The poster doesn't advertise much. "This is a movie about a dog," it seems to say. And yet right away, the poster has failed, because based on that image, we are utterly unconvinced that the film features a real dog. It's such a bad composite that it's not clear whether it's supposed to look like the dog is pinching her nipple. "Probably?" you might think, since its paws are on her boob, directly under the words Heavy Petting. "I hope not," you might also think.

In later versions of the poster, they re-Photoshopped the dog to make it look 10 percent more present while it licks the beautiful, talented, creatively unfulfilled actress Malin Akerman.

Anchor Bay Entertainment"... and it's gonna get ruff." -- a cry for help from an almost certainly suicidal copywriter.

So now it looks like Akerman is being kissed at the same moment a dog corpse is being thrown at her -- which, to the artist's credit, would almost certainly disrupt the couple's attempts at romance. Maybe they finally got it right with the release of the director's cut?

Anchor Bay Entertainment"Watch out for this c**k-blocker spaniel this holiday season!"

Then the studio went and dropped this:

Universal Pictures"MISTER POLICE MY DADDY IS PRESIDENT OF MURDER AND HE TAUGHT ME HOW TO TRICK YOU. MY FAVORITE MEAT IS HOT DOG."

What was supposed to look like a taunting letter to the police ended up looking like a kid pulling a prank. No longer was this a movie about Michael Fassbender hunting down a serial killer in the frigid, bloodsoaked snow. Now the whole thing seemed to be some kind of Norwegian Home Alone parody. People were both confused and delighted, and that's how you birth a meme.

The internet loves to turn failure into conversational shorthand, and soon everyone was taunting MISTER POLICE with how they accidentally made a poop or forgot to wear pants. The film itself was a critical and commercial failure, but maybe not because everyone had spent weeks making fun of it. Though it must take some of the edge off the horror when you go into a movie half expecting the killer to be an actual magical snowman.

@pilotbacon/Twitter"This serial killer snowman is about to meet the dog sworn to stop him ... and things are gonna get ruff!"

It's so badly chopped together that it looks like someone taped in a stack of random faces and arms cut out of an Us Weekly. Firth is looking at the back of Uma's head, and that photo of Morgan was clearly taken as he watched a hitchhiker scream for help on a surveillance monitor. This is not a romantic movie poster. This is something you'd make if you never had time for your photo collage hobby because of your busy career as a murderer. Let's look at the next one:

Yari Film GroupNone of these arms or people were ever in the same room.

OK Colin, what are you seeing, mate? He looks like he's either trying to pretend that there isn't a piece of gum stuck to Uma's hair, or he's trying to remember if he left a baby in the backseat of his car.

This next one is just a woman falling to her certain death while two men sarcastically watch it? It seems like some kind of visual metaphor got stretched too far, and it cost Thurman's character her life.

Yari Film Group"When two men with no depth perception get a job as stuntmen, and one of them likes dogs, it’s gonna get ruf- kill me. I yearn for death, but lack the strength to greet him.”

Six-foot Matthew Perry has had his head clumsily removed and placed on a man with a torso only slightly larger than it. It looks like the only person here with all their original parts is Bruce Willis, whose skin has been so buried by the blur tool that he's more smear than man.

Warner Bros. PicturesHe's still sporting the smooth, bagless eyes of a 63-year-old man.

Maybe things will look better without the title in the middle?

Warner Bros. PicturesNOPE.

Somehow Perry's weird little head looks even more out of place. It's like they started by searching for a stock photo of "Bruce Willis vacuuming with a rooster," got very lucky, and then had to build the rest of the poster from scratch. Which explains why Kevin Pollak is playing some kind of fleshy alien penguin that walks on human hands.

Warner Bros. Pictures"BLGGH! BLAAGHGBLB!!! YOUR PLANET IS IN TERRIBLE DANGER!!! BLLORGGGHHBLG!!!!"

He'd probably be happy to know that some countries decided to edit him out of the DVD cover altogether. It still looks like a group of medical students cobbled a tableau with random cadavers, but at least there's no monster climbing on it anymore.

Warner Bros. Pictures"Jimmy 'Tulipan' je zpet ... and ya, it is going to get ruff!"

It's truly strange what they've done here. This is man who we've seen contort his face into all manner of absurd expressions, and they somehow found the one where it doesn't look like him. This is a man who replaced his head with a cartoon in the late '80s, and this poster made him look like a fan drawing by an artist who specializes in Sonic the Hedgehog f**king horses. Look at this facial range. How did they find a way to make this man look unusually ridiculous?

Columbia Pictures, Touchstone Pictures

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Maybe if someone had read Photoshop For Dummies we wouldn't have to write articles like these.

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For more movie poster fails, check out The 8 Worse Abuses Of Photoshop In Recent Movie Posters and 8 Actual Movie Posters That Are Hilarious Disasters.

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