It's difficult to describe the phenomenon that was television's Batman, starring Adam West and Burt Ward, but let's keep it simple by saying it was cooler than all the other cool pop culture things we lovingly remember about the 1960s. So any kid worth his or her cape and tights went to see this movie because it was the cool thing to do.
I remember this one because my dad took me to see it. I insisted. He didn't care for it much, thinking it was too "cute," but I liked it (that Death Blossom was awesome). This movie was one of the early birds to use computer graphics extensively to create the fantasy-reality of the science fiction storyline. Hey, it even had Will Wheaton in it! Until they cut his scenes, that is. Now, you may be wondering why the Mexican lobby card shown here is in English, except for the "El Ultimo Guerrero." The litho credit is USA, so this was printed in the United States, probably for US theaters catering to Spanish-speaking audiences. My educated guess is that they took a regular English lobby card, added the Spanish title, and thereby saved money. But this is the first time I've seen this, so I;m not too sure about that.
I've not seen this German and American production directed by Roland Emmerich (his third movie). It hit VHS shelves and did get a DVD release but that died quickly. Still, may be worth a look. The story (see Wikipedia article on Hollywood-Monster, this movie's alternate title) reads rather well in synopsis. It's getting that story onto the screen that's the hard part.
An unexpectedly gritty and mature movie from Disney is Dragonslayer. While its initial release to theaters may have confused parents, this movie became a VHS treasure with its special effects and Dark Ages storyline. With no happy ending for the princess, and a questionable future for the young magician and his love, this movie kept it dark indeed.
If you were wondering how Stanley Kubrick and his production team could have imagined some of those brilliant special effects in 2001 A Space Odyssey, wonder no more. Der Weg Zu Den Sternen showed a space station wheel years before 2001, and some scenes could be twins between both movies, according to sources cited in the Wikipedia article on this movie. This pocket-sized pressbook caught my attention with its stylized graphics.
Continue reading "Road to the Stars (1957) Movie Pressbook" »
This French pressbook for Le Fantome De La Rue Morgue opens to a long montage centerfold (split across the center two pages shown here). How can you not love two gorilla hands reaching ominously for a terrified woman (or man, for that matter)?
Continue reading "Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954)
French Movie Pressbook" »
Here's the French pressbook for House on Haunted Hill. The remake creeps me out, too, but the original still works its horror quite well (read my review). Watch it in the dead of night at your own peril.
Continue reading "French Pressbook:
House on Haunted Hill (1959)" »
Non-English pressbooks usually aren't very large or filled with pages like the American pressbooks, but they still pack a neat promotional wallop in a small package. Here's the French pressbook for the film noir, Conflict (1945).
Thanksgiving Day, 1927 -- If I told you there was this guy, Urbain Ledoux (I know, the papers liked Urban instead of Urbain), who gave up a business career to help the homeless and foster humanity among his fellows, who wanted to be a priest but got turned off by seeing very unpriestly misconduct, and who worked hard to awaken the slumbering conscience of the people to help those less fortunate and less news-sensationalized than the bombastic morons parading as intelligentsia today, you'd say I was crazy. I'm not, he was, and we all should be just as crazy as him.
With nefarious and icky one-eyed aliens, the Navy's new strategic weaponry of atomic powered submarines, and a budget take on alien encounters, pacifism versus fighting, and somewhat passable underwater staging, The Atomic Submarine launched before Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea's Seaview and the underwater warship Atragon. And I built the Revell atomic sub model, too!
Continue reading "The Atomic Submarine (1959)
Movie Pressbook" »
One of Vincent Price's less than stellar efforts. From Wikipedia:
Filming began in November 1966. Knowing that local censors would prohibit filming, Towers gave them a copy of Abe Lincoln in Illinois and hired an actor to walk around the set dressed like Abraham Lincoln in case the censors dropped by.
According to Price in a 1984 interview, he had been signed on to the project without full knowledge of what the film would be about. After his scenes were shot, "Martha Hyer and I were led off...so we went to visit on the set and we found that they were remaking all of the scenes we'd been in, but a pornographic version of it." He added, "I never got to see it."
A big 28 page pressbook for a little girl. But what a little girl. The Bad Seed seemed pretty daring for the 1950s: making a kid a serial killer (and the daughter of a serial killer to imply a genetic bond). Of course the movie twists around the ending from the novel to appease the Motion Picture Production Code (and also to make it more sellable to the adult theater audience). There's an interesting filler article on page 24 that states Alfred Hitchcock wanted a walk-on part in the movie. Sounds like a smart piece of promotion more than the truth, but check it out.
