Alfalfa (Carl Switzer) and Butch the bully (Tommy Bond) from Our Gang are all grown up (mostly) in Gas House Kids in Hollywood. This is the third and last movie in the franchise. They mix it up with a mad scientist and a haunted house and cute "goils."
ComicRack reader version: Download Gas House Kids in Hollywood Pressbook
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Monogram pulls down the noir shades with jumeuax identiques, in this crime whodunit based on a Cornell Woolrich story. (His book, Black Alibi, became The Leopard Man, directed by Jacques Tourneur.) For a budget movie, the pressbook is in color and well presented. I'm not sure the twin sundae idea is a good promotion, but crime and pretty dames times two sells seats anyway.
CBR version: Download The Guilty Pressbook
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Mickey Spillane wasn't too happy with how Richard Aldrich's movie version of his book turned out. Mike Hammer wasn't nice at all, the dangerous and deadly something in the car trunk proved too hot to handle, and the downbeat storyline spiralling into worse makes Kiss Me Deadly quite an unnerving, unsavory, and brutal experience, permeated with existential fear. Perfect! You want film noir? This is the darkest you'll come across. Ralph Meeker is brutal. The pressbook may play up the dames angle for all it's worth, but the movie's not about dames. It's about death, violence, and more death. The deadly macguffin in the car trunk would be purloined by Repo Man (1984) with a less violent and fatal wind up.
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Ah, the good old days, when promotion contests were all about the beautiful dames in movies. Well, maybe not so good with all that objectification of women in the movies of the time. They were either angels or devils, and the men on screen always had trouble telling the difference. At least in film noir the women usually gave as good (or bad) as they got. Are women more dangerous? You be the judge. As film noir goes, this one may be too much for you to handle. Are you hardboiled enough to take it?
ComicRack reader version: Download Decoy (1946) Pressbook
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Having just watched Murder is My Beat with Barbara Payton, I couldn't resist posting this pressbook for Trapped, with her and Lloyd Bridges. As soon as I can find the Murder is My Beat pressbook I'll post that one too. Film noir, like horror, requires a refined taste for classy and deadly dames, hardboiled stamina and worn-shoes detectives, and star-crossed victims. Horror, of course, abounds with star-crossed victims. Trapped helped her into the spotlight, followed by an ample contract after her performance in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. Sadly, her presence in Bride of the Gorilla didn't boost her career, although her co-star, Raymond Burr, fared much better. A lot of bad relationships, drinking, and drugs trapped her into a downward spiral.
ComicRack reader version: Download Trapped (1949) Pressbook
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There are horror films and then there are horrors films. Taxi Driver is a horrors film. The horrors of a Travis Bickle, a walking wounded lifer, looking for meaning in all the meaningless places. Is he pushed or does he push himself to become a knight in shining armor, to channel his frustration against helplessness? Vigilantism was a cinematic peg hole for 1970s New York City. Between the crime, grime, and gaffiti, knights are hard to come by but often hoped for. Here's the 20-page pressbook for the movie, with many pages devoted to newspaper poster ads. By the 1970s, most pressbooks focused on the newspapers to sell the movie with poster ads; when people actually read newspapers.
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First filmed in 1925, Zane Grey's novel, Code of the West, was again filmed in 1947. Here's the two-fisted pressbook.
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Here's a pressbook for the pre-code serial, King of the Wild (for a re-release in 1945) with Boris Karloff. I added some lobby cards too.
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Jack Mathis (Valley of the Cliffhangers) made a reprint of this pressbook available in the 1970s, when fandom was rediscovering the serial action format (especially with the more comic book and comic strip-sourced heroes on the silver screen). I would love to find the "circus" herald, mentioned on the Exploitation page. I'm not sure what denotes a circus herald, but the 5x17 inches size may be a clue. And not many movies would suggest a Special Timber or Logging District Stunt fo promotion, I'm sure.
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Bob Steele's look could play sinister, innocent or comedic roles. From the cold-blooded killer in The Big Sleep (1946) to the only survivor of the Alamo, Trooper Duffy , in F Troop.
Comic book reader version: Download Smoky Trails Pressbook
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The Stranger from Pecos was the second movie in Monogram's Marshal Nevada Jack Mckenzie franchise, starring Johnny Mack Brown. Brown appeared on Wheaties boxes and in comic books and roped in well over a hundred movies before he passed away in 1974.
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The good old days, when the only thing you had to worry about in the jungle was what was going to eat you. I'm nonplussed about that tagline: "Johnny Against the Cannibals! as the flames lick her lovely legs." Did Johnny have lovely legs? The sentence logic here is atrocious. So is Johnny Weissmuller's acting throughout the Jungle Jim series, in spite of his lovely legs. But there is a strange fascination for me with these jungle adventures, I admit.
Comic book reader version: Download Jungle Man-Eaters Pressbook
