More posts about horror movie posters: In his review of Dreamcatcher (a lousy movie, by the way, read the book instead), Charles Taylor mentions how "[as] a kid, I loved looking at the newspaper ads for the horror movies I couldn't get in to see... and imagining what they must be like."

Movie love must be the same all over, because I used to do the same thing. I can remember watching the ads for the Nightmare on Elm Street and Evil Dead films, with their lurid promises of horrible imagery, and script in my head a story that would incorporate them.

Alas, once the VCR and rentals allowed access to those films, not every one of them fulfilled the fantasies I had woven around them (except for the original Nightmare on Elm Street and the Evil Dead films; those were wilder than what I had expected).

Still, horror movie poster art has an undeniable appeal, and sometimes the descriptions of the movies they're attached to rise a creative challenge to their makers; too bad not many of them are true visionaries in the Peter Jackson vein.

Oh, well. No matter. Poster art like the following, and the accompanying synopses, still gets my juices going.

Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
The peculiar genius of schlock-king Roger Corman is in full bloom with this extremely gory, pointedly offensive homage to 1950s monster movies (with a generous helping of Alien thrown in for good measure), in which a legion of mutated salmon-men terrorize a small town in their search for unwilling female companionship. (Potential viewers should be warned that this movie goes to great lengths to show what earlier films in this genre had only implied.) A guilty pleasure for exploitation fans with a strong stomach and a twisted sense of humor. For what it's worth, director Barbara Peters has claimed that additional shock scenes were inserted by producer Corman without her knowledge. The glop-intensive special effects were devised by Rob Bottin, who later went on to gross out the masses with his work on Seven, Robocop, and John Carpenter's graphic remake of The Thing.
—Andrew Wright

The Prowler (1981)
If you think you're safe, you're dead wrong! On the night of her graduation dance in 1945, young Rosemary and her date are brutally murdered by a prowler thought to be a jilted soldier home from the war. The killer was never found. Thirty years later, the dance is held again for the first time since that horrific evening—but something else may have also returned. Tonight, the teens of this sleepy town will meet their grisly ends at the hands—and pitchfork, blade and more—of The Prowler! Also known as "Rosemary's Killer," this gruesome shocker is one of the most brutal body count movies of the '80s, thanks to razor sharp direction by Joseph Zito (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) and graphic gore effects by Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead, Maniac). Hollywood legends Farley Granger (Strangers on a Train) and Lawrence Tierney (Reservoir Dogs) star in this shocker from the golden age of slasher films—now presented completely uncut and uncensored!

Who knows? Maybe some of them might actually be good!

...No way.