Frankenstein Conquers The World of DVD's

I’m currently saving my pennies for the end of June when Media Blasters releases their super-chocolatey, 2-disc DVD of Frankenstein Conquers the World. It's packed with all manner of good stuff including a Japanese-language, English-subtitled version of the movie, trailers, a commentary track and deleted scenes (including an alternate ending that was never actually used in the Japanese nor the English theatrical cut). With all the effort being put into this release, it’s rather odd that they decided to go with such a garish cover:

Yow! My eyes! What’s with all the Jack-Kirby-esque “action lines” spreading outwards? And that title font... personally, I would have gone with something a little less “superhero-ish”. It is a monster movie, after all. Compare this to the Japanese cover:

The same publicity photo but with none of the graphic embellishment. One could argue that this version perhaps goes too far in the opposite direction and is somewhat uninteresting and less dynamic. I kinda prefer the simplicity of it, myself. Still, I suppose it could have been worse- Media Blasters could have chosen to use the original American release movie poster:

While I’m a big fan of the movie poster artworks created by illustrator Reynold Brown, this particular piece is definitely one of his weaker entries. I don’t get the impression that he was working from any decent reference material; it’s almost as if someone described the contents of the movie to him and he went from there. Check out what is supposed to be Baragon (the other monster in the film) in the background, looking like a flabby T-Rex. And in the bottom right corner... is that Archie Bunker toting a machine gun? So he spent his younger days fighting giant Japanese monsters? No wonder he was such a grumpy bigot in the All In The Family show.