Video Store Terror!!! The Big Box Video Covers That Made You Cry!

While discussing my last blog entry with a friend, we both started to reminisce about the old poster art that was on video cassettes in the 80's.  With little money for advertising and no "name" celebrities, the art on a video box was key in selling movies to horror hungry teens trolling the aisles for their latest fix.  Modern horror fans are used to floating heads around the image of the killer's mask for poster art — but back in the eighties and nineties, movie boxes had to convince you to pick up that movie and rent it.  Companies usually did this by making the boxes as gory and terrifying as possible.  The more shocking the cover art, the more likely some teenager was to pick up the movie and take it home.

Some of this poster art, HELLRAISER for example, is considered classic poster iconography.  Others have long since been forgotten except by those few of us who were unlucky enough to run into them on the shelves of our local Mom and Pop Video Store.  Below are just a few of the boxes that kept me away from certain sections of the Major Video in Lubbock, Texas.

Image Source:videodead.tumblr.com

Image Source: talkofhorrors.blogspot.com

Image Source: artscenecal.com

Image Source: imdb.com

Image Source: Movieposter.com

Image Source: talkofhorrors.blogspot.com

Image Source: moviepostershop.com

Image Source: clivebarker.com

Image Source: joblo.com

Unfortunately, with the rise of Netflix and the death of the video store (as well as the current lack of innovative poster art) the days of this kind of advertising are long gone.  But thankfully this art will live on forever on the internet and in the homes of collectors like me who remember what it really meant to be scared by something truly creative and shocking.

What posters scared you as a kid?  Comment below!