Entertainment Weekly has just debuted the poster for September's ambitious horror anthology "The ABCs of Death," which corrals twenty-six directors (among them Ti West, Ben Wheatley, and Nacho Vigalondo) and has them each tackle a way to die. But instead of going with the obvious – maybe a collage of stills from the movies – the poster goes in the complete opposite direction, with a baby in the middle of the image that wouldn't be out of place in those obnoxious E*Trade ads.
Of course the baby is surrounded by a presumed "angel of death," its raveny wings outstretched, holding a book of the "ABCs of Death." Oh now we get it! Entertainment Weekly explains that Kaare Andrews, a comic book artist and writer who is prepping his feature film debut (a "Cabin Fever" prequel, undoubtedly going direct-to-video, called "Patient X"), designed the poster, which makes sense given that the angel of death figure does kind of remind us of the creepy skeleton that served as the de facto emcee for the George Romero/Stephen King anthology "Creepshow."
The poster promises "26 Directors/26 Ways to Die," and we forgot to mention this at the time but they world premiered a brief teaser (a "splatter reel," if you will) at South by Southwest a few weeks ago. It was presented by Alamo Drafthouse head honcho Tim League before a screening of "V/H/S" (which shares a similar concept and at least one director). League helped put the movie together through his Drafthouse Films company, and while it was only a couple minutes long you definitely got what was promised – flashes of ultra-violence alongside nude women, sprinkled with horrifying debasements. Even in snippet form, it was pretty extreme. In other words: we can't wait.
