The Creeping Flesh

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:
"The Creeping Flesh" poster
(click on images to view hi-rez.)

The sensationally-titled "The Creeping Flesh" from 1973, starring horror gods Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee is among one of director Freddie Francis' most interesting efforts, standing tall among his already impressive movies. (Here is an insightful review of the film from another site that I think you'll find most interesting.)

"Man, I'm so scary I make my own flesh crawl!"

Turnabout is fair play, as we see from the poster below. This artwork is very unusual in that the poor skeleton is the helpless victim and the monster is a naked, though oddly nipple-less woman.

"He ain't heavy, he's my daddy's skeleton!"

The IMDB synopsis for the 1970 "Blood Mania" reads "A sex-crazed nympho helps speed along her father's death so she can use the inheritance to help out her depraved boyfriend." By most accounts it's a waste of time. But we got an amusing poster out of it! Scary though, it's not.

But, the story is not over... for look at the image used on the DVD release of "The Creeping Flesh!" Yes, the skeleton is being carried by the man. Full circle.

(Which brings up a point; why is it that so many recent DVD horror releases forego using the awesome poster artwork, in favor of a lame screen-capture from the movie? I mean, there's nothing particularly scary about a man carrying around a lifeless skeleton, is there? Makes the skeleton seem harmless. Whereas in the original poster spotlighted this time, the evil skeleton seems anything but harmless. )

"Good grief, you been packing in those fried twinkies lately, haven't you?"
As he stumbled over the threshold with his new bride, his insinuations about her weight got the honeymoon off to a bad start.

And so, as we draw the curtain on the happy couples, we have learned that it matters little who carries whom... as long as they have each other to hold.

Scream... and Scream Again!

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:
The "Scream and Scream Again" poster
(Click on images to enlarge)

"Billy! I've told you a hundred times not to leave the lid up on the acid pit!"

In 1969 when this film was in the theaters, I was a wee (yet really cute) tyke of ten tender years and could only gaze in wonder at this awesome poster. I was living in Belpre, Ohio at the time, and there was a drive-in theater near our apartment that I walked past each day on the way to and from school. This movie was on a double-bill with "The Oblong Box" and seeing both posters ignited a passion to see the movies that would go unrequited for 35 years. Fortunately, they were released recently on a Midnight Movies disc together, recreating the double-feature experience.

In my bedroom in the apartment about two blocks from the drive-in, it was possible to see a small part of the top of the screen if I climbed on top of my dresser and peeked out of the top of the blinds. Needless to say I couldn't see enough to tell anything, but such was my mania that I woke up the next morning with a crick in my neck from craning to view what I could for nearly a half hour. The images of the posters, that of corpses buried underground and upside down in a pit of acid, bounced around in my monster-addled brain while at school, inspiring me to draw copies from memory. These sadly got confiscated and unceremoniously trashed by a teacher who had no love for art.

"But they told me urine was good for the skin!"

The art for both was striking, but the "Scream" poster was especially memorable, with the poor woman trapped in the acid dissolving alive as her skull and bones were exposed. Strong stuff for a 10 year old who had yet to see even a Famous Monsters magazine. Little wonder it stuck in my memory all those years. It's a testament to my innocence at the time that I never noticed the state of the thinly-veiled and about-to-be-revealed bosom.

"Aaaaiiiieee! It's fading my lovely new pink dress!!!!"

Totally unrelated to the movie, but connected in my memory with the drive-in, was the day I took a shortcut through the woods behind it along the wooden fence surrounding it. I was walking with a three or four other kids, and took the dare to join in a whizzing contest to see who could project the furthest. It was with no little pride that I won. (Nowadays the whole posse would have been rounded up by the PC Police amidst a swarm of reporters and carted away for rehabilatative therapy.) That was about the extent of my naughtiness at that age. I was a good kid who only wanted to see those forbidden and tantalising movies that the posters told about.

