Still a good movie, even if Christopher Lee wasn't in it. This is something of a double bill pressbook, although The Leech Woman is somewhat off to the side as a suggestion more than a big selling point.
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I would watch the Bomba and Tarzan movies every Sunday on local television, along with Abbott and Costello. The movies aren't great, but always entertaining, and they give you an interesting perspective on how Hollywood (and America) viewed the Dark Continent (Sub-Saharan Africa according to Wikipedia), and its inhabitants through cinema. And boy, I wish I looked that good in a loincloth. I know the term "dark continent" has fallen out of favor, but it best encompasses the artistic leanings and dramatic on-film mindsets of the 1930s through 1950s.
This large 15 by 22 inches pressbook for Jules Verne's Master of the World, starring Vincent Price, has stiff covers, lots of promotional material, and a polished page layout. All of this presents quite a "selling" package to movie theaters, and indicative of American International's use of quality pressbooks for movies where Vincent Price is involved. (See The Tomb of Ligeia and The Haunted Palace.)
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The promotions for William Castle's movies were always lively. Here's the one thousand dollars death by fright pressbook for Macabre.
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With Lionel Atwill and Bela Lugosi, even the Ritz Brothers couldn't make The Gorilla too unwatchable. I spotted this movie herald listed on eBay.
Horrorpedia notes that Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of this movie; critics, not so much. John Carradine appears in this one but not one of his best. Fantastic poster art helps sell this Mexican movie, but the pressbook is disappointing. It contains only newspaper ad mats; no articles on Carradine or the other actors. (see also History of Film with Quentin Tarantino)
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What every astronaut hopes to find in space: rock monsters, giant unfriendly spiders, and lots of beautiful women improperly dressed for space. The poster art is wild, right? A "hair-raising adventure" indeed.
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Here's some paranoia and Red Scare cinema for you to start off the new year right. Invasion U.S.A (not the Chuck Norris movie), warns us against The Enemy and why we should keep the lights on when we sleep. Mystery Science Theater 3000 spoofed it, but the idea of attacking with atom bombs (a cold war fear) still lives with us today. So maybe the joke's on us, not the movie. In spite of copious stock footage use, movie grossed over a million. Fear sells.
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"A natural for school cooperation," Ulysses is a fun movie. This is the pressbook for the re-release of the movie.
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The fascination with outer space exploration and interplanetary travel (and evil aliens) fueled a lot of 1950s science fiction cinema. Usually it was either the after effects of space travel causing more harm than anticipated (the Quatermass Xperiment: The Creeping Unknown is a good example), or it was finding out that once you got to where you were going, monstrous alien monsters (I'm open to a better term if you've got one) wanted to eat you or do other nasty things (like in The Angry Red Planet). Then, of course, you had George Pal insisting on giving us movies that focused on the more positive and challenging aspects of space exploration. He even insisted on adding as much scientifically accurate information (at least what was known back then) as possible. Wild, right? Here's the pressbook for George Pal's Conquest of Space.
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Many 1970s pressbooks focus on admats, which are placed up front in the pressbook, and then add a page or two of article promotion toward the end of the pressbook. If based on a novel or there's a novelization of the movie, there's a page devoted to it. Many 1970s pressbooks are rather bland because of this less stylish and often repeated format. This movie has that slow 70s pacing, but still is a good one to watch.
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Here's a nifty double bill pressbook for The Devil's Partner and Creature from the Haunted Sea. This one has a unique design: you unfold the left and right edges to read the first page, then lift that page to see the ads. Striking combination of blue and yellow make this one pop. As does the lurid illustrations.
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Double Bill Pressbook:
The Devil’s Partner
and Creature from the Haunted SeaRead More »