20 Bad Book Covers That Should Be Movies

Breed To Come

The Cover: That cat looks decidedly shifty…what does it know that we don’t?

The Movie: After a nuclear event in rural Vietnam, the local moggies start acting strangely. Eventually all becomes clear…they’re trying to usurp us humans! That’s not a rice-paddy worker at all…it’s a mutant cat! With ‘Nam in chaos once again, the US army are back to put things straight…and this time, it’s personal.

Awesome Scene: Flaming cats fill the streets of Hanoi, as Uncle Sam arrives with a job-lot of napalm. Miaow!

Spawn

The Cover: Yikes! That baby is terrifying. Is it a giant baby? Or is that a miniature man? Either way, we don’t like his chances…

The Movie: Body-shock horror starring Nic Cage as a childless scientist who engages in some genetic tinkering with an aborted foetus. One reanimation later, and he’s got the baby he always wanted…except that it’s evil. And out to find the parents who didn’t want it…

Awesome Scene: Cage cradles his newborn “son”, not noticing the knife it’s managed to grab behind his back…

Slave Ship

The Cover: Priceless. The navy bloke looks more gormless than the ape he’s trying to instruct. This’ll never work…

The Movie: High-seas caper, re-named Noah’s Ark for the family crowd. Steve Guttenberg is Noah Chance, a hapless crewman charged with teaching a crew of animals to operate a navy vessel. Cue a series of hilarious scrapes as the goat Steve puts in charge of navigation gets them all hopelessly lost.

Awesome Scene: All hell breaks loose when the first mate starts sniffing the engineer’s backside.

The Listening House

The Cover: What’s that attached to that house? Is it a conservatory? Hang on, it’s a giant bloody ear! You’re right to run mate!

The Movie: A riff on the classic haunted-house genre, in which the eponymous mansion earwigs on the young couple who move in, before airing their dirty laundry at the least convenient moments. Pesky house. Mind your own!

Awesome Scene: The house waits until the vicar comes to tea, before blurting out that the husband is wearing his wife’s knickers. It’s a laugh riot!

The Little People

The Cover: A fairytale castle, some midgets and….a swastika? Not exactly what we’d call “carefully laid-on horror”.

The Movie: A family holidaying in the German countryside soon find themselves besieged by a tribe of angry dwarves, hell-bent on creating a master-race of bearded, pointy-eared shorties. Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to ethnically cleanse they go.

Awesome Scene: Salvation is provided by the family pooch, who swallows the chief dwarf whole. Take that small-fry!

The Private Life Of Julius Caesar

The Cover: Archetypal pulp guff, complete with heaving cleavages and a fanciful grasp of history.

The Movie: British sex-farce re-casting Caesar (Robin Askwith) as a leering lothario. A series of smutty escapades with his Centurions’ wives ensue, as Caesar desperately tries to keep one step ahead of Her Indoors, the foul-tempered Cleopatra (Patsy Palmer).

Awesome Scene: A budget-sapping set-piece in which the Barbarians lay Rome to waste, whilst Julius is laid low with a dose of the clap.

Sos The Rope

The Cover: A distinctly homoerotic scene featuring a mulleted muscle-man. God knows who or what he’s got tied to that rope…

The Movie: Adventure saga, starring Matthew McConaughey as sexually-questionable beefcake Sos, a fabled warrior with a taste for the flamboyant. Assisted by his magic rope, Sos must brinbg down the evil tyrant Homophobos and his prohibitively conservative regime.

Awesome Scene: Sos manages to entangle an entire posse of henchmen in his rope. “I can see you’re all tied up,” he quips as the audience cheers!

The Penetrator

The Cover: KAPOW! This ain’t no ordinary book, heard? It’s got guns and strippers and moustaches! WHOOSH!

The Movie: Michael Madsen is Max Thrust, a washed-up PI with nothing to live for and even less to lose. When the only woman who ever cared for him is gunned down at the local whorehouse, it’s time for Max to sober up and get some payback.

Awesome Scene: “Wh-who are you?” quivers a suspect, as Max towers over him. “I’m the Penetrator,” growls Max, drawing his gun...

West Of January

The Cover: A naked man rides a killer whale, cheering as he does so. And why not?

The Movie: Robin Williams plays an alcoholic dad who loses his kids after a drunken, nude misadventure at Sea World. Desperately penitent, Rob takes on a job at the park, forming a powerful bond with a killer whale. From that whale, he learns a clutch of life lessons, returning to his kids a new man.

Awesome Scene: Initially wary, the killer whale takes a hearty bite out of Robin’s trousers. Everybody laughs.

Slimer

The Cover: We don’t know what’s more repellent, Slimer’s saliva-coated fangs or unsightly double-chin. Gross.

The Movie: An old-school creature feature, with a sub-Anaconda swamp thing, wreaking havoc in a Mississippi bayou. Burt Reynolds stars as the cigar-chomping ex-marine looking to send the Slimer “back to the Stone Age”. The film’s success prompts the return of the moustache to popular culture.

Awesome Scene: Burt lights a stick of dynamite with his cigar, before tossing it down the Slimer’s gullet. That’s how we spell Kaboom!

