11 Worst Movie Posters of the 80s
Published Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 12:01:00 AM - Single-page view

I went through at least 1,000 movie posters from the 1980s to pick the 11 for this list. It probably would've been fewer, but, because of the hip-hop world, there are at least 100 variations of the "Scarface" poster now cluttering up any '80s movie poster repository.

Here are the 11 worst posters from '80s movies. No "Scarface" ones included.
  1. "Victory" (1981) - They're trying to make the three leads for a "V"... but instead, it looks like all three are part of some freakish three-torsoed, Black Power-saluting hydra. Also, the multiple spellings and translations of "VICTORY" in the background just look like typos.


  2. "Superman III" (1983) - Yes, that's Superman carrying Richard Pryor over the Grand Canyon. More than 25 years later, this almost seems like a joke, like something someone entered in a Photoshop contest where they replaced a comely Lois Lane with Richard Pryor. But it's real. And ridiculous.

    (I'm just a bit too young to remember the early '80s but, based on what I've gathered, there was a brief period where Hollywood was determined to use Richard Pryor's status and fanbase in the stand-up world to make him into a movie star. It never really worked. It's exactly what happened with Chris Rock and, now, Dane Cook.)


  3. "Soul Man" (1986) - "Soul Man" is a really good high-concept comedy premise, with a white guy using tanning pills to turn himself black so he can get a free ride to Harvard. Of course, he finds out that being black is more than he bargained for. (That last line is really corny so you should read it in the "Rob Schneider is... a stapler" voiceover style.)

    So why did the poster mention none of that and just chose to have mid-level movie star C. Thomas Howell stand there, in full-on honky mode, next to a completely irrelevant tagline? I have absolutely no idea.


  4. "The Blue Lagoon" (1980) - I guess it's a good thing that, almost 30 years later, our societal sensibilities would never allow for a movie poster talking about "a sensual story of natural love [featuring] two children."

    I'm not a fan of the ongoing morality police/censorship culture that has been cultivated in the past six or seven years... but when it keeps stories like this from happening, maybe it's not all bad.


  5. "One Crazy Summer" (1986) - You have John Cusack, fresh off "The Sure Thing" and "Better Off Dead"... and you have Demi Moore, fresh off "St. Elmo's Fire" and "About Last Night..." So what gets the focus on two-thirds of the movie poster? Why a hideous, gigantic, maniacally-evil cartoon sun that appears to be doing a Jack Nicholson impresson, of course.


  6. "Conan the Barbarian" (1982) - I get that Arnold Schwarzenegger is muscular. No one has ever denied that. But those are not natural abs. No one in history has had abs like that.

    It looked to me like he has a giant brain in his stomach... which instantly made me think of Krang from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". And to better flesh out that thought, I've included an insert of Krang in the picture below.



Continue reading on page two...


This list was published on Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 12:01:00 AM under the category Movies.

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