Faces of Boris Karloff
From the Professor Kinema Archives…more faces of Boris Karloff.
Captain Company Star Wars
I started collecting toys in earnest by the time The Empire Strikes Back hit the theaters. Blame the Star Wars merchandising machine. I'd scour Toys "R" Us every weekend for figures and vehicles, and dreamed of finding more of those red markdown stickers on them.
Then I hit the jackpot. A comic book store I visited for the first time had all the playsets for 5 bucks apiece. Those micro playsets with their diecast figures were my favorites. The guy was happy to finally sell all those playsets gathering dust on his top shelf, I was happy to suddenly find all of them. Win-win all around.
I miss the exhilaration of those early days before collecting became a business, and you could leisurely walk around Toys "R" Us without some knucklehead grabbing an action figure right out of your hands if you hesitated for a moment, or rudely shoving you out of the way to be first at the racks to find those hard-to-find gems.
Yes, I miss those days. eBay doesn't muster the same thrill-of-the-hunt enjoyment you get tracking your collectible prey in person.
Henri-Georges and Vera Clouzot Graveside
Another graveside visit
with Professor Kinema
Visitors to Paris frequent the Parisian cemeteries with as much interest as the other tourist spots around the city. If walking, a route heading up to the Montmartre section of Paris would take one past the Cimetière de Montmartre.
During the days of the mass obliteration of the Jim Morrison grave contained within another famed Parisian cemetery, Père-Lachaise, a large handwritten sign was placed in a prominent spot at the entrance of the Cimetiere de Montmartre. This sign read, in english, “Jim Morrison is not buried here.”
Morrison’s mega trashed gravesite (as well as many gravesites within close proximity of it), perpetrated by international fans and admirers, has since been cleaned up. Most pilgrims to the infamous ‘lounge lizard’ simply had to party on Jim’s grave, believing he would’ve preferred it that way. The sign, consequently, has been taken down.
Although not as large, elaborate, and filled with as many historical names contained within Père-Lachaise, the Cimetiere de Montmartre is just as interesting and fun to explore.
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Captain Company Fun Reading
Captain Company not only offered wonderful toys for little ghouls and boys, but it also provided exciting reading for lovers of the fantastic. My introduction to Mandrake the Magician and Buck Rogers came from reading these wonderfully oversized books. Here's where the power of print trumps digital every time. You can still find these books on Amazon.
Spooks Run Wild (1941) Mexican Lobby Card
The Bowery Boys, (East Side Kids), meet Bela Lugosi in this spirited and low budget Monogram romp through spook show style shenanigans. Angelo Rossitto (Freaks) helps bolster the sinister tone as the mysterious Nardo's (Bela Lugosi) assistant.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Pressbook
Real life serial killer Ed Gein’s penchant for fashioning masks out of human skin provided the inspiration for Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which remains one of the most disturbing horror movies made. No matter how you slice it.
See more movie pressbooks From Zombos’ Closet.
LOTT D Roundtable:
Cute Monsters and Identification With the Terror
Groovy Age of Horror recently posed the question what do cute versions of monsters tell us about horror? While it was directed primarily toward the LOTT D, the question is an important one for anyone interested in horror and how this genre’s commercial, sociological, and philosophical impact on popular culture can be analyzed.
It is not so much a difficult question to answer, rather, it requires more than one simple answer. Given any of the multifaceted influences–with each directing a specific outcome–you care to look at, the possible depth of the answer will vary.
The more obvious influence of marketing adult-themed iconic imagery in such a way as to increase marketability to a broader audience is one possible and fairly easy answer. Examples of this include Frankenberry and Count Chocula cereals. The serious images of the Frankenstein Monster and Count Dracula are rendered harmless and lovable to sell cereal to children (and adults like me who revel in the colorful pastiche of horror and nostalgia–and the sugar rush).
But is there a deeper meaning possible here? Why use monsters at all when Rainbow Brite, charming leprechauns, and Trix-loving rabbits will suffice?
Marketing horror to teens and adults is also a rich vein of potential sales to tap into as well. From the more socially conscious vampires and werewolves of Twilight, to Teddy Scares, Living Dead Dolls, Skelanimals, and Voodooz Dolls, these products offer ‘safe’ horror monsters to identify with, play with, and collect (control).
Perhaps, like how an inoculation works against a virus, if you weaken the monster to the point it becomes empathizable or a safer and more manageable terror surrogate, you create a palliative horror-play used as a defense against real or imagined terrors.
This horror-play can be viewed as a reaction formation that dramatizes and forestalls the terrors by day and the horrors by night every child and every adult faces in ever increasing severity given our more stressful times.
At least this is one possible answer. What do you think?
Son of Dracula (1943) Pressbook
Another sumptuous pressbook (campaign manual) from Universal Studios, Son of Dracula (1943). While I will agree that Lon Chaney’s physique is the least beneficial asset to his portrayal of Count Alucard, the movie’s atmosphere and effectively applied special effects create a uniquely intimate Gothic-noir.
Comic reader version: Download Son of Dracula Pressbook
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Bela Lugosi Meets Mother Jones
Professor Kinema just alerted me to another face of Bela Lugosi, this time on the cover of Mother Jones magazine.
Politics aside, I'll simply note the only Dracula who could embody the essence of "the superrrich sucking America dry" is the one and only Bela Lugosi. Someone at Mother Jones is definitely a monsterkid.
Aristocratic and upper crust evil never looked so rich in tie and tails.
The Invisible Man Returns (1940) Pressbook
Universal Studios certainly knew how to do pressbooks (campaign manuals) for their horror movies. They were large, filled with many pages of publicity information, and presented with style. The showmanship pages have some clever ideas to promote the movie. I’ve left out a few of the poster and ad mat pages. (This color copy of the original pressbook is courtesy of Professor Kinema.)
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