Lowe’s Halloween 2020
The Home Depot by me still doesn't have the Halloween decorations out, but Lowe's did. And boy, some cool looking animated goodies this year. My favorite is the spooky radio.
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August 2020
Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) Pressbook
The 1950s produced some very thrilling science fiction and some awful oddities. Here's one oddity: Cat-Women of the Moon. The pressbook is equally budget-conscious, but the limited color does make the beatnik-styled ladies a little more vampy. Judging by the lobby card shown below, it's a shame it wasn't shot in color. Green skin always puts the vamp in vampy, I always say. We all remember the dancing Orion slave girl in The Cage, the Star Trek pilot. Well, at least I remember it, anyway. Probably its only dubious importance, Cat-Women managed to usher in other let's-travel-to-another-planet-to-find-weird-women movies, as if there was a real audience-need for them.
eComic reader version (I use ComicRack): Download Cat-Women of the Moon Pressbook
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Halloween 2020: Michaels
Okay. Maybe I'm rushing the Halloween season along a bit too fast, but can you blame me? With the pandemic, I'll take whatever little bit of Halloween Heaven I can find as quickly as possible. I think a lot of Halloweeners are feeling the same way: both adults and kids. Will it happen, won't it happen? Boy, the Halloween Tylenol and razor in apple scares of the 1970s and 1980s was a cakewalk compared to this virus.
Home Depot, disappointingly, didn't have anything out yet, but I swung by Michaels and…they didn't have much of anything out yet either, just the so-cute it's safe Fall decorations; you know, the scarecrows, colorful autumn leaves, and blank-faced foam pumpkins just filling store shelves while die-hards wait for the REAL deal to start with the spooky stuff. But…
Michaels did have Lemax Spooky Town starting to take shape! So here's a look at some of the newer creations for 2020. And there were Halloween trees! I don't recall seeing these before, but for the true fan of Halloween like me–if my wife would let me, but she wouldn't–there are spooky trees you can put up and decorate rather gloomily and doomsily and ghostly. If your wife or significant other would let you, of course.
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Doc Savage (1975) Pressbook and Herald
It’s a shame that George Pal’s last movie had to be Doc Savage with Ron Ely. Ely was a good casting choice, but the movie was a misfire from script to execution. How one can take the precursor to Superman and not run with it boggles the mind. Chuck Connors was in consideration to play Doc back in 1966 and that would have been very interesting to see. Unfortunately the window of opportunity for that one passed and we have the 1975 campy abomination with the ear-slapping theme song and atrocious acting. Doc’s Fabulous Five are more Shabby Handful than their portrayals in the pulps. Poor production values also pounded more nails into its cinematic coffin, a far cry from when I, along with others, enthusiastically watched the trailer at one of Phil Seuling’s Comic Cons before the movie hit theaters.
Here’s the pressbook and herald. I’ll note the printing on this pressbook is fairly cheap, too. Both Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Rock were associated with a Doc Savage movie at some point, though nothing’s come of it. Hopefully Netflix or another streaming channel will develop a series, which is the best approach, for Doc Savage, and even The Shadow: they both have a lot of stories to tell.
Comic book reader version: Download Doc Savage Pressbook
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Mysterious Island (1961) Pressbook
Thanks to Terry Michitsch for again reaching into his collection and providing these wonderful scans of the American pressbook for Mysterious Island. With a rousing score by Bernard Herrmann, Herbert Lom providing the gravitas, and Ray Harryhausen's exciting stop-motion creations, this is a lively and colorful adventure.
Comic book reader version: Download Mysterious Island Pressbook
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