hooper’s fictitious one-sheet screams classic slasher film. A heady mix of sex and horror, a Freudian yin-yang that’s catnip for prurient-minded gore hounds. Mr. Hooper, I know this film isn’t real, but I’d be first in line to see a retro-style classic like this.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Based upon Ira Levin’s horror novel, Rosemary’s Baby is a crypto-feminist horror film that’s as much about a woman’s right to control what happens with her body as it is about kooky sixties satan cults. The poster, with its green and black color scheme super-imposing the silhouette of a seemingly abandoned cradle on a mountaintop over Mia Farrow’s face, obviously on her back here, communicates the true message of this film: attempts to control what a woman does with her body is devilish indeed, at least in the eyes of filmmaker Roman Polanski.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
“Who will survive and what will be left of them?” That tagline, boldly emblazoned across the movie poster tells you all you need to know: director Tobe Hooper is playing for keeps, and no one’s going to walk away without a little damage, including the audience. The poster designer took the gutsy step of featuring lead baddy Leatherface front and center. It was a gamble going with such a big reveal, but it seems to have paid off.
Jaws (1975)
A classic horror/adventure film with a solid story line and very likable characters, Jaws was head and shoulders (or perhaps “a dorsal fin”) a mere monster flick. Ironically, the shark POV shots – as eerily effective as they were – were only included because of malfunctions with the shark model “Bruce”. Looking at the poster we once again have sex and death, which is like the chocolate and peanut butter of the horror world. A noticeably phallic shark head at the bottom screen aiming directly at the body of an unsuspecting beach babe is a message that most movie-goers would read loud and clear. There’s also the primeval fear of hidden dangers – the unknown frightens us more than anything. Jaws traumatized a generation of young kids, me included! Even swimming pools frightened me for years. Today it’s one of my favorite movies, and I have to have seen it twenty times or more.
Suspiria (1977)
A flavorful Italian fromage of art and hallucinogenic brutality, Suspiria’s tale of a terrorized ballet dancer probably inspired Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. Its, poster, a primal splash of blood red tells the tale better than any plot synopsis.
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
It’s a zombie film! It’s a scathing criticism of consumer culture! It’s both! George A. Romero took the premise of his original Night of the Living Dead (1968) and carried it to its logical conclusion: total zombie apocalypse. As the last vestiges of law and order collapse, a team of survivors seek shelter in a suburban mall. The soon find that the boredom of living in their consumerist paradise is almost as deadly as the zombies. The movie poster image, a zombie rising from the ground, is a twisted reversal of the pleasantness of a sunrise. This is no ordinary dawn.
Halloween (1978)
Ah, yes. Halloween: the movie that elevated the mass murderer into the supernatural ranks of werewolves, vampires and ghosts. Michael Myers, like his zombie peers, is unstoppable and anonymous, a shambling giant behind a creepily blank mask. The poster features a sinister looking jack-o-lantern with a knife in the foreground that echoes the pumpkin’s curves. Perhaps it symbolizes that this is a new, bloody twist on a traditionally harmless holiday for kids.
Alien (1979)
Talk about the fear of the unknown! The poster’s image of an “egg” is as iconic as the film’s tagline: “In space no one can hear you scream”. Speaking of screaming, while I was too young to have caught this in the theater, my in-laws tell me that people in the audience screamed aloud and cursed in shock at the film’s infamous “chest burst” scene. Audiences weren’t the only ones shocked: according to cast member Tom Skerritt, the shocked reaction captured on film of co-star Veronica Cartwright is real. If you’re getting Freudian vibes from this film, too, well, then you’re on track. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon has this to say about his work: “One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex… I said “That’s how I’m going to attack the audience; I’m going to attack them sexually. And I’m not going to go after the women in the audience, I’m going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number.” Thanks, Dan.
Friday the 13th (1980)
In this poster the woods and the killer is one, seemingly embodying the horror that lurks just out of the campfire. While this long-lived franchise is now associated with the killer Jason Vorhees, fans of the original film know that his involvement is this first installment is only peripheral.
The Howling (1981)
The Howling, along with An American Werewolf in London (released the same year!) redefined the werewolf film for horrified audiences worldwide. Both films offered a mix of fright and funny, with an equal mixture of knowing nods at the genre’s conventions and respect for the explosive savagery of the werewolf myth. Again, both films served sex and death side by side, with Werewolf’s hapless college student and his nurse girlfriend, and The Howling’s goofy but sex-drenched encounter group. The Howling’s poster communicate’s this winning combination rather well, with the curiously inviting image of a clawed hand and a beautiful woman’s face, both tantalizingly just for the price of a matinee seat.
Evil Dead (1981)
It’s the little film that could! Evil Dead was a guerilla, by-the-shoestrings production created by a group of lifelong friends, including later Spider-Man director Sam Raimi and Bruce “The Chin” Campbell. This tiny, but hugely effective, horror film skyrocketed to success when a young Stephen King gave it his approval. The poster, as you can see, features King’s blurb…perhaps an inclusion that for horror fans was more effective than any monster or splash as blood.
Want more horror and Tobe Hooper? Read my companion article, “Tobe Hooper’s ‘Midnight Movie’ and 13 Horror Films Somewhere Between Fact and Fiction” at Word & Film!
