Books/movies/comics that can't possibly live up to their titles or covers

I’ve had this crumbling old pulp sitting on my bookshelf for the better part of a decade, and refuse to read the story inside under any circumstances because there’s no possible way the author can deliver a tale that lives up to my expectations after attempting to unpack that title.

The fact that it’s corpses (plural) is what really sells it.

One promiscuous corpse you could write off as a straightforward mystery tale of some guy/girl who faked their own death so they could sleep around, or were sleeping around and became a corpse. (Yawn :sleeping:) But that extra s on the end implies that at some point during this story, at least two or more dead people were getting up to some serious bangin’. :flushed:

And because they were being promiscuous, that means that at some point, at least 4 individuals… either living, dead, or undead… were having sex with a corpse (knowingly or unknowingly). :exploding_head:

Well, I suppose it could be 3 if both corpses were being promiscuous with the same person/corpse. Or 2 if there was some sort of freaky Piña Colada Song thing going on… but that’s still at least 2 more individuals having sex with corpses than should be having sex with corpses. :angry:

And the word “promiscuous” generally implies that said corpses were really slinging it around all over the place, so 4 is probably a quite conservative estimate.

So what other books/movies/comics can’t possibly live up to their titles or covers?

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HA that title reminds me of the Paperback Paradise account on Twitter. Warning: NSFW!

https://twitter.com/paprbckparadise

Here’s a sneak preview

Now back to your regularly scheduled topic…

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From this tumblr post

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(Transformers More Than Meets The Eye issue 17)

It totally does live up to the cover though!

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EDITOR: “Call it Case of the Promiscuous Corpses. And put the word promiscuous across the ankle of a leggy dame in a red dress.”

COPY BOY: “But boss, don’t you think that’s kind of exploitative?”

EDITOR: “You’re fired.”

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I don’t really do comics but my mom sent me a stack I had thought were tossed. Like movie posters, covers heighten one moment in what is just an average story.

It’s weird to think there was a time when A New Hope was the only Star Wars movie and Marvel decided to spin new stories based on where that movie ended.

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I haven’t read it, but I can’t believe it lives up to the cover.

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There was a time when STAR WARS was the only Star Wars movie. We didn’t know about any of this “New Hope” folderol.

I still have my digest-sized black & white collection of the original Roy Thomas/Howard Chaykin comics adaptation of the movie.

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That series of covers is what adorns the first set I recieved… Gollum looks downright terrifying on the Hobbit cover, and Aragorn’s crown is downright laughable on the Return of the King cover.

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Sadly, this movie, which is also known as The Cars That Ate Paris, is nowhere near as dope as this poster.

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I bring this one up frequently, since it’s a movie I secretly enjoy (I also love the Dr. Phibes movies, which were written and directed by the same guy) but the poster for Last Days of Man on Earth, better known to most of the world as The Final Programme, is one of the most bonkers sci-fi movie posters ever created, and it has almost zero to do with the actual movie.


The poster promises ray-gun wielding cave men in Zardoz harnesses wearing Sting’s jockstrap from Dune, while scantily clad ladies are trapped inside giant Prisoner bubbles, the moon cracking apart, and giant futuristic cities exploding before your very eyes.

The movie you actually get is this:

The “caveman” is from the last few seconds of the movie where the main Jerry Cornelius character gets transformed into the new David Bowie-esque “super being” ultimate evolution of man… which is somewhat ironically depicted as a slouching protohominid. The ray gun and Sting’s jockstrap don’t show up at all. Neither does the exploding moon, and the exploding cities are “inferred” from a few lines of dialogue, but never actually seen on screen. And the ladies in bubbles, again, comes from just a couple seconds of footage during the brief “the world is ending, so why not go insane and hang out in a casino” sequence.

Honorable mention also goes to these glorious Hungarian Star Wars posters.

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I have no idea who the green guy with three eyes and a scimitar is, but I guarantee he’s already been given a full back-story and his own Dark Horse comic series by now.

And any movie poster made in Poland, especially this one for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest… which also inexplicably features Christopher Lee as Dracula and zombie grave-robbers.

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A few more honorable mentions include:

Godzilla vs. The Thing. Which was the American release of Godzilla vs. Mothra.
They tried to infer that “the thing” was some nameless abomination elder horror too hideous to behold without losing your sanity. When, of course, we know perfectly well that Mothra is just… well… Mothra.

The Italian movie poster also went for a similar approach, minus the “censored” gimmick:

And of course, Werewolves on Wheels… the movie that promised us friggin’ werewolves riding motorcycles.

And the closest we get is this one scene at the very end where one werewolf does, in fact, very briefly ride a motorcycle for about 50 seconds (most of which you can’t even see) before catching fire and exploding:

From Hell It Came might also have been slightly exagerating how terrifying it’s monster really was with it’s movie poster…

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This. Is. AMAZEBALLS

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When I worked at a big chain book store in college I remember needing to shelve this book:

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My immediate reaction was, “this is such a badass name for a book. I want to read this RIGHT NOW.” I assumed it was a mystery or thriller or something.

Nah, just some evangelical christian non-fiction thing. Was very sad when I discovered that… what a waste of a great title and cover. Props to the marketing team, I suppose.

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Oh and there was this one, a western about a man with a shotgun for a hand. I never even read it because I knew it couldn’t be as hilariously enjoyable as the cover made it seem. Always cracked me up when I saw it on the shelf.

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Totally sounds like an awesome 1970’s Hammer Horror title.
That’s just depressing… like getting chick tracts in your Halloween candy. :cry:

That’s brilliant. I love that they splurged for the photo cover as well.
Now if he had shotguns for BOTH hands… that’s a book I’d have to buy in a heartbeat.

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See, they coulda had a good movie there.

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By C. Courtney Joyner? Is that the same friendly guy who appears in so many of the MST Shout DVD featurettes? :exploding_head:

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If we’re going by foreign movie posters, Alien doesn’t live up to its Polish poster.

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