post movie posters done in a busy/claustrophobic caricature style from the 70s and 80s

Hah these all look like random saturday matinee movies they would show on over the air TV in the 80s.

http://www.worthpoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ShaggyDA.jpg

billion dollar hobo is cracking me up. conway's expresion! not exactly conveying the promised laff-a-minute rate, is he?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/39/First_Family_%28Film%29.jpg

First Family

(another one for the "you're not really convincing me this is a comedy here, guys" file)

https://youtu.be/2rLim9U2q2E

going by the trailer, that is a pretty impressive cast they've assembled for completely terrible looking film. I do like the Kraftwerk-esque Bob Newhart dummy, though.

"senator from rhode island" jokes have always been with us, huh.

Where did most of the movies featured in this thread go? I pretty much lived in video stores when I was a kid during the 80s and while these all seem like the kind of things that would have littered the video store shelves of that era, I recognize very few of these.

i'm guessing some of them were just never even sent to vhs let alone dvd?

First Family was the movie which was supposed to launch Gilda Radner as a movie star, so double sad.

The impressive cast is almost certainly due to the fact that this was Buck Henry's follow-up to "Heaven Can Wait," which was Oscar-nominated and a big hit.

i'm guessing some of them were just never even sent to vhs let alone dvd?

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Monday, September 28, 2015 7:41 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is likely otm, I think a lot less made it to VHS than people assume, and even less of that made it to DVD.

First Family was my first "worst movie I've ever seen." Age 10.

there isn't a remotely likable moment even in the trailer, which says a lot

a *lot* of this stuff made it to VHS, but early in the format's life, I think, and there just wasn't much urgency to keeping them in print when there were *new* disposable ensemble comedies with a better claim on limited shelf space. also suspect that if you trawled the tv guide archive, you'd find at LEAST one of these films playing, somewhere, every single week of the 1980s.

but yeah theyre not super common. my partner collects tapes and we're always on the lookout for these but mostly it's the same crap from the format's peak years in the late 90s. best chance sadly is really long-established video stores that never updated their stock doing going out of business sales. ive posted abt this before but I once got really wistful at one of these finding an ollld, pre-clamshell disney tape, think it was a herbie movie. yellowed cream background, always-yellow 70s font, still frame of the movie. what my childhood looked like.

Speaking of VHS cases that evoke intense childhood memories, I searched "First Family VHS" to see if it did get put out in that format. And of course it did, in the type of generic case that is the polar opposite of the caricature style, the kind of case that you could still occasionally find at video places in the early 90s.

god i'd forgotten those cases where they just throw a still from the movie on the generic cover and call it a day

what's new pussycat:

http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/9657181965WhatsnewpussycatQuetalpussycatingbq.jpg

http://www.impawards.com/designers/jack_davis.html

i'm fond of the generic warner home video cases (especially the color-coding to help you sort your collection by COMEDY, DRAMA etc), but they're nothing on the generic MGM/UA boxes: oversized, super blah gray cardboard, but with each film getting its own set of distinctive colored stripes, the poster on the front cover (usually), and (in a crucial distinction from Fox's boxes) actually using the letterforms of the poster on the spine. flip it open and you get the main cast and crew credits, and the tape set in a separate, plastic housing which often gets all mangled up and detached from the cardboard. e.g. for this thread: http://vhscollector.com/movie/pandemonium

wow, i really wanted to see first family until i saw the trailer.

if you really want to be turned off from it read the wikipedia description of its plot

the (fictional) African nation of Upper Gorm

man i know this is nostalgia at it's most ridiculous but those dull vhs cases bring a smile. casino knows this but athens video stores were incredibly well stocked but even w/ them i don't think i ever saw a lot of these ever (they leaned toward foreign, old, and cult so i'm not sure they would have ever been interested in the first family anyway. plenty of other richard benjamin vehicles though.) it occurs to me now that literally every physical store i've ever rented a movie from doesn't exist anymore. i'm not sure there's any other kind of business i frequented that much i can say that about, like i'm pretty sure there are newsstands in italy i bought the international herald tribune at that still exist.

that Fish That Saved.. tagline reads like absolute gibberish!

i miss the five-for-five deal at vision video, but not as much as the sound of the guy answering the phone at our local spot growing up: "Multi-TV Video! Nintendo!"

the disney tapes i was talking about btw, this kind: http://www.retro-daze.org/ActionAndChildren/Children/B/BEDKNOBS-AND-BROOMSTICKS.jpg

https://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/2/A70-1114

thread won't load easily so i dunno if anyone's mentioned the Carry Ons

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Carry_On_Abroad_%28movie_poster%29.jpg

http://www.tele-movie-shop.de/images/product_images/original_images/27516.jpg

Geld oder Leber! (1986)

this is slightly different style but I like it, particularly 'und FALCO'

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Nv33zs6mL.jpg

"It's a Falcon Funny Movie," wow.

The dog reaction in that last one is such a stock cartoon trope, I love it. That and the pen-and-Prismacolor aesthetic make it feel like something from Dynamite magazine.

Find me a single funny movie that uses the word "laugh" or "funny" in the movie poster.

http://pics.filmaffinity.com/A_Funny_Thing_Happened_on_the_Way_to_the_Forum-837908798-large.jpg

other than in the title, obvs

haha i almost posted that, nice

http://pixelatedpop.com/sites/default/files/u3/Ernest-Goes-to-Camp.jpg

https://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/75/MPW-37596

I still think it looks like she's about to stab Elliott GOuld in the ear.

Poor George Washington doesn't even get star billing

I still think it looks like she's about to stab Elliott GOuld in the ear.

wait you mean that isn't what's happening?

this thread is great at helping me realize just how many terrible-looking movies Elliott Gould, Alan Arkin, and George Segal made in the 70s.

My guess from the poster was that she would be an aspiring pop star, but this HBO lead-in from 1982 insists she's a "TV news lady." So I guess she's...interviewing him?

Yeah, it's only in recent years that I've pieced together that Gould/Segal were big, big names in the 70s, Gould especially. I'm 33 and they were basically non-entities in the 80s. Probably didn't help that the majority of their output was aimed at adults with nothing that might really seduce you in the video store or reruns, like an action or fantasy joint or something. It'd be like someone born in 2000 not knowing who, like, Harrison Ford was or something. Not the exact right comparison but, y'know?

I believe Segal also had a hard career crash after asking too much money for things or something, but others would know better.

(ford obviously in tons of teen-friendly fare that has remained very popular - just meaning super big all through a decade and then basically irrelevant immediately afterwards)

yeah I don't think that applies to Harrison Ford

(currently in the process of designing an Elliott Gould t-shirt at the request of my wife btw)

Busy without being busy with people; Carbon Copy (1981)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_vGC7KpaH7G0/TScHvAO-PmI/AAAAAAAAAsA/E777ADf6_ug/s1600/carbon-copy-movie-poster-1020378095.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/sKbo9kU.jpg

Hoo boy, and now I catch that they're eating fried chicken in the first one.

Wait a minute. Is the English title "Carbon Copy" and the Italian title is something about chicken?

"The Chicken You Eat WIth Your Hands" ...