We’re always told to never judge a book by its cover, but particularly when it comes to the horror genre, that can be impossible. In the bygone video store era, for example, the art adorning any given VHS box was often what dictated whether or not we cuddled up on the couch and spent the night with that movie, and you better believe that distribution companies understood that.

No matter the quality of the movie itself, good art can get people to watch that movie and bad art can turn people off from it, and though that’s as true today as it was back in the ’80s and early ’90s, there’s no denying that horror movie art hit peak awesomeness during the heyday of the mom-and-pop video shop. That box art had to be eye-catching in order to encourage rentals, and oh boy was it ever.

Unfortunately, necessary bells and whistles like company logos, taglines, pull-quotes, and movie titles often distracted from the stunning artwork that painters and photographers were tasked with whipping up to grab our attention at the video store, and we’ve never really gotten the chance to see what some of our favorite VHS art would look like without all that filler. Until now, that is.

Massachusetts-based artist Chris MacGibbon recently set out to retouch and clean up some of his favorite pieces of VHS art, breathing new life into old art simply by washing away anything and everything that distracted from the raw artwork itself. The result of the restoration project? Absolutely stunning pieces of art that look brand new, despite how familiar we are with them.

“Well, it was mostly as something to practice on,” MacGibbon told me, when I asked him about the genesis of the project. “See if I could do it and keep the art alive. It’s not an art form really, cloning, it’s more of a… precision. You clone too much, you remove a piece of the art or alter it so it looks tampered with. But when you get that right mix, and it starts to work – it really comes together.”

“A lot of the studios with these films never kept or had access to the transparency art – so I realized that some of these would always have text, titles on them and such,” he added. “So why not try my luck with these and see if I can restore them to just pieces of art? And here they are.”

You’ve seen the art. You love the art. But you’ve never seen it like THIS before!