Zombos’ Closet…a vast trove of endearingly cheap thrills, including movie and book reviews, and scans of his collections of cinema pressbooks, goofy paper-cutout Halloween decorations, and his amazing collection of Mexican lobby cards from B-grade films. If you have time to descend into a serious rabbit-hole of marvelous trash-culture nostalgia, visit that site just as soon as you possibly can.” (DangerousMinds.net)
I received a call from my ornery grandson, Big Abner, the other day, and I could tell right off he was up to something.
“Granny,” he said, “I just watched two movies and they really sucked!”
My mind raced, going over all the low-budget, Z-movies I could think of.
“Which ones?” I asked, taking the bait.
“Brides of Dracula and Kiss of the Vampire!” he said with a big laugh. “Get it? Do you get it?”
“Yes, Abner, I get it, you big goof. Was there anything about them you liked?”
“Yep, two things,” he responded. “Beautiful women and beautiful vampire women.”
I sighed and told him to get back to work.
After he hung up I began to think about what he said, and there was some truth to it. Hammer Films ushered in a new retelling of the old Universal classics with The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), both color productions that featured lots of blood and graphic stake-driving scenes not pictured in the old versions. And each was complete with ghastly monsters and…beautiful women, often in bosom-baring low-cut dresses as befitted the time period in which the movie was set. They were hits and Hammer Studios began a series of movies on the Frankenstein and Dracula legends. …
Brides of Dracula
and Kiss of the Vampire
Radio SpotsRead More »
At AMC, heading in to see F1 (which was good by the way), I spotted these new standees in the lobby. I have mixed feelings about Fantastic 4: First Steps. Love that they finally seem to have Kirby’s Galactus, which is an awesome character. Sad to see Silver Surfer is not male. I make no apologies. I understand that Shalla-Bal becomes the silver surfer in alternate universes’ stuff (Earth X), but in the original comics it was Norrin Radd. If there’s a thematic or planned storyline reason for her as Silver Surfer here, I’m all ears, but for now just not fully buying it. Just really tired of the redundant multiverse excuse for character timelines, that are picked up when original storylines run dry. The trailer for Superman gave me goosebumps, though. Looking forward to that one.
Gary Fox and the Radio Reaper just can’t stay out of the water…
Since 2-D wasn’t enough to bring the terror close, Jaws 3-D made those shark chompers sharper for popcorn-loving audiences. Or, at least, that was the intention. Released in July of 1983, This “third dimension is terror” outing pumped up a soggy script with gory optics. Being a Jaws nut no matter what, I did watch this, with friends, in the theater. The 3-D glasses gave me a headache but I persevered. Besides, I loved Louis Gosset Jr. as much as Lea Thompson (I know, right!) and with a team of female water skiers, the Sea World park backdrop, and Brody’s son all growed-up to face a mother shark and her baby–with help from “plucky” dolphins, what’s not to love? Well…although they hired Richard Matheson (yeah, that guy) to turn in a top-notch script, some bright bulbs decided to revise it to his dislike. Of course, audiences (including me) ate it up anyway as much as the sharks ate up the people. To get the lowdown on Jaws 3-D, read Just When You Thought It Was Safe: A Jaws Companion by Patrick Jankiewicz. One tidbit I gleaned from the book: Because of the 3-D process, the original hope was to use it for a Creature From the Black Lagoon sequel, headed by director John Landis. Sid Sheinberg, head of MCA, saw the test and opted to do Jaws 3-D instead. Ouch.
The radio spots provided by Gary and Radio Reaper include the Advance Promo and Preview Trailer.
I’m playing around with generating AI country music. With one prompt and no itineration, here’s my (that is, AI) honky-tonk cowboy’s lament: A Truck, a Woman, and a Bar. And yes, we should be very afraid of AI. Very, very afraid. Given how easy and quickly it comes up with this stuff (we can argue artistic and quality merits later). But at least for now it’s fun; especially when AI still can’t seem to grasp that ordinary humans can’t reach through glass, as that bit of whimsy happens in this AI image I generated. Even with multiple iterations (but no few-shots) and trying various contexts, my AI application seemed as unhappy as this image and finally refused to generate further. Maybe it didn’t like country music?
