Horror-rama 2

I didn't get around to posting as many horror ads for October as I would have liked--work and vacation got in the way. But here are a couple more.

A Sioux City, Iowa "dusk to dawn" horror bill from 1969 anchored by The Devil's Bride (aka The Devil Rides Out), one of my favorite Hammer horror films. The story of a small band of intrepid do-gooders out to save two people from being baptized into a Satanic cult is interesting, and based on a pretty good pulp horror novel by Dennis Wheatley; the budget is too low for most of the shocks to really be effective, but it's still fun, and Christopher Lee gets to play a hero. Also playing: The Vengeance of She, The Power (sci-fi thriller), and the Roman Polanski comedy The Fearles Vampire Killers.

Also from 1969, The Witchmaker, a B-horror film that is surprisingly good, set in a swamp and involving graduate students who run, as in The Devil Rides Out, into some murderous devil worshipers. Playing in Akron, Ohio in November of 1969.

Finally. The Crawling Eye (1959), one of the first horror movies I saw, as a child of 7. Seen as an adult, the effects are not terribly impressive, but as a kid, it gave me frights.

Horror-rama!

The multi-movie horror fest had a long tradition, especially during the heyday of the drive-in theater.

And Now the Screaming Starts (1973)--Terror in the Wax Museum (1973; with Ray Milland and Elsa Lanchester)--Ben (1972; sequel to Willard). Columbus Ohio triple bill at a couple of drive-ins in September 1973. 

Don't Go Near the Park (1979; with Aldo Ray and Barbara Bain)--Don't Go in the Basement (aka Don't Look in the Basement, 1973)--Don't Answer the Phone (1980). Playing at a Columbus drive-in in the summer of 1982. Never heard of any of these movies, but the "don't go" theme is clever. 

Nightmare in Wax (1969)--Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969)--Blood and Black Lace (1964). Triple horror bill at Columbus drive-ins in September 1970. Dracula's Castle is the only movie I've seen by the notorious Al Adamson, and it's cheap but not bad. Blood and Black Lace is beautifully photographed.
 

Another Al Adamson cheapie, Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), and two classier horror pix from Hammer, Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), the movies that revived the horror fad into the 1960s. This bill was playing in Columbus during Halloween week, 1972.

October is horror month

I'm a little late getting started, but it's time to post some horror movie ads from my collection.

A Halloween night triple feature from Akron, OH in 1969. Teenage Psycho is better known as the grade-Z classic "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" which you may know from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Also Hammer's Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Castle of Evil (1964) with Barbara Steele. 

Black Sunday, another Barbara Steele movie, in Tucson in 1961. A witch is brought back to life to wreck vengeful havoc. This is the movie whose opening freaked me out so much, I had to leave the theater when I first saw it in the mid-60s (I was 9, and it was the iron maiden scene) and I didn't see the whole thing until I was in college.

The Horror of Party Beach, a B-movie which tried to combine the appeal of the monster movies and the Frankie & Annette beach movies. It did not succeed. I owned a photo-comic of this movie in the 60s and didn't see the actual movie until sometime in the 80s. It did not live up to the magazine, but again, it made good fodder for MSR3K. Ad from Dayton, 5/9/64.
 

As I seem to be on a Mystery Science Theater kick, here's The Mole People, on a double bill with Curucu, Beast of the Amzaon, showing in Atlanta in December of 1956. My first experience with Mole People, as with the above Party Beach, was owning a photo-comic book. The movie itself is deadly dull. I'm sure I saw Curucu at some point in the 60s on Chiller Theater; I'm trying to track it down again but it seems to be in hiding.

(Maybe not so) Astounding!

The Astounding She-Monster (1958) provides a good example of ads vs. reality. Below are 1) a sexy full-color ad for the movie (about a space woman wondering through the woods, scaring people with her blurry figure); 2) an example of the kind of ad that ran in newspapers--it was released as the second feature to Viking Women and the Sea Serpent; 3) what the She-Monster (Shirley Kilpatrick) really looked in the movie.