Still a good movie, even if Christopher Lee wasn't in it. This is something of a double bill pressbook, although The Leech Woman is somewhat off to the side as a suggestion more than a big selling point.
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I would watch the Bomba and Tarzan movies every Sunday on local television, along with Abbott and Costello. The movies aren't great, but always entertaining, and they give you an interesting perspective on how Hollywood (and America) viewed the Dark Continent (Sub-Saharan Africa according to Wikipedia), and its inhabitants through cinema. And boy, I wish I looked that good in a loincloth. I know the term "dark continent" has fallen out of favor, but it best encompasses the artistic leanings and dramatic on-film mindsets of the 1930s through 1950s.
This large 15 by 22 inches pressbook for Jules Verne's Master of the World, starring Vincent Price, has stiff covers, lots of promotional material, and a polished page layout. All of this presents quite a "selling" package to movie theaters, and indicative of American International's use of quality pressbooks for movies where Vincent Price is involved. (See The Tomb of Ligeia and The Haunted Palace.)
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The promotions for William Castle's movies were always lively. Here's the one thousand dollars death by fright pressbook for Macabre.
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Private eye Peter Gunn was one of my favorite characters on television in the 1960s. Even as young as I was I loved that opening theme music. It's a wonder I didn't become a PI. And I shouldn't forget Honey West. She was a favorite, too, though I think I was in love with the AC Cobra she drove and all the high tech gadgets she used more than anything else. Here's the movie herald from 1967's color caper, Gunn.
I hear the only major expense in a prehistoric wedding is the mastodon catering.
Posted in the Universal Monsters and More Facebook group, this print advertisement for Nightmare Theatre reminds us of how much fun it was staying up late to catch a monster movie on local television. Growing up, I slept around 3 hours each night. Now I can't get enough sleep. For me, it was either reading all my monster magazines in the wee hours of the morning or watching TV until the stations went off the air.
With Lionel Atwill and Bela Lugosi, even the Ritz Brothers couldn't make The Gorilla too unwatchable. I spotted this movie herald listed on eBay.
I vaguely recall the 1964-65 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens. But I do sorely miss my mold-a-rama Make Your Own Sinclair Dinosaurs. It was quite magical watching your 25 cent dinosaur being created as you watched. I couldn't get enough of the Futurama exhibit sponsored by General Motors, either. I came across this mailer for the Official World's Fair Balloon. Being a nostalgic type I couldn't pass it up.
Those were the days, weren't they? Now we're all kind of being burnt at the stake because of our use of coal, oil, and all that burning stuff that did make us 'handier' and 'happier' for a long time. 'Healthier' is debatable, though, at least now. Of course, hindsight is always perfect. What's intriguing in this advertisement for the bituminous coal industry are the use of the stereotypical 1950s housewife taking some serious umbrage from the Puritans, and the small-print patriotic blurb that reads "The contributions of the Bituminous Coal Industry are typical of the many ways in which the people benefit when business enterprise is allowed to operate freely as it is in the U.S.A." My impression is said industry was getting some flack even then for their practices, and we all know how unregulated enterprise doesn't always benefit the people. But the 1950s was a great time to be naive, so we may find amusement in this kind of advertising now, but don't kid yourself: we're all still pretty naive.
Zombos Says: Good
Beautifully filmed and with a brooding country mansion harboring dark secrets, The Boy doesn't pack an emotional wallop from intense scares or mind-numbing body counts, but what you will find in this gentle-gothic, that borrows much from other horror movies, is a simple treat of creepiness and mystery.
Lauren Cohan plays an American, Greta Evans, traveling to the Heelshire's family estate in the United Kingdom. It's an old, large, stuffy, and filled with hunting tweediness and wood trimmings kind of mansion, forgotten deep in the surrounding woods. Mom and Dad Heelshire need a nanny to take care of their son as they go on a much needed vacation away from–their son. They introduce 8 year old Brahms to her, but he's a life-sized porcelain doll, neatly dressed and somewhat melancholy in expression.
She laughs. They look appalled. She realizes they are serious. She settles in. Greta needed to get away so she has little choice. The grocery man, Malcolm (Rupert Evans), warms up to her and explains the background of Brahms and his parents. He gives Greta the pub gossip version and the regular gentrified version, and both tend toward providing just enough information for us to know there's something odd going on with the Heelshire's and their very odd son: the porcelain one and the real one.
The Heelshire's (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle) look tired, on edge, and desperate to leave the mansion. Mrs. Heelshire apologizes to Greta for leaving her alone with Brahms. A hint that maybe the other nannies they hired had their hands full and then some. The list of to do items, left behind, directs Greta to play music, make sure the boy is fed, dress him for bed with a goodnight kiss, read aloud to him, and do all the things you would normally do if he were a living boy.
But he's a porcelain doll so of course Greta gives up the listed duties a short time after the Heelshires have left. That's when strange things begin to happen. As Stacy Menear (writer) and William Brent Bell (director) mix in the hoary horror elements amid the splendidly brooding images of the mansion's animal carvings, hallway windings, and cloistered presence in the forest, away from neighbors and town life. Greta begins to suspect that the porcelain Brahms is alive.
As her suspicion grows, her seclusion and avoidance of Malcolm's interest in her grows, too. She becomes more protective, more mothering, and starts adhering to that list of duties with unwavering determination. But then her reason for leaving the States catches up with her, forcing Brahms and his mysterious story into a new direction.
While Menear's story resorts to too many overly seen tricks of the horror trade, without twisting them in non-traditional or quirky new ways, she does provide a kick in your seat moment as Brahms and Greta's pasts knock into each other. You will either like it or hate it, but it provides a direction that's not expected. For fans of, and those not familiar with, Lauren Cohan, she's very good at making the story work beyond the simple premise of "our son, the life-sized porcelain doll" and keeps to the fine line between histrionics, vulnerability, and assuredness.
Not so welcomed is the sequelantic ending tacked on beyond the perfectly good one. It's the kind that screams "not dead yet!" while ruining the natural denouement. I will say that there's a lot of backstory here that's left to imagination or future sequels, but I would have preferred a less blatantly commercial ending here. The story's mysteries are sufficient enough to spark a revisit, should the movie's box office mojo allow.
Part of the 7900 Series for Wonder Books, which covered "television personalities/programs or fictional characters" (Wikipedia), this softcover children's book features abridged versions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, and Dracula by Walter Gibson (writer of the Shadow pulp magazine) and is illustrated by Dell and Charlton comic book artist Tony Tallarico. Note the placement of the electrodes for the Frankenstein Monster and how Dracula is portrayed mostly as a presence throughout the story.
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