The "Sad Warrior" Pose

 Earlier this week I posted a review of low-budget horror-flick "Land Of The Pharaohs"(It's crap. don't bother) but in the process of writing the review something occurred to me.

I looked at the DVD cover and thought "Why does that look familiar?"

And the answer was "Because I've seen that pose used on a few DVDs lately.  Let me demonstrate.

This is the one that immediately came to mind.

I've decided to call this pose The Sad Warrior pose because let's face it, do any either of these people look like they're having fun.

  At best you have a warrior praying for strength and fortune before an epic battle. Alternatively, here's somebody on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of all the heinous shit they've been put through.

 My theory is that DVD artists like this pose because it suggests a depth of feeling to the hero that might make us care about them a little more. "I'm not somebody that stabs people then parties. I stab people then feel really bad about it afterwards. Such is my fate"
 
 Problem is I've watched both of these DVDs and neither of the blokes on the cover are in the frigging movie.  
 Not even a little bit.  If it comes to that, the movie on the cover is not the movie on the disk because "Land Of the Pharaohs" is set almost entirely in a municipal museum and "Clash Of Empires" is about Javanese villagers fighting an evil king.

I suspect this is deliberate. 

Still don't believe me? Let's have another one.

Sympathy is not the only emotion being deliberately courted here, I feel. 

It's also  curiously similar to this Red Sonja promo poster. 

 A film we never got to see, sadly. 

 Once again the packaging for "Red Reaper" is deliberately misleading. No chainmail bikini for a starters.

  Beyond the fact that the hero is a pretty redhead, you don't get the film you' paid to see.

Moving on to film's I haven't seen. A five minute trawl through Amazon pulled up all of these adventure movies, coming to a CEX near you. 

  (I did try watching this one but gave up after 20 minutes because it was so dull. I doubt it got better.) 

 A slight variation here. Yay.

 I haven't seen this movie but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it isn't about "one man's fight to destroy an entire empire". It's more likely about a Thracian farmer fighting against the Roman prick that nicked his donkey. 

  One more to finish. 

  Here's a funny thing. When I went looking for this DVD cover I found two different versions. It's interesting how there's such a wide gap between the film you'd expect from this cover and what the other cover suggests.

Almost like one of these covers is lying to you.,

Here's my tip. If you see The Sad Warrior pose on a DVD, save yourself time, money and frustration and walk on by.  Maybe then the people who perpetuate this bullshit will finally stop taking the piss. 

 That's All Folks.