And don’t get me started on the stupid credits idea that seems to be taking hold with AI subscriptions. You not only pay for a subscription to use the application, but then you’re charged with generating the image (credits). Here’s what my AI application had to say about it. I highlighted a few troublesome parts of it.
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Once again the mysterious Radio Reaper strikes with radio spots from Jaws 2…
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water” is the tagline we can never forget. While Jaws 2 may be the best of the sequels, given that it has Roy Scheider returning as Chief Brody, Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody, and Murray Hamilton playing the mayor again, it began the sequelitus money-grab of the franchise. But who could resist? There is something about watching a huge shark chomping on people–especially teenagers–that riffs off what makes horror movies so appealing. This time the director, Jeannot-Szwarc, gets the credit after replacing the original director, John D. Hancock. Scheider returned to fulfill a contract obligation, but wasn’t too happy on set. Once again, the problems with salty water mixing with a mechanical shark led to delays and a ballooning budget expense. In spite of the director differences, script rewrites, and technical problems, Jaws 2 was another box office winner. (ScreenRant has something to say about it.)
The Fourth of July Weekend is coming, and you know what that means….
Welcome, all lovers of all things intense and terrifying! I’m the Radio Reaper. Welcome to my Radio Spot Reliquary.
It was back in the summer of 1975 when I saw a movie that scared me to death! I would never go swimming in the ocean again! Despite many production problems the movie went on to become one of the top grossing movies of all time and put the name Steven Spielberg on the map.
From the horrifying opening to the explosive climax, the terror doesn’t stop.
“May be too intense for younger children.” Hell, may be too intense for adults! Just listen to these exciting spots from 50 years ago!
Poor Chrissie! Poor little kid on the rubber raft! The bitten-off leg! You’re gonna need a bigger boat! Chief Brody! Quint! Hooper! Bruce the shark! JAWS!!!
Jaws Re-release Spot
ZC Note: Jaws was the original summer blockbuster, ushering a whole new terrortainment into the theaters. Who could enjoy the beach after that movie? While the fictional town of Amity Island was located off the coast of Long Island, the movie was actually filmed at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Jaws was the first major movie to be filmed on open waters instead of studio water tanks, which caused numerous issues for Bruce, the mechanical shark. They had so much trouble with Bruce that, although Stephen Spielberg originally planned to show Bruce eating up more screen time, he relied instead on John Williams’ score to use music to drive the now unseen terror.
The town of Amity may have been fictional, but some of the details come from real events. Quint (Robert Shaw), the experienced shark hunter, was based on Frank Mundus, a shark fisherman from Montauk, New York. Benchley used Mundus’ experience catching a gigantic great white shark off of the New York coast as inspiration for writing Jaws in the ’70s. The story itself was also loosely based on the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, a time when five people fell victim within two weeks in early July. ScreenRant
Check out Josh Olson on Jaws over at Trailers From Hell.
William Armstrong (add an All American after his name and that sounds like a movie serial!) contacted me, asking about the Tarzan and the Leopard Woman pressbook. He recalled I’d snagged it sometime back in an auction on Emovieposter. I didn’t recall it. Now, that’s a glaring example of the difference between a hoarder and a collector, but nevermind that. Anyway, I recently started cleaning up the mess that is Zombos’ Closet and, lo and behold, I found a stack of great pressbooks lost behind some boxes. And there it was! Along with a ton of other pressbooks I had forgotten I had. Oops. Need to get that hoarder/collector balance in shape, I know. Of course, as I rediscovered them, I thought, what a monkey’s uncle I am (sorry, no refunds on puns or idioms). I clearly have no advantage over Cheetah. So, you can thank William Armstrong (All American!) for reminding me about Tarzan and the Leopard Woman. Here’s the cool pressbook. Add a mental Tarzan jungle cry as you drool over its pages.
