Custom DVD Cover: 8 Million Ways to Die

Why would you put out a film as eighties as this and give it a dull modern cover? I have no idea, but that's what Second Sight did. A simple restoration of the great contemporary poster did the job, with a European one providing a great piece for the back as well.

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Custom DVD Cover: Picnic at Hanging Rock

This one was something of a challenge; the film itself is achingly beautiful but I dislike covers that are just a single shot however beautiful it is as one shot shouldn't define a film. But the original poster was a bit inappropriate in full colour, so a sepia filter seemed a nice compromise.

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Custom DVD Cover: Pickup on South Street

Optimum can be funny about DVD covers; most of their vintage stuff looks great with the standalone ethos I really like, original artwork and so on. But every now and then they just use stills and blocks of primary colour, as per the original sleeve for Sam Fuller's classic. This was a fun one to do as there were a couple of really nice old posters for the film that were easy to use.

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Custom DVD Cover: Nikita

Luc Besson's second best film. Sadly the UK release was saddled with two things I really can't stand - being part of an incomplete "collection" and an uninspired still front cover. The expressionistic French poster did a better job with the aforementioned still now on the back and filtered to match the front a little better.

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Custom DVD Cover: Journey Into Fear

The maybe-directed-by-Orson-Welles-but-probably-not minor classic. The US posters were all rather dull efforts for the time, dominated by billings, so a major fudge of a French version was needed. Quite happy with this one when there were so few options available, though.

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Custom DVD Cover: Dressed to Kill

The usual drill.

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Custom DVD Cover: D.O.A.

Public domain films are a double-edged sword; they're cheap and even free depending on where you look but any retail release will have corners cut, most just using poor stills. This one has one of the original posters on the front with a Swedish version cannibalised for the back, all slapped on the Optimum template because I really like Optimum.

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Custom DVD Cover: In the Realm of the Sense

A hard one to do in terms of finding grist - the Japanese make awful film posters, the original UK sleeve is just a big still of Sada and Kichizo fucking and the various Criterion attempts are just airy-fairy hipster symbolism. Whereas I like the basic simplicity of the front cover with the pair of them just separate to everything else without it being too much of an abstract image.

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Custom DVD Cover: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Rounding out the Dollars trilogy. Only reservation I have with this one is the van Cleef/Wallach billing on the front; that's roughly where it was on the poster but it looks too far down, yet moving it up closer to Eastwood's name looks just as weird.

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Custom DVD Cover: In a Lonely Place

Columbia's vintage stuff has the considerable distinction of making even MGM's stuff look like hard work. Though in this case it was quite difficult to find a poster not utterly dominated by the "Bogart suspense film with the surprise finish" tag-line. In the end I went with a classy French poster with the title pasted in front a US poster.

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Custom DVD Cover: Foxy Brown

Another MGM photomontage replaced by a classic original poster. Look at that, why would you not want an image like that on the front cover?

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Custom DVD Cover: For A Few Dollars More

Much the same thing as A Fistful of Dollars; the plan was to come up with something that worked both as a standalone and next the other parts of the trilogy on the shelf.

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Custom DVD Cover: The Defiant Ones

Another MGM release given a photomontage cover; I much prefered the original poster, ridiculously exaggerated physiques for Sid & Tone notwithstanding.

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Custom DVD Cover: A Fistful of Dollars

The Dollars Trilogy have often been the victims of dull giftset and/or collection work on DVD; I really wanted to do a standalone-style cover using the original poster.

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Custom DVD Cover: Dead Man

I've no idea what the R2 release of this even looks like but the R1 version I have is a bit of a mess, so out came the old trusty Optimum template.

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Custom DVD Cover:Les Diaboliques

One of the greatest films ever made, Clouzot's classic is generally lumbered with dull covers of the Criterion type. UK licencees C'est La Vie got using the majestic poster on the front cover right but got just about everything else wrong. Switching it to the ever-useful Optimum template was a start.

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Custom DVD Cover: Mulholland Drive

The usually reliable Optimum did a lovely series of 2-disc Lynch special editions a few years ago; sadly they all used the ultimate wear-and-tear combo of digipaks with an acetate slipcase. Not only did these split and scratch respectively within minutes of purchase but they look really nasty on shelves to boot. So here's Mulholland Drive done in a visually similar style but for a standard double case.

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Custom DVD Cover: Blowout

MGM/UA issue a lot of classic films on DVD but they always use a dull photo-montage template for the covers - a real shame when the original film had a beauty of a poster like this.

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Custom DVD Cover: Bound

Subbed in one of the better US theatrical posters to replace the tabloidy UK "it's by the guys who done The Matrix and has sex in it" cover. Though if ever a more modern film deserved a forties-style painted noir poster it's this one.

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Custom DVD Cover: The Shining

Replacement for the dull and pretentious "door" cover for the special edition. Always find it worth remembering that while The Shining is technically superb it's still an eighties 18-cert horror and deserves garish cover art to match.

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Custom DVD Cover: Repulsion

My favourite Polanski, but the UK release has a boring montage cover when the original poster was terrific.

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Custom DVD Cover: Foreign Correspondent

Hitchcock is one of the more frustrating directors to collect if you're OCD about DVD sleeves as all the various distributors are always putting out incomplete themed sets; the smashing Foreign Correspondent suffered more than most through being put out in one of Universal's more modish sets, a dire thing basically consisting of a big block of green and another of black. No. Went instead for the terrific art deco style poster on the front, though I'm not sure if using a similar but different image on the back was all that smart.

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Custom DVD Cover: The American

Anton Corbijn's underrated modern classic was blessed with a great poster but when it came out on DVD the sleeve was lumbered with a boring photomontage. Soon remedied.

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Custom DVD Cover: The Funeral

Abel Ferrara's The Funeral, another personal favourite that only seems to be largely available over here as part of a triple set with two other films. Standard stuff based around the US poster.

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Custom DVD Cover: Blue Velvet

One of my favourite films - and one that's been repeatedly saddled with cheap-looking UK releases, usually dominated by Frank Booth (the sleeve is for Secular Entertainment's two-disc special edition). Whereas America and much of Europe got one of MGM's better efforts, a smart wrap-around featuring the classic Kyle-and-Isabella on blue velvet background. So this one was pretty simple, adding UK bells and whistles to the German release.

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