We are deep in what might have been the greatest summer in the history of moviegoing. The past two months have given us iconic posters and terrible one-sheets for otherwise great films (and vice versa). Past the Fourth of July holiday we got past the gigantic event films and into the genre pictures, and with it some surprise hits that became part of the indelible cultural lexicon. And what movie did that faster than…
American Pie
I had this one! Okay, I had one of those postcard recreations that were in kiosks all over New York back then, but I could get those for free and tape them into my school binders, which was almost as good as papering my whole room with full-size theatrical issues.
Looking at it with fresh eyes, this poster is a nightmare. I don’t believe any of these people were in the same room with each other for a second. I don’t even think that flute was in Alyson Hannigan’s hand. And why is everyone in these People photoshoot all-black deals? Remove Overly Smooth Jason Biggs from the center and this is any given teen movie. This is Down to You. There’s basically no moment from this movie that could make it onto a poster; I’m amazed they got away with the hole in the pie. Instead we got something generic as all hell for the movie that introduced MILF to the cultural lexicon.
RATING: Eugene Levy a huge fine on this one.
The Blair Witch Project
Holy iconic posters, Batman! This one image would dominate the parody conversation for at least the next five years along with Heather’s heaving breath and terrified tears. It wouldn’t have worked so well or been iterated into oblivion if we didn’t in some way believe that it was totally real. We all had that inkling, right? Even if we didn’t totally buy into the backstory of the Blair Witch we couldn’t totally disprove it. I was freshly fifteen and still scared of all kinds of boogeymen. Of course I bought into it a little bit.
Mostly I was impressed that this one poster and a minimal ad buy on cable could turn into a runaway hit, because I was already that kind of obnoxious kid.
Now we know that the Blair Witch phenomenon was sort of terrible for the actors at the center of it. Could you imagine the whole world thinking you died at the hands of a ghost when all you want to do is talk about this cool movie you made? It’s infuriating how it stopped several promising careers dead. We needed more than one truly upsetting Outer Limits episode out of these actors. But no matter what we have this one image and this one film that has lived on well beyond its modest ambitions.
RATING: One map. Where’s the DAMN MAP?
Eyes Wide Shut
There is some other reality where Tom Cruise became Father Thomas at a parish in New Jersey and this movie stars Timothy Hutton or that guy from Super Force. Is it any better? Honestly is it any worse? Kubrick returned to screens twelve years after Full Metal Jacket only to die on us before Eyes Wide Shut was completed.
And when you compare this poster to his other movies this one is…weirdly forgettable? I could draw you any of his other one-sheets from memory, from the hotline hookup of Dr. Strangelove to the still-somehow-controversial “BORN TO KILL” helmet from Full Metal Jacket. This is 70s psychedelia-hangover colors and the promise that we’re gonna see Tom Cruise bang. Hey! Nobody wants that! If we wanted to see his dick then we just would have rented All the Right Moves again!
RATING: A fully-reconstructed version of this article on a London soundstage, just get on the damn plane, STAN.
Summer of Sam
This is not even my favorite Berkowitz-adjacent narrative; The Bronx is Burning packs the sort of wallop that very few miniseries of its type ever get near. But Summer of Sam is a tremendous work of atmosphere from a director who felt a little lost in the woods through the end of the 90s. (When was the last time you went back to He Got Game? Bet you still won’t!) You won’t get a better cast telling this story, and every bit of the film at least has this insistent sweaty atmosphere that makes it feel like the best 70s-shot New York thrillers.
The poster captures that same intensity. This was the third-choice movie for most of my peer group going into the Fourth of July Weekend; we were more ready to dive into South Park than a serial-killer movie set in our parents’ past. But this design felt worthy, right? It was creepy in all the right ways. Bonus points for the fact that it blended in perfectly with the bills posted on New York’s POST NO BILLS blue walls, like an echo and memory of a city that occasionally loses its mind.