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The poster art and unusual size (9 inches x 20 inches folded, 18 inches x 20 inches unfolded) grabbed my attention for this Underground (1941) pressbook. The story concerns two brothers on opposing sides of a really bad situation. Although the storyline concerns Word War II, not so surprisingly, it is still relevant today. What’s old is new again, and what’s new is old again. That lobby floor set piece is pretty cool. These days, while we get standees in the theater lobby, they’re usually so standard and uninspired. Theater movie promotion way back when was so much more exciting to experience.
ComicRack reader version: Download Underground pressbook
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Yes, my dear friend, I’m sure you’ve made the connection that’s been my secret for all these years. My stories don’t come from my own inner fears, but from my mother’s mad ramblings and whispery rants. (Horrifica: Collected Stories, by Sheldon Woodbury, Nightmare Press)
Sheldon Woodbury. Sounds like a rich person in a noir film, doesn’t it? A scriptwriter and former advertising agency suit, he writes a fatalistic and darker side of fantasy life, with thirty-one short stories that, mostly, would fit nicely into a 1950s horror comic. He traps them into three categories: Grotesqueries, Monstrosities, and Depravities. His characters are usually headed one way (downward), with few side trips along the way. There is no bright serendipity or goodwill for anyone found in these pages. Well, then again, the monsters do quite well, though. He keeps the terror very horrible indeed. Not gory, just terrible and very no way out, with endless ways to bury his victims, deep and dark, giving no inch or breath to escape.
Reading each story, you see his tight setups and ghoulish penchant for bad situations that fester into high mortality statistics as they wrap around his victims like butcher paper tucked snuggly around a steak. And then he tickles your eyes with some classically-tinted horror, which stands out for us growing old in the genre; Halloween, Jack Pierce (the maker of Universal’s monsters), eldritch abominations, hellscapes, revenge served hot, apocalyptic worlds, secret clubs and dark cityscapes, all are fair game for his macabre mindset.
From the things coming at the stroke of midnight for an errant preacher, the lonely woman who could just eat you to death, and the mom with a penchant for knives and revenge, Woodbury sticks to narratives with little, if any, dialog, and people who, whether on the receiving or giving end of it, strut and fret their hour on the page and then are heard no more (well, except for the screaming or last gasps).
Each tale has a few or fewer acts, (you could argue some Freytag’s Pyramid tossed in, maybe), that run mostly linear, driven by narratives providing excellent examples of the term short and sweet. He likes to keep it impersonal through third-person description with an occasional first person talking, but, without dialog, he conveys characters’ emotions through their responses and thoughts, with beats (those small amounts of action) shifting them toward his bleak endings. Woodbury is not one for a lot of description, but what he does choose to describe sets the mood perfectly for each story, as well as keeping the pacing brisk but not too fast. He wants you to savor each spilled red drop like a good single malt whiskey that’s sipped and not gulped.
In his Gift From the Stars, a young man writes a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, regarding his mother’s peculiar malady, and in The Last Horror Show, a bittersweet life in horror is drawn until the end, where we are left with the knowledge that “monsters should never be ignored.”
Just the thought of Woodbury mentioning authors like Clark Ashton Smith made this reviewer smile. I can imagine him opening a Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine in the dead of night or watching the black and white monster movies as well as the more colorful ones to hone his bad taste buds. Woodbury’s choice of subjects, and his styling, from story to story, as he switches gears to accommodate a bit of nostalgia in The Monster Maker or revealing why “real monsters are hard to kill” in The Last Halloween, draws inspiration from earlier horror fiction and pulpy terrors to frame his modern monstrosities. You can imagine these stories flickering on 1980s television horror shows.
So, if it’s monstrosities you like, there’s the mystery of Extinction, where what killed the dinosaurs is finally solved. Unfortunately. If you like depravities, perhaps Midnight Town will provide that beckoning side trip you’ve always wanted to take, after the sun goes down; just follow the “flicker in the desert” as you leave the city lights behind. Perhaps you like grotesqueries more. If so, just go Down Where Nightmares Dwell, but mind the basement steps. In Woodbury’s world, mothers can be hell as much as the monsters. And, if you like all three, well, he’s got you covered neck deep in Horrifica. Just take breaks to keep breathing and you’ll be fine. Maybe.
