Pressbooks (Non-Horror)

Having just watched Murder is My Beat with Barbara Payton, I couldn’t resist posting this pressbook for Trapped, with her and Lloyd Bridges. As soon as I can find the Murder is My Beat pressbook I’ll post that one too. Film noir, like horror, requires a refined taste for classy and deadly dames, hardboiled stamina and worn-shoes detectives, and star-crossed victims. Horror, of course, abounds with star-crossed victims. Trapped helped her into the spotlight, followed by an ample contract after her performance in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. Sadly, her presence in Bride of the Gorilla didn’t boost her career, although her co-star, Raymond Burr, fared much better. A lot of bad relationships, drinking, and drugs trapped her into a downward spiral.

ComicRack reader version: Download Trapped (1949) Pressbook

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There are horror films and then there are horrors films. Taxi Driver is a horrors film. The horrors of a Travis Bickle, a walking wounded lifer, looking for meaning in all the meaningless places. Is he pushed or does he push himself to become a knight in shining armor, to channel his frustration against helplessness? Vigilantism was a cinematic peg hole for 1970s New York City. Between the crime, grime, and gaffiti, knights are hard to come by but often hoped for. Here’s the 20-page pressbook for the movie, with many pages devoted to newspaper poster ads. By the 1970s, most pressbooks focused on the newspapers to sell the movie with poster ads; when people actually read newspapers.

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First filmed in 1925, Zane Grey's novel, Code of the West, was again filmed in 1947. Here's the two-fisted pressbook.  

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Here’s a pressbook for the pre-code serial, King of the Wild (for a re-release in 1945) with Boris Karloff.  I added some lobby cards too.

Comic book reader version: Download King of the Wild 1931 Pressbook

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Bob Steele’s look could play sinister, innocent or comedic roles. From the cold-blooded killer in The Big Sleep (1946) to the only survivor of the Alamo, Trooper Duffy , in F Troop.

Comic book reader version: Download Smoky Trails Pressbook

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The Stranger from Pecos was the second movie in Monogram’s Marshal Nevada Jack Mckenzie franchise, starring Johnny Mack Brown. Brown appeared on Wheaties boxes and in comic books and roped in well over a hundred movies before he passed away in 1974.

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