Battle of the Bloody Arts #2

Curtains (1983)
Dir: Johnathan Stryker
Canadian one-sheet



Two little-known slasher pic posters up for comparison this week, the first being the creepy Canadian production Curtains featuring a killer donning the frail mask of an elderly man and terrorising youths amid the country’s icy cold landscape. Above-average stalker flicks seldom received effective poster art during the early 80s, distributors instead opting for more exploitive imagery more suited to that of a Hershel Gordon Lewis gorefest. Luckily, Johnathan Stryker’s film garnered a one-sheet to remember. This gloriously creepy artwork is immediately eye-catching, not only for the draped jowls of the killer’s visage but also for the seemingly motionless porcelain doll emerging from behind them with its arms stretched out and into the abyss. The striking colour scheme of blues, reds and purples are beautifully merged together to form the ghostly spectre of the film’s villain and further lend the design a rich visual sophistication rarely seen in low budget marketing material. Also prominent is the bold typography employed for the films’ title (featuring the commonly used ‘blood drip’ effect popular at the time) and the nicely ambiguous, if unremarkable tagline: ‘Behind every curtain, someone is waiting…someone is watching’.

Pranks (aka The Dorm That Dripped Blood) (1982)
Dir: Stephen Carpenter & Jeffrey Obrow
USA one-sheet



Another barely available (except for old VHS rentals and the bootleg R2 disc) dead teenager flick, Pranks's poster art makes this body count caper appear more like a parody of itself, or at the very least something resembling a goofball comedy. The hapless coed crammed into the industrial steam cooker (the final shot of the movie, by the way!) that it features so prominently is simply laughable, not only for the pure absurdity of the cartoonish imagery used but also for the fact that she really doesn’t look scolded at all. Whose idea was it to use such a blatantly silly illustration as the central marketing iconography for the film?? Perhaps more perplexing is the nonsensical quote taken from critic Bill Cosford of the Miami Herald: ‘The Villain Makes Coed Stew’. Granted, the film didn’t receive especially glowing praise when it was initially released but was this really the best plug they could pull to entice people to see their movie?? I dig the film but this poster deserves to be dug a grave.