Saturday Matinee

Having watched a documentary round at Robin and Heidi's on poster artist Reynold Brown, here are a few I hadn't already saved by him which I've hunted up, including (top) the US version of Hammer's 'The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll'. I'm sure many of the poster images I've already got saved are also by Brown: he seems to have been very prolific.

Saturday Matinee

'Body of a boy... mind of a monster... soul of an unearthly thing' - ie a typical teenager! Two schlock classics. The 'Frankenstein' make-up was based on Hammer's Curse of... which had shocked audiences with its unflinching technicolor gore so much that they went to see it in droves, making it the most profitable film of the 1950s.

Saturday Matinee

Two classic sci-fi B-movie posters on a similar theme. In a way they're both what would be considered 'good girl art', a phrase used by collectors of pulp paperbacks: The 50ft woman obviously so, but no more so, in fact, than the squirming figure clutched in Mr Colossal's colossal mitt.

Saturday Matinee

The Abominable Dr Phibes and Dr Phibes Rises Again - the last two great American International productions starring Vincent Price. Stylish, camp, full of black humour but also featuring some quite disturbing scenes, they are better than most of the Hammer films and all of the Amicus films of the period (early 70s), and Price is enjoying himself hugely. I love the top poster but it probably didn't draw the crowds.

Saturday Matinee

Blacksploitation at its most preposterous - and fun.

Saturday Matinee

A couple of classic zombie posters. The bottom one is a Spanish poster for Night of the Living Dead, a much more traditional old-school design than the usual black and white photo montage version you see. The top one is for a 1977 Italian film with the English title The Child. It sounds a hoot, judging from the IMDB plot summary: 'A newly-hired housekeeper in a remote area is alarmed to discover that her boss's eleven-year-old daughter is using her supernatural powers to take revenge on the people she holds responsible for her mother's death, with the aid of her flesh-eating zombie 'friends'...'

Saturday Matinee

Somewhat late for a matinee, but ay me, it's been a hell of a week, what with two magazine deadlines to cope with - and I've got more work to do tomorrow. Anyway, in deference to the first enjoyable episode of Mark Gatiss's horror series, here is a cool art deco poster for one of Val Lewton's films, one I've wanted to watch again for a long time - and missed that it was on BBC 4. Bugger.

Saturday Matinee

In keeping with my rockabilly vibe here are a couple of posters for hot-rod flicks from the 50s (the top one has stunnign artwork, I think).

Saturday Matinee

Two of my favourite 50s sci-fi movies, both 'ITs'. It Came From Outer Space is an acknowledged classic, of course, with its literate Ray Bradbury script which introduced many themes later to become cliches: the desert setting, misunderstood monster and aliens masquerading as humans. First (I think) use of Theramine soundtrack, creepy monster-eye-view camera work and the most sophisticated 3D process then invented - so sophisticated it was never used again and it's impossible now to see it in 3D (the excellent documentary extra on the DVD convinces you just what a real loss this is).

It- The Terror etc is much, much better than its naff title would suggest. Indeed Ridley Scott mentioned it as an influence on Alien. Spaceship goes to Mars to find out what happened to an earlier expedition, only to find everyone dead except, suspiciously, the captain. He babbles on about a monster coming out of the dark to kill them one by one, but they think he murdered his crew in order to live off their rations till help arrives. Needless to say, said monster climbs on board before they take off and in the depths of space starts killing off this crew, too. 'It' is just a bloke in a rubber suit, but is largely kept in the shadows, fortunately. The film becomes increasingly claustrophobic as the unstoppable creature gets through first one bulkead and then another, advancing floor by floor and forcing the crew into the confined space of the nose-cone. Good stuff.

Spooky Matinee

OK, this is shameful, isn't it? I seem to be having a bit of a wank holiday weekend, doing sod all so have shamelessly combined Saturday Matinee with Spooky Sunday with a couple of daft B-movie ghosts. From now on if I miss a day, I'll just miss a day and stop maing lame apologies for it. Anyway, here is Terror in the Haunted House (1961) also known - I learn from IMDB - as My World Dies Screaming. Oh and look, it's made in 'Psycho-Rama' (what a great name for a band!), which apparently meant they shoved in odd frames of scary imagery, like a bloke with a rat in his mouth, and messages like 'Scream Now!'. All very William Castle, but not.

Then we have Lucky Ghost (1942), later renamed Lady Luck and featuring the extraordinary Mantan Moreland and an 'all-colored cast'. I'd like to see more of Morland. I saw him in another cheap horror-comedy flick from the same period called I think King of the Zombies; he gets third billing, effortlessly steals every scene he's in and takes the piss out of the white 'stars' in a way I wouldn't have thought possible in the 40s. He was a bit of a geezer, I thought, and I'd like to learn more about him. I must see if there's a biography.

