From Zombos' Closet

The Pirates of Blood River (1962) Pressbook

An entertaining non-horror movie from Hammer, with Christopher Lee playing an evil one-eyed pirate (not named One-Eyed Willy).

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) Mexican Lobby Card

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad did well in theaters. On a budget of $982,351 it grossed $16 million. I always enjoy watching Tom Baker as the evil Prince Koura. The role led to his becoming the 4th Doctor in Doctor Who.

Forbidden Planet (1956) Spanish Pressbook

Here's the Spanish pressbook for Forbidden Planet.  Download Forbidden Planet Spanish Pressbook (comic reader version). 

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The Time Machine (1960) Pressbook

A large pressbook for a classic movie, The Time Machine, is packed with promotional material. From the Coppertone suntanning lotion tie-up, the coloring contest mat, a 40x60 display poster on heavy board, Dell comic book, record tie-in, and Yvette Mimieux's fasion. Whew.

Download The Time Machine Pressbook (comic reader version)

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The Beast With Five Fingers (1946) Danish Program

The Danish Programs can be pretty small: 4.5 x 6 inches, but wonderfully collectible because of that, along with their often eye-catching covers. Here's the one for The Beast with Five Fingers starring Peter Lorre.

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The Empire of Dracula (1967) Mexican Lobby Card

Great smaller-sized Mexican lobby card for The Empire of Dracula, although a bit confusing for die hard fans as it mixes up a few movies through its illustration and sub-title. The Dracula in the illustration looks like German Robles (El Vampiro, The Vampire's Coffin, not the fang-meister in the inset scene (Eric del Castillo), and The Brides of Dracula ( Las Mujeres de Dracula) this movie is not. I guess they needed all the name recognition they could muster to sell theater tickets. The lobby itself has a wonderful primitiveness to it that's quite colorful. By the way, Dracula in this movie is called Draculstein. Go figure. A sequel character could be called Frankenula. 

Terror of the Tongs (1961) Belgian Pressbook

Here's the Belgian pressbook for Terror of the Tongs. The striking cover, with its perfect use of white highlights, caught my eye. Christopher Lee didn't play Fu Manchu here, that would follow in 1965 with The Face of Fu Manchu. 

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13 Ghosts (1960) Belgian Pressbook

Here is the Belgian pressbook for 13 Ghosts (1960). Foreign pressbooks are always so concise (although I've not see any Bollywood ones in-depth, yet, so I may be overstating here).  this pressbook is one sheet, folded to create four letter-sized pages. Nice and concise, like I said.

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The Art of Horror Movies: An Illustrated History

Zombos says: Very Good

A natural follow up to his book, The Art of Horror, Stephen Jones once again provides eye-candy galore in The Art of Horror Movies. As an illustrated history, it is geared to the neophyte, although older horror fans will love the poster art as it claws at their nostalgia-clogged heart strings, and the highlight articles, such as The Man of a Thousand Faces (who else but Lon Chaney), that remind us of how this grotesque and arabesque cinema evolved through its stars and subject matter.

This time around, Jones slices up his art according to the decades, using descriptive words like thrilling thirties, frightening forties, and fearsome fifties. Each decade is handled by a different contributor: for instance, Lisa Morton handles the Evil Eighties, Tom Weaver takes on the Thrilling Thirties, and Ramsey Campbell goes crazy over the 2000s Maniacs to name a few.

More importantly, especially to those new to all this colorfully naughty movie-making, each decade identifies key stakeholders that drove home the decade's most notable movies. For instance, in the stylish sixties, names like AIP, Hammer, Amicus, and Tigon stand out as much as their garish movie poster art examples from Spain, France, Britain, and other countries. If Lon Chaney helped define the sinister silents of the 1920s, it was actors like Barbara Steele and Vincent Price (both highlighted) who helped define the memorable horrors of the 1960s and 70s.

Laying out this predator and perpetrator landscape across the decades provides a unique view of how it (and its promotional artwork) had changed over time. One can sense the earnest exuberance of the early horrors (1920s to 1930s) and how that gave way to the more homogenized terrors of the 1940s (with some exceptions, of course). The 1950s followed with their more rational and scientific monsters, but then a complete u-turn takes place in the 1960s as George Romero and Alfred Hitchcock bring the horror closer and make it more real.

Of course there was that sweet spot, from the late 50s and running through much of the 60s, when monster kids were born and gleefully frolicked among the flippant tombstones, but it didn't last long enough, sadly. It did see a rekindling when those monster kids sprouted into eager monster young adults in the 1970s, ready to devour anything related to horror, science fiction, fantastic cinema, and comic books. Those Satanic Seventies came in and screamed bloody terror with a vengeance, all the way into the 1980s, when that decade exploded into a manic expression of old and new bogies and maniacs. The 90s and 2000s just upped the ante on the angst, the gore, and the philosophy. 

Ironically, it is during the last two decades or so that we can see the decline of the opulent and more imaginative promotional art of the earlier movies, to give way to the sterile photographically-inclined look in favor today.  The Art of Horror Movies illustrates that idiom, "they don't make them like they used to," all too well.

Cry Terror! (1958) Mexican Lobby Card

A colorful and exciting (more so than the movie, apparently, based on the critical reviews) Mexican lobby card for Cry Terror!  

The Devil's Widow (1970) Mexican Lobby Card

An adequate but so-so Mexican lobby card for The Ballad of Tam Lin (The Devil's Widow, The Devil's Woman). A section of the poster art is used with an inset scene. Roddy McDowell missed appearing in Beneath the Planet of the Apes while he directed this movie.

Dracula (TV Movie, 1974) Mexican Lobby Card

Dan Curtis's made for television Dracula (Bram Stoker's Dracula), starring Jack Palance, and written by Richard Matheson, was tapped into by Francis Ford Coppola for his Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). According to Wikipedia, Gene Colon got the idea for his Dracula's appearance (Tomb of Dracula) from seeing Palance in his first hookup with Dan Curtis, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's a shame Palance did not continue to play Dracula in other movies.