From Zombos Closet

It Came From Hollywood

Special Delivery (1976) Pressbook

Here’s a blast from the 1970s with Bo Svenson and Cybill Shepherd, courtesy of It Came From Hollywood. The decade of slinky women and bulky men onscreen gave us some cool matchups, even if the movies weren’t all that svelte. In Special Delivery, the pair run afoul of thieves, or rather, one thief  (Bo Svenson) has to deal with one woman (Cybill Shepherd) looking for some adventure and another guy (Michael C. Gwynne) looking to get the cash he stashed in a mailbox. Familiar faces pop up along the way: Jeff Goldblum, Vic Tayback, Sorrell Booke, and others you may find familiar from your movie-watching. If you ask me, no movie with either Bo or Cybill, or both of them, can do any wrong. This pressbook is unusual in that its pretty loaded with promotional goodies and solid poster art. It also has a coloring contest page! Both Paul at It Came From Hollywood and myself love coloring pages in pressbooks. They are so cool and retro but timely at the same time, and kids and adults could enjoy coloring them. So, bottom line, they made great advertising for movies in the local papers. In the pressbook you will also find promotional offerings with Special Delivery imprinted balloons and t-shirts. I wonder if Granny Creech has the radio spots? Music by Lalo Schifrin (Mission: Impossible tv series for starters, need I say more?) (Click each image to enlarge and read or right-click to download after you enlarge it.)

Special Delivery Pressbook page

AIP News Clips Galley Packet
Vincent Price, Dunwich Horrors, and Dali in De Sade

Here’s another news clips roundup courtesy of It Came From Hollywood. In this packet: famous Fondas star in film together, blurbs on The Dunwich Horror with Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee, Vincent Price’s Scream and Scream Again, and AIP does Wuthering Heights (yeah, probably with bikers, though, Heathcliff, fill my arms with leather!)

AIP News Clips Galley Packet

Peter Fonda Festival Movie Promotion

It Came From Hollywood…and the American International Exchange! The Fonda Festival, three great shows, with Bruce Dern, Dianne Ladd, Dennis Hopper, Susan Strasberg, Jane Fonda, and Nancy Sinatra. Oh, and members of the Hell’s Angels of Venice, California. A drive-in wet dream for sure. You’ve got bikers, baddies, and naughty behaviors galore in The Wild Angels, an Edgar Allan Poe movie (sort of) Spirits of the Dead, and Jack Nicholson’s scripting for The Trip, an acid-tripping movie. Spirits of the Dead boasted directors Roger Vadim, Federico Fellini, and Louis Malle, but IMDb notes that Orson Welles and Luis Buñuel were supposed to direct, along with Fellini (wow, what could have been!).

AIP Peter Fonda Festival Movie Promo AIP Peter Fonda Festival Movie Promo AIP Peter Fonda Festival Movie Promo AIP Peter Fonda Festival Movie Promo

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) Re-release Pressbook

Courtesy of It Came From Hollywood…the re-release 1979 pressbook for Bedknobs and Broomsticks. The Sherman Brothers, who wrote the songs for Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Jungle Book, and many others, wrote the songs for this movie. They also wrote It’s a Small World After All, so nobody’s perfect. My favorite work of theirs would be Mary Poppins, which reaches sublime heights of melody and heartstrings’ tugging. The rights to Bedknobs and Broomsticks were acquired before those of Mary Poppins, but it was shelved a few years to make way for Mary Poppins, since the stories were somewhat similar. Julie Andrews was the preferred witch for Bedknobs, but feared typecasting and demurred. Angela Lansbury eventually took the role. The movie won the 1972 academy award for Best Visual Effects over its competition, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. (Click each image to expand it–you will need a BIG screen–or right-click the expanded image to download it. And you don’t need witchcraft to find more pressbooks, just rummage through our categories.)

Bedknobs and Broomsticks Rerelease Pressbook

AIP Big Four
Feature Unit Shows!

Big Four Feature Unit Shows! from AIP. Gone are the days when people sat in movie theaters for a good part of their day, catching a feature, a newsreel, some cartoons, a second feature, and some popcorn; or at least a double-feature.  The last time I sat for a bunch of movies back to back was when they did a marathon with Planet of the Apes at the Benson theater in Brooklyn. I loaded up on McDonald’s, bought my ticket, laughed, cried, and basically enjoyed the hell out of watching the movies back to back. Of course, my prostate was smaller then, so no problems with missing any of the action.

Here’s a down and dirty ad mats promotion for the five packages, each with four themed movies, courtesy of It Came From Hollywood. Take that, AMC!

AIP Showmanship Packages Promotion

The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) Pressbook

Courtesy of It Came From HollywoodThe Groundstar Conspiracy pressbook with supplement. A noirish, spyish thriller movie with George Peppard and Michael Sarrazin. Peppard, of course, is best known as Hannibal in the television series The A-Team. He also played his annoyingly cool and supercilious leading man persona in Banacek. Michael Sarrazin, a Canadian actor, is notable for his role in They Shoot Horses Don’t They and to horror movie fans for The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. Funny, but I recall They Shoot Horses Don’t They mostly because my dad took me, I was pretty young, to see it and he said an expletive, along with his dislike for the movie’s ending. I wasn’t too keen on it myself at that age, either. But he did manage to bring me to science fiction movies (he didn’t like horror: my mom did), and he behaved himself when The Last Starfighter ended (though he found it just as underwhelming as Horses). Click each image to expand it–you will need a BIG screen–or right-click the expanded image to download it.) And you don’t have to read the signs to find more pressbooks, just rummage through our categories.

The Groundstar Conspiracy Advertising Supplement

AIP News Clips Galley Packet
Bette Davis a Bunny?

It Came From Hollywood provides a bunch of cool galley packets of AIP news clips with fetching titles like “director goes from cellar to beach,” “Bette Davis becomes a ‘bunny’,” and ”green beret versus motorcylce gang” to perk up interest. Here’s the first one. There’s also a neat blurb for Five-in-One Horror Show, An Evening with Boris Karloff.

AIP News Clips Galley Packet

The Sign of Zorro (1960) Pressbook

A big thanks to It Came From Hollywood who have now joined the Gang of Terrors From Zombos’ Closet. With a huge archive of both Joe Kane’s (The Phantom of the Movies) movie memorabilia and their own, stretching across decades, you will be seeing a lot of cool stuff in its new home From Zombos’ Closet. Of course, we’ll need a bigger closet…but, to start, here’s The Sign of Zorror pressbook from It Came From Hollywood’s archive.

Being a Disney pressbook, it is filled with merchandizing and promotional content galore. Guy Williams (Armando Joseph Catalano) also made a very dashing Zorror, too. His two notable roles were as Zorror and John Robinson (Lost in Space).

The Sign of Zorro 1960 Pressbook page