Borrowed Covers, Part II

Oddly enough, I simultaneously saw two different users in separate Facebook groups post about reading Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, both with this cover from the 60's paperback version, which I had never seen before. Instantly I recognized Mario Bava's Shock, a film I haven't seen in well over ten years and can't quit remember all that well, but I've always enjoyed the poster.

And, not surprising the art was copied over for the film poster, thanks to the, uh... extent of "borrowing" in Italian films, with about a fifteen year gap since the paperback was published. Interesting they took out the jagged wood to give the horned appearance, but I suppose a ghost with a box knife is plenty to get the point across.

I found this image on Tumblr, posted by someone who erroneously claimed it was the "inspiration" for the poster art. Some reverse-googling shows this is actually the art of Anthony Jimenez, who creates collage work out of old posters and VHS covers. Looking at some of his other work, it's obvious these are collages, seeing mash-ups of things like Rats: Night of Terror! and Return of the Living Dead, or the groovy skull surgeon from Death Warmed Up. Pretty rad stuff, regardless!

Borrowed Covers, Part 1

I always like finding those posters or covers for ficiton that tend to 'borrow' from artists. Poor Frazetta seems to typically be emulated the most frequently, but due to his popularity and output these are usually pretty easy to spot. There's infinite coverage on game cover ripoffs, like Contra and Castlevania to name a few popular ones, but I don't see a whole lot for books. So huzzah, here we go whenever I find some.

Mindbridge the novel was published beforehand, but this specific re-release was in 1978, the same year of Eyes of Laura Mars. Maybe stretching it, but seems too coincidental.

Another similar case, both released in 1984. This one gave me quite a laugh. At a quick glance I swore that was Albert Finney.

 So I think this one is a bit of a reversal. Pigs was released in 1973, and any poster or release for it was quite a bit different until DVD, when the art started to adopt this cover from 1986, Richard Haig's The City (sequel to The Farm), which appears to be edited for its release. The good folks over at Vault of Evil posted the unedited image, borrowed here below, which these editions of the film have appear to been using.



The unedited art, courtesy of Vault of Evil boards.



I rented Pigs in middle-school and haven't revisited since, so seeing this now get a Bluray fairly recently was pretty exciting, although I'm not sure it's all that worth getting excited for! And same goes for The City, which took me a fair bit to track down, along with its prequel, The Farm, which I read last year and was quite underwhelmed with. A bunch of farm animals get all jacked up on PCP and there's sort of a siege situation on a farm. Sounds like the stuff of dreams, but it's mainly a lot of buildup to a pretty weak payoff. Pearls before swine or whatever.