Music To My Sorrow

The Cover: A prancing flutist seems to be winding up a heavy metal band as a fire erupts between them. Nothing weird there.

The Movie: In a world where music is power, two tribes battle it out for supremacy. The heavy-metallers reign supreme, but resistance comes from a band of elfin tree-huggers and their whimsical, folksy noodling. Think Underworld with more singing.

Awesome Scene: A cameo from Pan’s People, which sees them burned at the stake to the accompaniment of Enter Sandman .

Last Come The Children

The Cover: That hooded fellow looks like he’s about to separate a pair of conjoined twins with a meat cleaver! Should’ve gone private girls.

The Movie: Generic slasher fare starring comeback kids The Olsen Twins. Marvel as TOT run around in their pants, whilst the local psychotic attempts to slit their throats. The killer is eventually revealed to be jealous crooner Mandy Moore. Remember her? Nope, us neither. That’s why she’s pissed.

Awesome Scene: A flesh-filled scene in which the twins inexplicably share a shower.

Door Into Fire

The Cover: Pneumatic babe, skulls on spikes, big-ass sword… this will be aimed at the chaps then, yes?

The Movie: Science-fiction caper following the adventures of Sly Stallone’s grizzled warlord. Having defeated every earthly opponent going, Sly is challenged by Dolph Lungren’s God of War for an otherworldly scrap, with immortality up for grabs. Conan, eat your heart out!

Awesome Scene: A CGI Marlon Brando pops up as a celestial referee. He signed up to all sorts of guff before he pegged it…

Undying World

The Cover: Put some clothes on man, there’s a strangely hairy lizard to fight! So camp, it’s untrue…

The Movie: Sometimes, the world needs a hero who can’t be bothered with clothes. That hero is Blade! Armed only with a steely glare and his trusty harpoon, Gerard Butler grimaces his way through this action-packed fantasy, pausing only to size up the busty maidens placed strategically along the way.

Awesome Scene: Blade whips off his loincloth to reveal…nothing. Just a smooth surface. So that’s why he’s so angry!

Rubber Dolly

The Cover : Not sure what’s more disturbing here, the wires coming out of Mrs. Dolly’s tummy, or the startled look on her face. Mr. Dolly doesn’t seem too fussed…

The Movie: This Weird Science re-boot sees a crackpot professor (John Turturro) invent himself a girlfriend out of bits and bobs from the recycling. Initially ridiculed, the caring relationship between man and machine soon wins the hearts of the town.

Awesome Scene: The surprisingly bleak ending, in which the consummation of the relationship gives the Prof a fatal electric shock. Ouch.

Sister Time

The Cover: Oversized breasts meet massive, phallic gun? Go on, we’re listening…

The Movie: Angelina Jolie pours herself into a latex catsuit to star as a time-hopping “cleaner”, charged with keeping the universe on the path of fate. She’s after Billy-Bob Thornton’s rival time traveller, who’s determined to cause chaos by playing silly-buggers with history. We can almost hear Michael Bay’s ears pricking up…

Awesome Scene: A shoot-out in the Cabinet War Rooms, as Billy-Bob tries to put one in Churchill’s head.

The Rifleman

The Cover: What in the blue hell is happening here? We’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but the parallels with The Woodsman are unfortunate.

The Movie: Western drama, starring Russell Crowe as a drifter who takes a newly orphaned boy under his wing, and helps him track down the villainous sheriff (Willem Dafoe) who killed his family.

Awesome Scene: When Junior helps himself to Russ’s gun, and aims it squarely at Willem’s crotch. Ain’t payback a bitch?

The Texas-Israeli War

The Cover: Rednecks vs Israelis. This is what it look like inside Bush’s head.

The Movie: Yee-ha! Sick and tired of Obama’s “pussyfooting”, some Good Ol’ Boys from Texas tool-up and take the USA by force. The lily-livered Democrats have no option but to call for their old buddies in Israel, who are only too happy to kick some cowboy ass.

Awesome Scene: Obama (Jamie Foxx) goes rogue when the Texans hit the White House, snapping Garth Brooks’ neck with his bare hands.

The Magick Of Camelot

The Cover: The spacecraft is bad enough, but is that dragon shitting fire?

The Movie: Fantasy spectacular as King Arthur (Daniel Craig) and friends are faced by a bunch of marauding aliens. Its laser-guns versus broadswords, as the little green men get more than they bargained for from the Knights of the Round Table.

Awesome Scene: A swarm of aliens are incinerated by a single puff from the court’s resident dragon. Dragons versus aliens? Come on…you’d watch it!

The Yngling In Yamato

The Cover: Rippling muscles, incomprehensible title, East meets West dynamic…the stage is set for a truly atrocious tale.

The Movie: In dire need of some new weaponry, the US military pitches up in Japan to conscript a chapter of Samurais into their service. However, they haven’t reckoned with one man, an American ex-pat who won’t let his adopted people go quietly. That man…is Charles Bronson!

Awesome Scene: Charlie B takes down an entire squad of marines using a tree branch and a dustbin lid. Owned.

George was once GamesRadar's resident movie news person, based out of London. He understands that all men must die, but he'd rather not think about it. But now he's working at Stylist Magazine.