What follows are not the worst examples of the recent spate of silent film releases from Grapevine Video — I am trying to keep this series within genre boundaries, after all — but they’re indicative of the median quality for the whole series. The quality and design sense on these indicates someone whose last design job was for bootleg VHS tapes in the mid-’80s:
You know, if you’re going to plaster a publicity shot of Will Rogers all over the cover instead of anything spectral or fantastic or in any other way headless-horsemanish, wouldn’t it behoove you to label him “Will Rogers” somewhere in the cover, instead of assuming that his seven-decades-dead likeness is instantly recognizable to kids these days?
Well, at least the star power of Henry B. Walthall is trumpeted loudly on this one. Doesn’t the spookiness just chill your bones?
#1 by RogerBW on June 21, 2011 - 3:03 pm
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Bad striping on that second one – I smell inkjet printer. Strange semi-colour effect; given that there are B&W films it might have been better to do a straight B&W cover.
I wonder how much it would have cost to use the original film posters, or whether they’re even still available. Or just to cut something together from the films themselves…
#2 by Nathan Shumate on June 21, 2011 - 3:05 pm
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Or hire a teenager who knew what this “PhotoShop” thingummie is.
#3 by El Santo on June 21, 2011 - 11:19 pm
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The Headless Horseman came out in 1922, so its original ad art should be in the public domain even if the copyrights on it were renewed by people who are still around to enforce them. And the one-sheet is definitely out there somewhere, because I found a scan of it online to illustrate my review of the film.
#4 by Richard on June 22, 2011 - 6:54 am
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They could at least be consistent in their choice of fonts…