Something of a cult favorite these days, The Phantom sees Billy Zane's uncharismatic hero take on a raft of one-dimensional villains while clad in some questionable purple spandex. The movie features some great production design but is filled with thoroughly wooden dialogue, something that seems to have filtered through to the marketing team. The purple-on-purple-on-purple color scheme of the poster is bad enough, but the tagline is something else entirely. What does it even mean? I'm not sure how one would go about the act of slamming evil, but apparently it needs to be done urgently given the massive exclamation mark. Surely this poster marks the only time anybody in history has ever even used that phrase.
14. King Kong (1976)
The 1976 version of King Kong was actually a huge hit when it was released; one of the biggest movies of the year, the $90.6m worldwide gross is over $375m when adjusted for inflation. However, the marketing team should hang their heads in shame for printing a bare-faced lie on the movie's one-sheets. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a movie called King Kong released in 1933 that is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential creature features ever made? It makes absolutely no sense to market your movie as an 'original motion picture event' when it is a blatant remake of a classic movie that most of the cinema-going population are aware of. Who knew that Hollywood was capable of lying to the general public?
I don't do social media, so like or follow me in person but please maintain a safe distance or the authorities will be notified. Don't snap me though, I'll probably break. I was once labelled a misogynist on this very site in a twenty paragraph-long rant for daring to speak ill of the Twilight franchise. I stand by what I said, it's crap.
