Yes, that's Jess Franco's image as the mad slasher from his 1979 film EL SADICO DE NOTRE DAME adorning this WIZARD Video cover of Maurizio Pradeaux's 1973 TORMENTOR, one of the lesser mid 1970's Italian gialli but nevertheless an entertaining 90 or so minutes of Le Bad Cinema. Jess Franco is not in the cast of this sleazy item and the killer in the film bears no resemblance to his image here whatsoever.
WIZARD also released a video in an oversized box of DEMONIAC, a heavily censored version of EL SADICO, so maybe they decided to get more bang for their buck by porting Jess over. But the DEMONIAC box had different cover artwork, not including JF's image, although there were stills of him in action on the back.
This eyecatching cover is a case of video box art being superior to the film it's promoting. For an array of old WIZARD video covers: http://critcononline.com/wizard_video_vhs_covers.htm
(c) Robert Monell, 2006.
The Wizard boxes were as notorious for misinformation as the Private Screenings/Luna Video boxes. (Remember Luna's release of MIDNIGHT PARTY, which actually contained a Max Pecas film with Karine Gambier?) I remember seeing Wizard boxes with pictures from the wrong movies on the back, wrong cast and credit info, etc. Obviously, Wizard accidentally released TORMENTER with DEMONIAC's box art, and vice versa... but, strangely, I've also seen a Euro release of DEMONIAC, under that title, bearing the same confused cover art more appropriate to TORMENTER.
ReplyDeleteI remember that the stills, cast and crew info, plot synopsis for Pierre Chevalier's THE INVISIBLE DEAD (1970) ended up on the back of another WIZARD oversized box, perhaps ZOMBIE LAKE while the back of their VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD box had stills from Franco's OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES! The cover art for DEMONIAC was one of the covers SYNAPSE offered for their DVD of Franco's 1974 EXORCISM. I bought a bunch of these boxes at a Mom and Pop video store liquidation sale almost 20 yeas ago and only have one or two left.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, Vincent Gallo is selling his film posters (at a very inflated price). Scroll down the page for an image of Franco's El Sadico De Notre Dame.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vgmerchandise.com/posters.html
Force Video's EXECUTIONER OF VENICE has at least one still from VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD as does their tape of EROTIKILL (the shot of Franco, the aunt, and the severed arm). Some of that Wizard video art actually appears on covers for different video titles throughout Europe as well with some elements added or subtracted. I'm guessing some of these cover images originate with European or Asian poster art.
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