The artwork on this lobby card is unique. I’m not sure of the significance of the human and monkee heads positioned in a similar fashion, but the snake versus leopard tableau is striking against the darker foliage.
Okay, I'm a big fan of jungle movies and gorillas. Note the dinosaur and crazy monster in the bottom left. This is some jungle. And it stars Phyllis (Lois Lane) Coates, too!
This crude, paste-up hodgepodge has its charms: the glaring vampire and skull faces, the positions of the masked wrestlers looking toward those faces, the repetition of the flying bat between them, and the skeleton holding onto a cross and rosary. Hammer Horror used Eastman Color for its vivid reds, so while I’ve not seen this movie, I wonder if the production team here was thinking the same thing?
Ritos Malditos (Macumba Love) presents a striking illustration of terror and danger. The use of the inset scenes, done in cartoon format, indicate the artwork is taken from the American poster art. However, the American posters differ in their use of a skull face for the voodoo woman, instead of this alluring face of evil seen here (see American poster below).
La Invasion De Los Muertos screams 1970s by the look of this lobby card. Zovek looks like he's channeling Billy Jack. Here's the lowdown from The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia by Peter Dendle:
There's no real explanation for the unhappy catastrophe afflicting the Mexican countryside–just a lot of talk of the mysteries of the cosmos and shots of a starry sky. Whatever's to blame, the dead return from their moldy coffins with blank stares and a thirst for murder. Congregating in large groups, they choke and maul their victims and then tip over the furniture for good measure…Most interestingly, these zombies have an unprecedented fetish for vehicles: they hover around a bulldozer, and make off with any car or truck the keys have been left in.
Another Mexican lobby card for an American movie, The Watcher in the Woods, that uses the American poster art directly. Effectively atmospheric movie, by the way, that starts out as horror but switches gears to science fantasy. I recommend you see it.
I don’t believe Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera appears in The Human Duplicators, but this card makes effective use of his horrific face. Richard Kiel (Jaws) also stands out as the monstrous villain holding one victim’s head while dangling another barely dressed victim from his massive arm. Surprisingly, this illustration is taken directly from the American poster, and is not a figment of some underpaid, but highly creative, Mexican artist’s mind (just an American one).
Roger Corman's fourth movie, The Day the World Ended. Note the card shows "Jorge Corman" as director, and there's a misspelling in "trmendo;" should be "tremendo." I also don't recall a woman running around in a skimpy outfit, especially with all the radioactivity outside. Pay particular attention to the positioning of the two men: one is fighting the monster, the other is holding a gun but facing away from the monster. In the middle is the woman. In this primitive and colorful illustration the artist has told us there's a villain, there's a monster, and there's a hero. Oh, and a beautiful woman caught in the middle. Sadly, this card holds more drama than the movie itself, and it also shows the plot quite well.
The Undead is one of my favorite AIP movies. According to Wikipedia "The movie was filmed in a converted supermarket, and was completed in only six days. Its original title was The Trance of Diana Love. The bats that the imp and witch continually change into were left over from another Corman movie, It Conquered the World." This Mexican artist's version of the poster art adds more bats and less nightgown.