Gone forever? Like the drive-in and nasty-ass intermission snack bar pizza, is the Roger Corman style of writing movie taglines so-bad-they’re-good a thing of the past? These days we get heavily photoshopped images of Mr. Cruise and his name at the top. If we’re lucky, maybe even a clever tag that sums up the movie premise. But does Mystic River’s “We bury our sins, we wash them clean” even hold a candle to those of yesteryear?
I think not.
Take a classic like The Violators. I mean look at the size of the tagline on that thing. That’s a two-part, double-XXL monster in All Caps-O-Vision with an italics chaser: “TEENAGERS ON PAROLE! TOO YOUNG TO KNOW BETTER — TOO HARD TOO CARE!”
Lost in Translation tells me quietly, “Everyone wants to be found.” Not when I have The Blob hot on my trail: “INDESCRIBABLE... INDESTRUCTIBLE! NOTHING CAN STOP IT!”
Or maybe you wanted a nice, peaceful sojourn in the wine country of Sideways with “A story about friendship and pinot envy.” Notice again the current trend of using the passive-aggressive lower case in the tag. Well, I don’t think so, not with Death Race 2000 staring you down, because “IN THE YEAR 2000, HIT AND RUN ISN’T A CRIME, IT’S THE NATIONAL SPORT!
Now that’s crafty wordcrafting people.
Tags: old movie posters, movie subheads
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