Pressbooks (Horror, Sci Fi, Fantasy)

At 44 pages, the pressbook for Mary Poppins is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, indeed. Every Disney pressbook I’ve seen has an incredible amount of merchandising and promotion packed into it. While the sequel, Mary Poppins Returns was enjoyable, there’s magic to be found in the original that cannot be repeated. The Sherman Brothers music score is emotionally compelling and the talent-filled chemistry between Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews certainly does make you want to dance. Using the Edwardian period was a smart move, too. P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins author, may have hated the movie, but boy was she wrong. Everything, from the casting to the set designs, and even the animation, created a wonderful film. Well, maybe except for Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent, perhaps, which he did own up to and apologize for (his voice coach couldn’t do one either). But as a kid, I hardly noticed, good or bad. Now that I think of it, it does remind me of when I visited London in 1982 with my father, who couldn’t stop himself from using a really bad cockney accent everywhere we went. If looks could kill, we would have been dead for sure. Had I a magic umbrella and a strong wind to carry me away, I’d have left him toot sweet.

ComicRack reader version: Download Mary Poppins Pressbook (this is a big file at 115MB!) See Mary Poppins pressbook part two.

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Mary Poppins (1964) Pressbook
Part OneRead More »

The Living Dead, also known as The Scotland Yard Mystery, has another mad scientist somnambulizing people (yes, I think I just made this word up!) into a zombie-ish trance to do his criminal bidding. Since my favorite color is purple I couldn’t pass up this pressbook. That poster art is pretty cool too.

ComicRack reader version: Download The Living Dead Pressbook

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The Living Dead (1934) PressbookRead More »

Had Mighty Joe Young sold well at the box office, the sequel would have been Joe Meets Tarzan. Sorry to not see that movie get made. Do not hate me, but I tend to enjoy Joe more than King Kong. Both are great movies, but I like the happier ending in this one. Although Ray Harryhausen began stop-motion animation with Puppetoons, this is his first major movie animation that would lead to more fantasy and monster films. I had the pleasure of meeting Terry Moore at a Monster Bash some years ago.

ComicRack reader version: Download Mighty Joe Young Pressbook

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Mighty Joe Young (1949)
British PressbookRead More »

Bruce Eder sums up this movie quite well. As Eder points out, elements of The Invisible Boy, like the super computer that wants to take over the world, would be seen in later movies, like Colossus: The Forbin Project. And the fact that Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet) time travels back to 1957 is so understated, and the scientists and boy’s family so unimpressed by Robby, and the boy’s smarts in putting him back together, it’s kind of funny and sad and intuitive as to 1950s sentiments on child-rearing and American atomic age insouciance and superciliousness rolled into one. At the heart of the story is a boy who just wants to be able to play and have fun. Given that MGM wanted a movie vehicle to re-use Robby, since he cost so much to build, may have rushed the script into less-than-polished as it should have been; but Cyril Hume and Edmund Cooper manage to add some food for thought while keeping it at a juvenile level for the matinee kids.

ComicRack reader version: Download Invisible Boy Pressbook

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The Invisible Boy (1957) PressbookRead More »

As Christopher Lee said, the first one should have been the last one. The Castle of Fu Manchu is the worst of the lot, but the first two are good, if questionable today. The first movie in the series is made better by Nigel Green as Nayland Smith. Here is the British pressbook. One thing, the pressbook states that the saying “one picture is worth a thousand words” is a Chinese proverb. Nope. Not even close. Fred R. Barnard is credited with saying it in 1921, although he did pretend it was a Chinese proverb.

ComicRack reader version: Download Face of Fu Manchu Pressbook

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The Face of Fu Manchu (1965) PressbookRead More »

One of my guilty pleasures, Target Earth lacks an army of robots (they made only one), lacks a good budget to sell the invasion angle, but does provide drama between the players who must survive the (did I mention only one) robot’s deadly intentions as well as those of the psychopath in their midst. Later movies, from zombies to aliens, would play up on the dealing-with-the-threat-from-without-and-within theme. While the robot isn’t designed all that well by today’s standards, it does create menace and has that 1940s/50s esthetic that I do find endearing. The pressbook is a tidy little number with enough articles, promotion, and poster art to help sell the movie. And, repeat after me, “beaverboard.” The pressbook mentions taking the 6-sheet poster, mounting it on beaverboard, and placing a flashing red light where the robot’s eye-panel is.  Whew. That would have been killer in the theater lobby.

