An all-Frankenstein (really they meant The Monster, for you purists) issue of The Monster Times, for number 21, makes for stellar reading. A Glenn Strange interview, Frankenstein in the Comics, Frankenstein’s Castle, The Decline of Frankenstein (bite your electrode!), Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror, and the usual TMT stuff to keep you busy. Whew!
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Issue 41 of The Monster Times has some monstrous coverage to sink your teeth into. There’s the wonderful low-budget It! The Terror From Beyond Space, Werewolf comic books are howled at, Six Versions of Frankenstein (up till then, of course) are counted, a mostly I’m-disappointed review of Young Frankenstein (now generally considered a comedy-horror classic), and How to Make a Mummy for Fun and Profit (which, disappointingly, is actually about the actual mummification process). The best part is Looking Back With Zach: An Interview With John Zacherly. One annoyance though: during the interview they showed Zackerly a photo of him with a very young Richard Thomas, taken out on Long Island, New York. “They” didn’t bother to actually include the photo, although Zacherly explains it. I’d love to have seen THE PHOTO. Space:1999 and How to Make a Monster Movie round out the issue.
Comic reader version: Download Monster Times Issue 41
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The old dark house trope as done by Alfred Hitchcock–and quite a movie it is. This Mexican lobby card does the movie justice. Well, except for the typo.
Here's the British pressbook for I'll Get You for This. I was never a big George Raft fan, but you can tell by the poster art how they played off his onscreen persona as a tough guy with a nasty temper. Wikipedia says that Peter Lorre was supposed to appear in the movie but his role was played by someone else. That's a shame. I'm a big fan of Peter Lorre. I'll watch Peter Lorre in anything.
Comic reader version: Download I'll Get You Pressbook
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Here's the Mexican lobby card for Neutron contra los Asesinos del Karate (1964). At first glance it looks like a simple layout, but look deeper. The inset scene and text are given dynamism by being slanted short of the diagonal, allowing the proscenium illustration to show the story's key themes. Notice the careful balance of the woman at bottom left, perfectly positioned along the slanting text and scene, as she looks to left and upward, while Neutron looks toward left (ostensibly towards her).
Tod Browning’s Freaks remains still freaky after all these years. Here’s the 1949 re-release pressbook. I’m surprised the studio had enough gumption to make audiences again squirm in their seats with another showing. This movie works its black magic by turning the monstrous, like a reflection in a mirror, back to the viewers. Browning made us uncomfortable because of our limitations, not those of the circus performers considered freaks because of their physical differences. A truly amazing movie, whose awkwardness from silent movie conventions and melodramatic performances only heightens its unnerving effect one feels after watching it.
Comic reader version: Download Freaks Re-Release Pressbook
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In Quasimodo’s Monster Magazine issue 4 you have a whopping 100 pages of monster goodness. Roger Corman, Lon Chaney, Jr., Space 1999, classic horrors, Doug McClure and The Land That Time Forgot, and enough bloody merchandise to scream about–oodles of monsterkid goodness. You can find more of the Quasimodo issues in my magazine morgue too!
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A lost viking civilization in the Arctic provides the theme for this fantasy film with David Hartman. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too was the other part of the double bill theater showing. Some critics at the time liked Winnie and Tigger more than Hartman. Island’s pressbook, as usual, throws everything into promotion. Did you know that toothsome means attractive? Agneta Eckemyr is described as “toothsome enough to make a mummy drool.” As usual with many pressbooks, female actors were often treated as mostly eye-candy fluff and glamour objects.
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Gene Autry sets his mind to tame a wild horse after it throws a boy and paralyzes him. Autry sings inbetween the taming and the Western drama. This is Pat Buttram’s first movie, although he’s probably more remembered for the Green Acres sitcom with Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.
Comic reader version: Download The Strawberry Roan Pressbook
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In this Austrian movie, a cab driver dreams of going to America and steals the identity of a murdered man. Love triangle motivations complicate things.
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Tim McCoy goes looking for the killer of his friend in this Monogram Westerner. He had the best scarf in the West.
Comic reader version: Download West of Rainbow’s End Pressbook
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A Disney pressbook is always a tutorial on what movie promotion was all about in the decades before the internet and social media news. Disney, especially, went all out for tie-ins. This Tron pressbook is no exception when it comes to those tie-ins and promotions. There is also an interesting vibe in the articles regarding computer imagery: it’s so 1980s. ” The computer plays a major role in Tron, and, indeed, is playing a greater and greater role in our everyday lives. The use of the computer by the average person, while not yet commonplace, is growing phenomenally, and you should capitalize on this new interest…” For those of you who grew up during the birth of the home computer age, this pressbook provides a lot of nostalgia too.
Comic reader version: Download Tron Pressbook
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