This double bill pressbook, well, It Came From Hollywood. The Horror of Party Beach kicks some sand into the faces of those wacky beach party movies, having some fun while doing so. In The Curse of the Living Corpse, rich grandpa (okay, I’m taking a bit of license here) comes back from the dead to kill off his relatives who apparently didn’t read the fine print in his will.
Both movies were double billed for balcony-minded teens (or the drive-in types too). In the early days of movies, when the studio system was still viable, you had your A movie usually paired with a B movie, a cartoon, a live stage show, and a newsreel, along with trailers. So double billing wasn’t new. American International Pictures (AIP) took the practice and revived it, and changed it. They made both movies on the double bill equal. They came as a complete package. There was no A or B movie, just two movies advertised equally. That came about more as a defense against television, which was stealing away the audience and locking them up at home. But the pricing scheme and distribution idea worked very well, for both the theaters and AIP.
By 1967 the American theater newsreel was dead since television had the handle on more timely news, and kid shows on the boob tube (I vaguely recall watching Howdy Doody) forced theater cartoons off the screen by the early 1980s. I recall my dad taking me to see a single feature movie (don’t remember which one) and a cartoon popped up, which was a nice surprise. At the end of the cartoon he turned to me and said “I don’t get it. What’s the moral message.” I looked at him. Growing up, for me, and every other kid on the block, moral messages were not a primary goal for watching cartoons. I shrugged my shoulders and we watched the main feature. Sadly, I grew up too. It happens.
Due to the pressbook page sizing, two pages were scanned twice to show tops and bottoms. So no, you’re not seeing double.