ComicRack reader version: Download Target Earth Pressbook

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Target Earth (1954) PressbookRead More »

If it wasn’t Mars blasting the earth’s atmosphere with deadly rays it was an undersea or other hidden kingdom threatening doom with a disintegrator ray. Ah, the good old days when global warming wasn’t a problem; just evil minions and their maniacal leaders who apparently had little else to do but make trouble for everyone on earth. Mystery Science Theater 3000 can mock this movie all they want, but it’s still a wild ride with its mishmash of whatever costuming was available from the wardrobe department, and creative model work, and the volkites (tin can robots), all done  on a shoestring budget. As for scientific gadgets, the Reflector plate is very interesting mostly because the concept was used again in Star Trek’s Mirror Mirror episode with its Tantalus Field: a device that could see and hear anyone at any time, with a handy press-here-to-disintegrate button. There’s also the Invisible Wall of Atom Rays that acts a lot like the Enterprise’s shields. So make fun all you want: a fair amount of later science fiction staples came from this and other serials. This pressbook is huge at 13 x 20 inches and contains a lot of promotional material to get the kids into the theater.

ComicRack Reader version: Download Undersea Kingdom

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Undersea Kingdom (1936) PressbookRead More »

With an amazingly low budget of anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000 dollars, of course they would come up with some gimmick to help cut corners. Enter cinemagic, a way to tint scenes of Mars a strong saturated red, thereby hiding the cheap budget by lessening details you would not see anyway. The rat-bat creature stalking the astronauts (well, more or less, given the budget), was a pretty good and effective design; enough so that Cloverfield‘s (2008) New York invading alien would have similar attributes. Carnivorous plants, a one-eyed amoeba (I always smile, because it makes me think of Zacherle the Cool Ghoul) , the rat-bat creature, and an unfriendly three-eyed Martian (just pops up now and then), provide the action as cinemagic does its best to provide the red colorization (though the process was more involved because it used solarization).

Here is the pressbook. It focuses on poster art to sell the movie as well as TV and radio ads. And, of course, it touts the CineMagic gimmick.

You don’t need to travel to Mars to see more pressbooks from Zombos’ Closet.

ComicRack reader version: Download Angry Red Planet Pressbook

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The Angry Red Planet (1959) PressbookRead More »

As a kid watching this on my black and white television, I admit I was both fascinated and bored at the same time. Abbott and Costello had more fun with the concept in their Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953). I will quickly sum up this baby by saying it’s Zsa Zsa Ga-Boring. But a saving grace is seeing costumes and props used from other more exciting movies, like Forbidden Planet. Interestingly, Wikipedia mentions the Queen’s guard costumes’ colors may have influenced Star Trek. The pressbook is not too shabby. Note the radio AND television promotions. TV was starting to become less astronomical, so it warranted attention to help sell seats.

Luckily, YOU do not need to be a queen to see more pressbooks from Zombos’ Closet.

Download the ComicRack reader version: Download Queen of Outer Space Pressbook

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Queen of Outer Space (1958)
PressbookRead More »

The Jungle Jim pressbooks were usually a six-page foldout. I scanned the pages in the order you would see them when initially opening the pressbook. The JJ series had a long run of B (perhaps more C) movies to fill theater screens when patrons would spend hours at the theater; unlike today, where you pay a lot of money to see one movie. I'm sure lots of parents would "dump" their kids at the theater for a few hours so they could experience some freedom from parental duties. William Castle took very good advantage of that with his horror movies and their gimmicks. I pity the poor theater crew that had to clean up the mess after Emergo, after kids used the skeleton for target practice with anything at hand they could toss. Oddly enough, due to copyright issues, Johnny Weismuller's name replaced the Jungle Jim handle. Hence the reason the pressbook says Johnny Weissmuller in Jungle Moon Men. He played himself in the movie. This entry leans toward the fantastical, with an immortal Moon Goddess, pygmies that worshipped her (the Moon Men), and a hidden treasure. Wikipedia notes that plot elements were taken from She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard.

ComicRack reader version: Download Jungle Moon Men Pressbook

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Johnny Weissmuller in Jungle Moon Men (1955)
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Subpar miniatures, bad acting, and clumsy wire-work for space scenes renders the wild, wild plot more harebrained than wild. Still, the low budget 1960s space vibe, campy and unintentionally funny, is interesting.

ComicRack reader version: Download Wild Wild Planet Pressbook

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Wild, Wild Planet (1966) PressbookRead More »

Curt Siodmak strikes again. He can’t seem to stay out of the jungle. Surprisingly, this movie gets a 6.5 rating on IMDb. Ah, I miss the good old days of cinema where savage women captured men to make them their love slaves, deep in some jungle somewhere. Ancient civilization, current civilization, no matter; everyone needs some love-slaving at some point, jungle or not. This one was paired with The Monolith Monsters on a double bill. Now that’s some date-movie combo if ever there was one.

ComicRack reader version: Download Love-Slaves of the Amazons Pressbook

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Love-Slaves of the Amazons (1957) PressbookRead More »