January 2026

The 12-page pressbook for National General’s The Light at the Edge of the World (1971) from It Came From Hollywood. Paul says: “It’s a pretty standard NG pressbook, pretty low on frills, but it did come with one outstanding item you didn’t often find within a pressbook. It is a theater herald mock-up with fantastic artwork, and printed on parchment paper. I’ve included a scan of the herald along with a photo. The scan kind of flattens out the greatness of the herald, so I included a photo so people could get a finer look at it. This is another one of those books I’ve had for years but only recently cracked-open to do a scan on. The herald was in the middle of the book, so I had no idea it was there.”

Not a box office fire cracker, this Spanish-American adventure movie was a passion project for Kirk Douglas. Based on the Jules Verne novel, the script turned much darker as pirates mix it up with shipwrecked survivors. The movie adds a female character not in the novel, Arabella, played by Samantha Eggar. It’s a period film set in 1865 centered around a lighthouse. The pirates screw up the light to wreck ships and collect the floating booty. Kirk Douglas as Denton aims to rescue Arabella and stop the pirates. The captain leading the more brutish pirates is Kongre (Yul Brynner), and, of course, he’s  cultured but sadistic (a character that Brynner could easily pull off).

Just given what I wrote above, the movie is well worth a watch, but just not one for the 1970s, a decade when movies were transitioning in the New Hollywood. Hard to say what killed the buzz on the movie, but period films were plentiful in the 1970s. By 1975, the birth of the blockbuster kicked in too. While marketed as a Jules Verne adventure, it was not suitable for family audiences given its darker and violent tone and scenes, although the U.S. release to theaters was edited to PG, so the re-editing, the poor miniature work, and the overall tone of an “older” movie, at a time when younger audiences were taking up more seats in theaters, pretty much ran the movie aground. …

The Light at the Edge
of the World (1971)
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You have to love the movie titles in the 60s and 70s. Today the title would be more like Door to Door Dangerously Manic Person, which doesn’t quite carry the immediate emotional concern that “maniac” carries. Special thanks go to our resident maniac Paul, at It Came From Hollywood, for this and his research that follows.

“According to the AFI catalog, “Door to Door Maniac” (also known as “Five Minutes to Live“) started production in March 1957. After three years of production and less than 30 days of filming between 1960 and 1961, the movie premiered in Dallas, Texas, in December 1961. The less than 30 days of actual filming make sense if you’ve seen the picture. The three years it was in some form of production is the real head scratcher.

“Produced by Flower Film Productions, a “one and done” production company headed by a mysterious figure known as Ludlow Flower. I say mysterious because Ludlow Flower left no trace that he even existed on planet Earth outside of this motion picture, save for a few mentions in some unclassified documents released by the F.B.I. concerning organized crime. Draw your own conclusions on that one. …

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It Came From Hollywood sends us the Horror of the Blood Monsters pressbook, along with Paul’s reminiscence.

“A press book that is very close to my heart.

“Horror of the Blood Monsters was produced and distributed by Sam Sherman’s Independent-International Pictures. I-IP was created by Sam and Director Al Adamson (who passed in 1995.) Sam Sherman passed away on Monday, September 29, 2025, at the age of 85. I never met Sam Sherman in person, nor had I ever talked to the man via phone, but I felt a huge sense of loss when he passed away.

“I had toiled away, along with my fellow editors, on Sam’s book “When Dracula Met Frankenstein: My Years Making Drive-In Movies with Al Adamson” which was published in July of 2021.

“Starting around 2017, genre legend, and long-time Sam Sherman confidant, Tim Ferrante, gathered a gaggle of die-hard I-IP fans to aid in putting together a book based on Sam’s recollections and recorded audio-commentary tracks. This was a super-secret project and the lot of us were admonished to not share what we were working on, on any social media avenue, and we didn’t. Mostly because we had no free time to share what we were working on. The bulk of this book, Sam’s memories, literally took up all available free time within our group. From the start of the project to the end it encompassed about five years. But, for the group of us involved in putting the book together, the time it took to make it happen was not of concern. We all did it out of love for the I-IP films and our distinct appreciation, and admiration, for Sam Sherman. …

Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970)
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Here’s a pressbook you can’t escape, from Paul over at It Came From Hollywood.
“In 1992, I bought a rather huge clutch of pressbooks from a collector who was getting out of the business. This was a “cold” buy, meaning I had no idea what I was getting for my money. I paid $200 for the collection. A king’s ransom back then, and because I lived the life of a carefree single gent living in the City of Chicago at the time, what I bought and when actually had escaped me over the years. Fast forward to 2021. Thirty years later. I finally (believe it or not) get around to digitizing those pressbooks, and I discover that, slipped into some pretty standard large-sized Paramount pressbooks, was this UFD Dawn of the Dead nugget. I was absolutely floored because I had never run across a Dawn pressbook in my life. I hadn’t even viewed one online.

“In 2023, I published the complete Dawn pressbook in It Came From Hollywood Book Four. I received some positive feedback on it as fans of the movie were, for the first time, ogling the actual pressbook. Now, three years later (and 33 years after I acquired the original book), I am happy to share the Dawn of the Dead-U.S. Pressbook (1979) with visitors to Zombo’s Closet, where it will be archived for generations to come.” (ZC Note: Thanks, Paul! George A. Romero’s DOTD is a classic.)