Foreign Poster Atrocities #1

Okay, faithful readers (all 12 of you): many of you (at least 4) have visited Something Awful and ventured onto their Fashion SWAT section where, sometimes, they will riff on badly-conceived movie posters from India, Mexico and the like.

With me so far?

Well, tonight I just happened upon a page on the web where they have a vast collection of just such posters from all over. And yes, they are all pretty bad. Now, seeing that a few of these posters are indeed pretty darned funny (and I am simply too impatient to wait till Something Awful gets a hold of them), I took it upon myself to make a few riffs on them my own self.

Thus you have my introduction to a new sometimes-segment on the ol' MBZ: Foreign Poster Atrocities.

...However, since I do this blog all by myself and have no one to riff with (whereas the crew from Something Awful outnumber my regular readers), I just riffed with myself. My alter ego for these segments will hitherto be referred to as Jeff...for no reason more than I couldn't think of a better name.

Now, while this is all still fresh in your (and my) mind, we shall start with our first poster.

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TGWD - Sonny and Cher: The REALLY Untold Story.

JEFF - Starring Harvey Fierstein and Janeane Garofolo.

JEFF - One's on ecstasy, one's on depressants: see if you can guess which is which!

TGWD - Apparently this is the part of the movie where Sonny's trying to convince Cher to go on just one more reunion tour.

JEFF - Or that Chastity's going to turn out perfectly fine and marry a nice Jewish boy.

TGWD - And what is this interpretation of Sonny they have here; totally glammed up, right down to the lipstick, the bling bling around the neck and flowery shirt.

JEFF - That looks like a poppy on his shirt...which would explain a lot about him AND the artists for this poster.

JEFF - But what happened to his throat?

TGWD - She wasn't in the mood; ripped out his thorax.

JEFF - That'll happen.

TGWD - And what's the title of this beauty; can you make it out?

JEFF - It looks like one of those things you make in wood shop that's just an outline of the words and, if you look at it just right the spaces in the center spell out "Jesus" or "Allah" or whatever.

TGWD - Unless you're some sort of Atheist wood-hater or something, then it's a drugged-out message of some sort.

TGWD - Either way, you flunk wood shop because the teacher's an ex-Marine who doesn't buy in to that hippie crap and lost 3 fingers in 'Nam so you could screw around in class making napkin holders with kitty silhouettes on 'em.

JEFF - Anyway, the title looks like Jug A Hug?

TGWD - Jug A Hug: you move your jug, you get a hug!

JEFF - Jug A Hug, from Milton Bradley. Play it at your next church function.

TGWD - Makes perfect sense for a Bollywood version of Sonny and Cher's life.

JEFF - It looks like they're on their second honeymoon in the haunted house ride in an amusement park.

TGWD - And Cher's thinking to herself, "Why the hell did I say 'yes'? WHY??"

TGWD - But Sonny's facial expression and hand position suggest he's putting her at ease by saying: "Hey now don't worry your pretty little head about a thing, Cher, baby - this little ol' ride's just a diversion...this is really the way we go to get to our deluxe honeymoon suite the owner of the park promised us!"

JEFF - To which Cher replies, "Sure, like that last honeymoon we went on at that seaside hotel haunted by shark ghosts with the meddling kids and that dog?"

TGWD - SONNY: (under his breath) "I thought the crossover thing would work. How was I to know it only helped The Harlem Globetrotters?"

JEFF - I just noticed up in the left corner...is that German?

TGWD - Jangal mein mangal, baby.

JEFF - Hitler's last words to Eva.

TGWD - Sonny's fey mannerisms are really setting this one off-kilter. Do you think Cher's pouting because he's acting more feminine than she is?

JEFF - Have you seen Cher lately? Carrot Top looks more feminine than she does.

TGWD - Ouch.

JEFF - It had to be said.

TGWD - Maybe the plot is that Sonny has to dress up like Cher to keep her safe from that glowing-eye skull behind them.

JEFF - I was wondering which of us would be first to mention that. It looks like a Day Of The Dead party gone horribly wrong.

TGWD - Oh. So they go right, then?

TGWD - Wait; that's a Mexican holiday. So that's Mexico, Germany, India and the United States, all integrated into one poster.

JEFF - No wonder no one else has seen this; those multi-national movies almost never make money.

TGWD - Plot's too convoluted; should have just stuck with telling the Sonny and Cher story as it was, without all the superfluous subplots.

JEFF - No, they had to spice it up with the evil skull, a drugged-out gay Sonny and the burning city behind them. Bring in the grindhouse crowd.

TGWD - And after the city's left in flames and the evil skull's been vanquished, Sonny turns to Cher and says, "See, baby? Told ya not to worry. Now, let's go back to the hotel and have a little Jug A Hug...and maybe I'll let you jangal mein mangal, mein liebschen?"

JEFF - To which Cher, arms crossed, promptly tells him no.

TGWD - That explains her shiner.

TGWD - See? There's another shocking topic to add to the fold: celebrity spousal abuse.

JEFF - It's give and take, though. He punches her in the eye, she rips out his throat. Lee Marvin and his girlfriend had the same kind of relationship.

TGWD - Except they used machine guns and grenades he picked up after The Dirty Dozen was through filming.

JEFF - Whereas the best Sonny could do is throw a Fender Rhodes at Cher while she blocked it with a Washburn or a J. Reynolds.

JEFF - In fact, wasn't that the grounds for divorce Valerie Bertinelli used against Eddie Van Halen?

TGWD - Well, anyone who picks on Eddie Van Halen is asking for it.

JEFF - Unless it's Lemmy.

TGWD - Yeah, but try to get Bollywood to make a Lemmy movie. Um, I think we're done with this one.

JEFF - I think we were done somewhere around Carrot Top.

TGWD - Think I'll ask the wife to play Jug A Hug tonight.

JEFF - Expect her to tell you to jangal your own mangal.

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Depending on the response I get from this one, we'll see when the next installment crops up.

Until next time, Dope (and Jeff) out.

-TGWD