Saturday Matinee

Rather late posting these for a matinee, but hey they're both horrors, so probably just as well. Two Mario Brava films, whose English titles have been presented as Black Sabbath (Karloff) and Black Sunday (Steele). A poster outside a cinema for the former gave Black Sabbath their name. I've had it in my Tesco rental list for about three years, but I've still not seen it. I'm guessing they've lost the Bava box set. Oh well, great artwork whatever.

Saturday Matinee

When in doubt, stick a lass in a leotard and call her a 'she-thing'! The Astounding She-Monster, also called Mysterious Invader, from 1957, and Terror From The Year 5000, from 1958 - and both crap, although I rather admire the She-Monster poster.

Saturday Matinee

Starring Drew Barrymore's dad (I think) and Charlie Chaplin's son. But putting Jerry Lee lewis in a film like this is surely asking for trouble! (Mind you, judging by the aged juveniles in most films of this period, he probably wouldn't have found anyone young enough to appeal to him.)

Saturday Matinee

This is fantastic, I think. Presumably intended for a cinema lobby, a massive poster for Forbidden Planet, showing Robby the Robot in the alien landscape together with the flying saucer and the Id Monster. Without words or sells of any kind - brilliant. And it makes a great desktop pattern.

Saturday Matinee

What a great title - just imagine the moan-and-dance sequences. But of course it's shit and apparently none of the 'action' takes place on Broadway anyway, just on old tropical island sets from I Walked With A Zombie. It's 1945 and this is all Lugosi is being offered by now. He doesn't even get to act alongside Abbott & Costello (bad enough) but with a poor imitation of them - although how much poorer can that be, I daren't imagine. According to the reviewer on IMDB: 'Toward the end, a monkey is able to steal the show, indicating the level of talent in the cast.'

A few years later Lugosi would be making Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire which, even allowing for Ed Wood, was probably his nadir. Rarely essaying a really good performance (but certainly capable of it), Lugosi rather asked for his slide into the Z-list. As his arch-rival Boris Karloff said: 'The poor man didn't bother to learn the language. And when your livelihood depends upon your knowing the language, what could he expect?' Mind you, Karloff rarely gave a bad performance, even in the rubbish he was being given in the late 40s and 50s.

Saturday Matinee

Two simple but effective sci fi-horror posters from the 1950s. I think the Donovan's Brain (1953) one is really threatening. Attack of the Killer Shrews (1959) is another example of 'nice poster, shame about the film'. To be fair, the movie takes itself seriously but can't escape its low, low budget or the fact that the gaint shrews are terriers in rugs over their backs with tails attached. But that poster would make me want to go and see it and is years ahead of its time in its bold, bloody premise and arch, pithy catchline.

Saturday Matinee

Classic stuff with archetypal Martians. Really cheap film but tip-top poster. If I remember correctly these are the aliens which use syringes in their fingers to inject making-out teens with alcohol so that they go crazeeee. 1957.

Saturday Matinee

The Flaming Teen-age, also known as Hooked!, from 1956. There's a whole subculture of these shock-horror-expose movies, most of which seem to be entirely salacious, with fake disapproval providing the excuse for a bit of soft porn. Not so, this strange offering, according to a reviewer on IMDB (somebody who's actually seen it!). He writes:

"The Flaming Teen-Age is a standard slice of conservative moralizing, a scare film about the evils of the world backed by the church."

Quite right, too - look at the wild craziness going on in the bottom right for example. Depravity! I can see her ankles, for chrissakes! The reviewer, who also adds the interesting detail that it was directed by the guy who later made The Blob (and apparently wasn't enjoying the job very much), outlines the plot as follows:

"It details a young man who forsakes his family for the big city, quits his job at a candy store, moves to the city to find his dreams, becomes an alcoholic, quits, produces a Broadway revue, becomes an alcoholic again, joins a booking agency, nearly dies from alcohol poisoning, gets arrested for dope peddling, gets out on bail, and becomes a junkie himself. All this is because he drank a bit of alcohol at a party he once attended with his girlfriend. Whew!"

Saturday Matinee

Set in New England but actually made in old England by an independent company, this 1960 movie provided an early non-Hammer horror vehicle for Christopher Lee and also a role for Valentine Dyall whose 'Man in Black' macabre storytelling series for BBC Radio had made him a star over here. In Britain the film went by the title City of the Dead. I've not seen a UK poster but this one from the USA is just great - way ahead of its time with the modern zombie-like portrayal of the undead (in the movie they're just vampires indistinguishable from living people) and for its joky strapline. The composition and the graphics are superb and I love the detail of the skeletal hand dangling the room key. You almost don't notice it's not in colour. The film is quite good in an unpretentious sort of way (bar some rotten dialogue) but not nearly as good as this striking poster would imply.

Saturday Matinee

I love this. It's like a kooky Doris Day movie gone wrong. I wonder at what point she discovered her new hubbie wasn't exactly human? On the honeymoon? Or during the reception when he started eating the other guests instead of the hors doeuvres? It dates from 1958.