RATING: .44 Caliber
Arlington Road vs. The Haunting
Hey, check out these two remakes! We got remakes in the house! Because I don’t care if this is an Ehren Krueger “Original” screenplay, Arlington Road is just The Parallax View for someone who was too obsessed with Ruby Ridge. The twists are the same, the ending is the same, but Arlington Road is way less interesting to watch and about a thousand percent dumber. Mark Pellington would make a much better piece of paranoia three years later with The Mothman Prophecies, a movie that’s actually discomforting to watch in the best ways.
So what’s the better move for a retread of something you can easily pick up at Blockbuster? Do you go for spoiling the ending on the poster or trying to create an iconic image for a movie that has basically none? I’m on Team There Are No Good Versions of The Haunting Except for the Robert Wise One–sorry, Flana-fans–but this one has at least decapitation by lion head and that truly creepy moment with the piano strings. You can’t put that on the poster, so instead the house is alive! Oooooooh! You’re basically daring your audience to mix this up with The House on Haunted Hill remake from a few months later. It’s nondescript horror which I guess fits for a remake that misses the general creepy sensations of the first filmed version and the novel.
Oh and that’s the ending of the movie right smack dab in the center of Arlington Road. Telegraphing a huge bummer to a summer audience was never the way to make money.
RATING: Warren Beat-ten to the Punch
Deep Blue Sea vs. Lake Placid
The battle of the mid-budget creature features! Lake Placid got the early boost during the summer because of the greater star power in front of and behind the camera. It was written by David E. Kelley, who was the reigning king of theoretically-clever hour-long dramadies, the shows you watched when you wanted to feel smart without having to be really all that smart while watching the TV. Ally McBeal was fine, it was whatever, it lived on the experience of a cast who had mostly been there before. What, you’re going to hire Peter McNicol and not get an all-timer performance out of him? Likewise you get a giant all-star cast here to make the most out of Kelley’s words, with Oliver Platt and Betty White having the most fun they may have ever had in a movie. (What is it with Oliver Platt and going over the top in movies that barely deserve it?)
But Deep Blue Sea knew exactly what it was, which is why it has that amazing ironic death right in the middle of the sharks-cure-Alzheimers-but-also-get-evil-smart plot. Wait, what was this movie about? The poster is the exact kind of late-90s whoops-crappy that it both deserved as a piece of calendar filler material and yet owns as a movie that far exceeds its modest expectations. No less an authority than Stephen King chimed in to talk about how much he loved it–it was the first movie he saw after getting hit by that van–and it remains a somewhat-dumb favorite of a lot of us to this day. I’m sure the quality of the respective films does a lot to influence how I see essentially-identical posters, but Deep Blue Sea might have the edge here.
RATING: This poster is like a shark’s fin
Inspector Gadget vs. Runaway Bride
There’s no doubting which of these movies ended up the superior experience, because both lead actors in Inspector Gadget were woefully miscast. Besides which, the film was cut to shreds after test screenings, because apparently a live-action Inspector Gadget that ignores all the stuff that made Inspector Gadget a real hoot didn’t justify a 100 minute running time. If we had waited five years we would have gotten a Steve Carrell version of this movie that would have been at least tolerable.
But I don’t hate the poster! It has a noticeable lack of Andy Dick, which is a good selling point for any movie that happens to feature Andy Dick. It departs from the aesthetic everyone was familiar with from the Inspector Gadget television series, but it’s not a heinous look. Really this should have been Matthew Broderick upside down as the I in Inspector, or maybe with the police siren sticking out of his hat. There were many moments from the cartoon that could have easily made the poster, but Inspector Gadget made nearly $100 Million at the domestic box office so what the hell am I talking about.
Meanwhile, the poster for Runaway Bride lacks literal depth. If you stare at this poster for more than a few seconds you begin to see Gere and Roberts as xeroxed paper dolls; the feathering around them is so bad that you can spot the original backdrop within Richard Gere’s hair. And let’s make sure we can see her running shoes so we know she’s the runaway bride! It’s boring and mostly exists to tell people that the Pretty Woman couple are back in a movie. (Come to think of it, Pretty Woman had a pretty lazy poster.)
RATING: Go Go Gadget Literally Anything Else
NEXT TIME: How do you predict the ending that has everything? Welcome…to Mind-Head.