From Zombos' Closet

The Valley of Gwangi (1969) Pressbook

Courtesy of fellow lover of the fantastic, Terry Mitchitsch, comes these scans of The Valley of Gwangi pressbook. Cowboys and dinosaurs, what's not to love? This movie marks Ray Harryhausen's final dinosaur stop-motion work. Like King Kong, the finding of an allosauros, they name Gwangi, leads to commercial exploitation, then mayhem. Perhaps the script would have been better if they just stuck with one lone dinosaur instead of having a bunch of them show up. That really doesn't work much, sensibly, except to give Harryhausen more skillful work. A lone dinosaur would have been more emotionally focused. But it's still not a bad movie and would actually make for a neat remake (sans the extra dinosaurs ;). Interesting to note that Willis O'Brien, who wrote the original script, Valley of the Mists, had only one dinosaur too (according to the Wiki). Check out the Beast of Hollow Mountain, another cowboys and dinosaurs movie.

This pressbook is rather basic, but still filled with some interesting promotional items that include a coloring contest and Gwangi Goodie Kit. You also have Richard Carlson and James Franciscus, so not too shabby.

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The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939) Reproduction Pressbook

Here's is the tribute reproduction pressbook for The Lone Ranger Rides Again, produced by Jack Mathis in the 1970s. His tribute pressbooks pop up now and then in auctions that list them as the originals (he really did a good job), but his produced versions have slight differences. In this one, the inside covers are not in color, whereas the 1939 pressbook's are. I came to the Lone Ranger through the television show with Clayton Moore as the masked ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. If you've seen the awful 2013 mess of a movie with Johnny Depp as Tonto, you haven't seen the real thing. While the television series was aimed at a young audience, they kept the relationship between the Lone Ranger and Tonto on a fairly equal footing, with both men relying on each other through trust and a strong ethical code. Funny, but the other important duo from television, Jim West and Artemis Gordon from The Wild Wild West also got screwed on the big screen with poor casting, poor scripting, and yet another cantankerous relationship that never existed in the original. What's it with Hollywood thinking friction-filled relationships are the only way to go big screen with characters like these?

ComicReader and YacReader version: Download Lone Ranger Rides Again

Shadows Over Chinatown (1946) Pressbook

Monogram Pictures was a low-budget producer of series films like Charlie Chan, Bomba, The East Side Kids, and The Cisco Kid. Along with a lot of westerns, Monogram filled movie theaters with memorable characters portrayed by Frankie Darrow, Mantan Moreland, and others. Notable stars also graced the Monogram productions, like Ginger Rogers, Alan Ladd, and Robert Mitchum. One of my favorite series is Charlie Chan. While politically and culturally questionable today, they were a staple of B (some would argue for C) movie fare for years, and actors like Mantan Moreland, a black man in a very white Hollywood, brought financial success to the movies he plied his comic trade in, as best he could, given the limitations of the times. He would have been fantastic as one of the Three Stooges (as Shemp's replacement). Note on the Exploitation page the casual suggestion of dressing someone in blackface for promoting the movie.

ComicRack and YakReader version: Download Shadows Over Chinatown