Another later move took us to Georgia (we moved a lot) where we lived behind a drive-in that had no fence around it, only protected from prying eyes by virtue of being located over a 10 foot tall dirt bank which you had to climb in order to see the screen. Which would have been great, but we lived there during the winter when it was closed! Talk about your good news and bad news.

"Sure, I'm being dissolved away, but for some reason I find it strangely arousing!"

You know what I'd like to do? Make movies based on some of the awesome posters like this and write them so that what was on the poster actually happened in the film! Imagine how good some of them could be! Never mind what the original was about... just make a movie based on the impression given and on what the poster portrayed. Now that would be worth seeing.

Poster from "The Cauldron of Death" with a similar theme, thrown in because it features flesh melting from a skeleton in a vat of acid. I don't know if the movie is any good, but I like the poster art. Who in their right mind wouldn't?

Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:
"Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" poster
(Click all images for larger versions.)

Had the title been more accurate it would have been "Dr. Terror's
Train of Horrors" but it would have lacked the alliterative punch.

Here it is, folks... the first in the long line of Amicus horror anthologies. Released in 1965 and directed by veteran horror film director Freddie Francis, written by Milton Subotsky and starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, it set the tone for nearly a decade's worth of awesome Amicus anthologies.

Inspired by the 1945 film "Dead of Night," Milton Subotsky patterned "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" on that portmanteau format. When his film was a big hit, he stuck to that format for the rest of the series: "Torture Garden" in 1967, "The House That Dripped Blood" in 1970, my personal favorite "Asylum" in 1972, "Tales from the Crypt" in 1972, "The Vault of Horror" in1973, "From Beyond the Grave" in 1973 and "Tales That Witness Madness" in 1974.

Dr. Terror has the last laugh on his doomed traveling companions. But, at least he kept them entertained, long train trips can be murder.

After Amicus founders Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg went their separate ways, Subotsky was still active in the early 80s, producing yet another anthology "The Monster Club," directed by Roy Ward Baker, veteran of several Amicus efforts. So I really consider that film to be a part of the group of films.

If you'd ever heard that Kenny Rogers song you'd know it was time to run.

Synopsis: Five strangers board a train and are joined by a mysterious fortune teller who offers to read their Tarot cards. Five separate stories unfold: An architect returns to his ancestoral home to find a werewolf out for revenge; a doctor discovers his new wife is a vampire; a huge plant takes over a house; a musician gets involved with voodoo; an art critic is pursued by a disembodied hand.

Since this blog is mainly devoted to the image of the scary skull as used in horror movie posters, etc., I won't try to review it... also for the simple reason that I have not yet seen it, although I'm familiar with the stories from various sources. I look forward to the DVD release and viewing it for the first time. I am enjoying the US releases of the Amicus films as they come out, for I am finally getting a chance to see and enjoy these films I have read about since I was a kid.

To stop his wife from maxing out the credit card, Donald was forced to take drastic measures.

Here are some poster variations to feast your worm-eaten eyes upon!

"Frenzied Fright! Screaming Nightmare! Freezing Terror!" And Horrifying Hyperbole!

"I actually do have a house of horrors... but it wasn't in the cards that you should see it."

"Not only do the cards predict your future, but they can
help you clean your teeth when you don't have time to floss."

Newspaper insert that tried to look like an actual article.

Cover to the paperback novelization of the film.

SEE! Really crappy artwork ! The poster for the 1943 spook show that claimed the title first.

The title had been used before for a traveling roadshow (not a movie, as I had thought before knowledgeable blogger Karswell corrected me) making the rounds in 1943, in which a live host known only as Doctor Terror recounts seven stories from his casebook of personal encounters with evil and the supernatural. The blurb reads "For the first time on any screen!" However, the stories which he introduces and then shows on the screen, are only segments of reused footage from such films as Carl Dreyer's Vampyr, White Zombie, The Scotland Yard Mystery, Le Golem, and the serial The Return of Chandu. Talk about a ripoff. A crummy clip show.