Pressbooks (Horror, Sci Fi, Fantasy)

I’m not sure why The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T is “the greatest merchandising picture.” Oh, wait a minute…yeah, okay.  With the “greatest merchandising campaign ever prepared” it does have a lot of merch and tie-ins going for it. I would say, though, that I lean more toward Star Wars being the greatest merchandising picture, given the amount of toys, clothing, decorations–you name it–that it has generated over the years. One thing: merchandising for pictures didn’t start with Star Wars; SW certainly took it to a whole new level, but product placements and merchandising off a film have been part of the movie business for many years. Still, this one is impressive.

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The Dr. T Theatre KitRead More »

“One of Disney’s four “Package Films”. During World War II the studio lost a lot of manpower and resources, which left it with countless unfinished ideas too long for shorts and too short for features. So, inventive as Disney was, it stuck short ideas together into feature-length movies” (IMDb). Combining two shorts, The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow into a feature-length movie, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad had alternate titles, Two Fabulous Characters and Ichabod and Mr. Toad. This would be the last package film by Disney, who returned to single-feature in 1950 with Cinderella. While costs were kept low by reusing previous animation work, the Headless Horseman sequence is memorable today and scary enough for the kiddies to enjoy (after being terrorized, of course). The Wind in the Willows segment was narrated by Basil Rathbone.

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The Adventures of Ichabod
and Mr. Toad
1949 PressbookRead More »

Here is the 1945 re-release by RKO for Pinocchio. Walt Disney did it best. And who knew he could be such a fright-monger. First he goes all supernatural evil with Snow White, then gives us a strong taste of unexpected body horror in Pinocchio. When I first saw those boys turning into donkeys, wow! Now that was scary. And he left them that way! Double wow.

The evolution of Pinocchio’s character through illustration is a fascinating read. At first the thought was to depict him as a wooden puppet, but after months going back and forth, Milt Kahl took an approach that Disney preferred: namely, animating Pinocchio as a little boy first, then moving him toward visual reminders of his wooden nature second; this changed Collodi’s “skinny, brash, cocky piece of cherry wood” (Frank Thomas) into a more innocent, passive character learning the ropes of life the hard way. This, of course, made him more endearing to audiences and created a stronger emotional connection between both, a Disney necessity with all its characters.

The movie itself broke new ground in animation and the use of the multiplane camera for depth, shifting the usual vertical position to a horizontal one. Multiple glass layers of artwork would be moved past the camera a varying speeds, creating water movement, flickering lights, and parallax. At 2.6 million dollars, a small army of animators, and two years of production, the movie didn’t do well at the box office (perhaps mainly due to the loss of overseas markets because of Word War II), but remains a classic today, even with the reimagining we’ve had to suffer through in later stabs at the story.

For Disney’s purposes, Collodi’s impudent protagonist was, in contrast to the characters in Snow White, all too distinct. “One difficulty in Pinocchio,” as Disney said on 3 December 1937, in one of his first meetings with the film’s writers, “is that people know the story, but they don’t like the character.” (Michael Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age.)

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Pinocchio (1940) Re-release PressbookRead More »

Extend your arm and open your hand, and imagine this tabloid-sized herald being distributed in theaters to promote the movie and you are about to take one. Now we have popcorn and drink container promos to hype today’s movies. Yes, I do collect them too! I was bummed to not get the Beetlejuice shrunken head drink container (sold out), but I still enjoyed the movie. But these paper heralds were free and, frankly, awesome. Now, that is. I’m sure no one back then was thinking about posterity and collecting such giveaway fare with an eye toward the future.

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Tarzan Escapes Tabloid HeraldRead More »

What the movie lacks in special effects and storyline, this sales brochure for Konga makes up for with exciting graphic style. I love the synopsis on the second page, which includes “Sandra falls into some mysterious man-eating plants.” The first page is a die-cut showing only Konga’s eyes, a nice pricey printing touch. There was a fascination with apes, as primal terror or comic relief, to scare and cheer audiences from the early days of Hollywood, beginning with 1918’s Tarzan of the Apes, up until the 1970s. Of course, the usual primate sidekick did still appear, here and there, in movies. Monkeys could be pretty scary too, but apes have the size and bulk more suitable for being visually menacing; and, let’s face it, look funnier dressed in human clothing.

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Konga Sales BrochureRead More »

Here’s the exciting pressbook for The Lodger (1944) with Laird Cregar. It’s almost as big as he was. As David J. Hogan in his Film Noir FAQ notes, while some consider this a remake of Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927), only the name and the Jack the Ripper storyline match to the previous film. Both, however, are based on the 1913 novel of the same name by Marie Belloc Lowndes. In this one, Cregar uses his immense stage presence (both figuratively and literally), and his piercing eyes, to create a multi-dimensional character that vacillates between sinister and innocuous, innocent and guilty, with a definitely male-gaze problem toward women and his dead brother. The last minutes of the chase through the catwalks of a theater provide a thrilling noir backdrop and pace. The fog-bound streets, darkly lit byways, and confined spaces filmed entirely on the Fox backlot give this noir a classic status. Unfortunately, Cregar’s body size kept him from being a leading man and he died from trying to lose enough weight to open up those roles for him. He was 31.

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The Lodger (1944) PressbookRead More »

Hitchcock had mentioned the birds rise up against humans because they are fed up with us. Given how badly we’ve messed up the planet, I’m expecting The Birds to become a reality any day now. Much of nature seems to be gunning for us these days. Back in the the 1970s there were a slew of movies depicting how mother nature turned into a mean bitch. From Frogs to Long Weekend to Soylent Green, we’ve been told this story again and again. But Hitchcock makes it pretty terrifying indeed. This 40-plus page pressbook for The Birds is a showman’s dream. Like William Castle, Alfred Hitchcock liked to play pitchman to his movies, and appeared to have fun doing so. The 6 foot standee of Hitchcock in a bird cage is awesome. Now my life won’t be complete until I find one.

ComicRack reader version: Download The Birds Pressbook

Before you fly away, see more pressbooks from Zombos’ Closet.

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The Birds (1963) PressbookRead More »