The Horror Zine staff book reviewer, JM Cozzoli
In 1981 I lost a girlfriend and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen. Let me explain. I had just broken up with her. She was still in love with a previous guy who did a lot of bar-hopping, playing in a band he never could commit seriously to. She couldn’t commit seriously to another relationship either as she followed him around, from bar to bar, hanging on. I actually wonder what happened to him more than her, but I hope she made out okay. Anyway, I was feeling awful after our split that night and, driving around aimlessly, I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark playing, though I forget which Brooklyn theater I walked into to see it. Place was packed. I barely made it in. After the traps started springing, in the first few minutes, I forgot everything else and joined in the foreign locale derring-do and supernatural mayhem. I felt a lot better that night. I went back a few times more. I bought a few Indiana Jones 12-inch action figures a while later, marked down (with that memorable red sticker) at Toys R Us. I always think of her where Indiana Jones is concerned. I wonder if that guy ever got his act together (pun intended). Funny how such things hook up in your memory and hang on, no matter how long ago it was. Here’s the pressbook.
Comic reader version: Download Raiders of the Lost Ark Pressbook
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Welcome, all lovers of all things weird and wonderful! Welcome to my Radio Spot Reliquary.
I was visiting with Granny Creech the other day when she noticed all the radio spots I had rearranged in my Reliquary and she wondered when I was going to start sharing them here on Zombos’ site. I told her I didn’t want to steal her thunder and, besides, I don’t have the way with words like she does. She chided me and told me that it would be OK. She said she concentrates on spots from the fifties and sixties, with a few later exceptional exceptions, and it would be cool for me to bring out those from the seventies and eighties. She said they were still good and fans would like to hear them. No detailed introductions would be needed just present them. So, I thought about it and decided that it could work. But I would need some help.
I’m no historian and I hate researching things, so I asked our old buddy Zombos if he would be able to help me. I aroused him from his usual stupor and, after much coercion and the promise of two cases of Guinness, he agreed to be my backup, filling in where I needed some help.
So, here is to the first of what promises to be a long series of classic newer radio spots, presented in no particular order, just however the mood strikes me. I’m sure you will enjoy them, as collecting them has been a labor of love for me. They are some of my favorite titles and I want you to hear them. …
According to Brian Patrick Duggan, in his book Horror Dogs: Man’s Best Friend as Movie Monster, the first dog in a motion picture appears in Edison’s Athlete with a Wand in 1894; but that dog just happened to be in the shot, lying at the foot of the athlete doing all the work, so he points us to Rescue Rover (1905), for a more action-oriented Collie. That family canine as rescuer theme leads us to Rin Tin Tin and more stories of dogs leaping into action to save us dumb humans or battle evil humans too, in movies, comics, and books. Of course, the horror genre has morphed the family-oriented dog to terrorize us, chase us, tear us apart, and, in general, make us run like hell or scream like hell. Rin Tin Tin was not a scary dog. Going to 1904, in Edison’s Dog Factory, the first hint of making dogs scarier, if only in a comedic way, can be found. Duggan goes on to note how the movie poster advertising began to show the dog as dangerous (in a wholesome way). By the time we get to 1978 and Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, the movie poster art focused on those sharp canine teeth a lot more, which was definitely not wholesome.
Rin Tin Tin’s predecessor, Strongheart, starred in six films from 1921 through 1927, but just two of those posters show the dog only launching himself at bad guys. From 1922 through 1931, the more famous Rin Tin Tin averaged even fewer examples, with only three posters out of twenty-six showing him poised just prior to grappling with the film’s villain. The implied canine violence in advertising and what was shown on screen was justifiable, because Strongheart or Rin Tin Tin were protecting their people or meting out canine justice. (Duggan, Brian Patrick. Horror Dogs: Man’s Best Friend as Movie Monster (Dogs in Our World) (p. 103). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.)
End Note: Warner Brothers originally had the popular Rin Tin Tin, but dropped the poor dog because of sound issues and their focus on talkies with humans. That’s when Mascot picked up the franchise with their first all-sound serial Rin-Tin-Tin The Lone Defender. Clearly they didn’t worry about his barking.