I hope you're ready to see the greatest thing you'll see today this week this year in your entire life.



This amazing picture of a bootleg RoboCop choking out a vampire while blowing up pretty much everything except a helicopter is the artifact of a bygone age: that dim and distant time when VHS box art roamed the Earth.

Over the weekend, my pal Ken Lowery sent me a link to CriticOnline's exhaustive collection of VHS boxes, and it hit me with nostalgia like nothing else. I spent countless Friday nights wandering around video stores looking for something to watch before ultimately settling for a copy of Escape From New York so worn out that I was surprised to find out Snake Plissken only had one eye when they did the sequel. As such, I've got a lot of affection for the art of the VHS box -- an art that was apparently built around making a movie look as awful as humanly possible.

So today, I've narrowed down CriticOnline's collection of hundreds to thirty of the most amazing! Sure, it doesn't really have anything to do with comics, but it is an amazing collection of art, and since ComicsAlliance editor Laura Hudson's out of town today, I can totally get away with sneaking one past.You know, I really can't understand why this guy wasn't a bigger star:

So wait, is he a serial killer that kills Satans?

Putting aside the fact that "White Fury" is a terrible name for any movie that's not about neo-Nazis and/or cocaine-induced rage, there should've been more films that dared to combine assault weapons, snowboarding, and the ugliest jacket I have ever seen in my life:

When you're the Ultimate Kickfighting Machine, there's only one choice you need to make:

You know, I ain't Sam Goldwyn or nothin', but when you're promoting your hyperviolent action picture, maybe don't go with a rainbow gradient for the logo:

It might not live up to the infamous "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People," but it comes close:

Because this is what bees are known for: Loving.

Before the franchise was rebooted this year with Piranha 3D, the second installment of the Piranha series involved the most terrifying thing anyone has ever imagined:

Unsurprisingly, roughly 43% of all VHS tapes released in the '80s involved the word Ninja. Sometimes the ancient assassins were given unusual opponents...

Sometimes they faced off against dudes with amazing hair / moustache / sunglasses combinations...

Sometimes they traveled to America!

And sometimes they were given Commandments, which included both "Thou shalt identify thyself as a Ninja upon thy headband"...

...and "Thou shalt display only the sketchiest grasp of grammar"...

...the latter of which was occasionally taken to the extreme:

Pretty sure the word you were looking for there was "forearm," but hey, it's your movie:

Named for Reginald Ephriam Cruisin' (1889 - 1953), statesman, educator, and accomplished chainfighter:

Oh finally, they can address all the questions unanswered in the original:

I have vivid memories of seeing this one at both the chain video store and the sketchier (but ultimately more rewarding) local place when I was a kid, and thinking "Look. If you go to a guy named Dr. Sadism, that's on you."

For those of you who may not know, Victor Buono played King Tut on the 1966 Batman TV series. And brother, if you thought he was trouble when he got conked on the head and thought he was a Pharaoh, just wait'll you see what happens when he gets punched in the gut:

Unlike Bounty Hunter 2002, which painted a pretty unrealistic picture of my college years, I have no trouble believing this one is a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of the next decade:

According to the IMDB, Equalizer 2000 came out in 1986, just in time for it to have a strong impact on the developing artistic style of one The Rob Liefeld. Think about it, won't you?

The fact that it replaces the letter I in both words is rad enough, but the placement of the missile in relation to Peter Graves' junk just puts this one way over the top:

Man, before he did Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Will Smith was in some weird stuff.

I think this was the Zapper that came with the more adult-oriented NES:

"Yo what up this DA YETI and we down here at Daytona Beach lookin' for the hottest girls of SPRING BREAK!"

I prefer homemade rage. Just the way grandma used to make every single holiday:

Of all the video art I've listed here, this is the only one from a movie I've actually seen, and yes: It is every bit as good as you'd expect a fantasy epic starring Jack Palance to be:

3,000 volts couldn't kill him... it just gave him the truly amazing idea to put a sniper scope on a jackhammer:

We are currently in the 21st century, and I was in New York last month. And yep: It was pretty much like this: