The Skull newspaper ad

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:

"The Skull" newspaper ad from 1965.

The ad for "The Skull" above is part of my personal collection of clippings that I made for my scrapbook. Besides the ads I clipped when the movies were coming out, some others I found in a neat way: I discovered that the attic of the house I lived in at the time, was chock full of old newspapers! Although it was hot up there, I spent a couple of summer vacation months going through them one at a time, looking for movie ads and articles on genres I was interested in.

This one was from a 1965 newspaper. I was saving it for a future post on "The Skull," but I'm showing it now to introduce a new blog I have just begun (Don't worry, it won't supplant this one, only supplement it). I'll revist "The Skull" and treat it right soon with some screen grabs and a good look at the posters.

What this post is REALLY about...

The blog I'm plugging is called "HELD OVER! Newspaper Movie Ads" and it is just for showcasing the movie ad clippings that fill up my old scrapbook. Whereas "Sweet Skulls" focuses on, well... skulls, this new blog will reflect the varied interests of my young self and will feature ads from genres such as horror, sci-fi, kung fu, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, etc. I'll be posting them every few days or so over there til I've done them all.

If you get a kick out of seeing old newspaper ads for movies, check it out occasionally. Each one featured in a post are ones I clipped with my own young hands (hence the uneven edges) and scanned in with my somewhat older hands now.

I also plan on posting other occasional goodies that I clipped also, like TV ads for shows I liked, and articles about the movies and TV programs. I think it will be fun! Leave some comments when you visit and let me know if you like it.

The address is www.heldovermovies.blogspot.com.

Space Skeleton!

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:

A "Space:1999" newspaper ad

In space, no-one can smell you rot. (Till they open the door, then pheeeeew!)

Well, since I spent so long yesterday posting the video for my "movie," I thought I'd take it easy today and lay a newspaper clipping from my old scrapbook on ya. The circa-1976 ad copy "Planet of the Living Dead" plays up the aspect of the moist skeletal corpse in the photo to good effect, and although I was a bit luke-warm about "Space:1999," (being a true Trekker) I liked the ad enough to clip it and save it. Wow, it's a good thing I did, or some 32-odd years later I might have actually had to work on this post today.

Whew! Is that foresight or what?

I might add that even lukewarm about it, I watched it when I could as a teen, sci-fi being scarce as it was then. I cut out any newspaper articles about it, bought the first issue of the comic magazine, the View-Master reel set, the soundtrack cassette, and some of the bubble-gum cards, all of which I still have. But that was about the extent of my collecting... I always liked UFO better. Those purple-wigged gals really launched my rocket!

"So how 'bout it?"

I Drink Your Blood/I Eat Your Skin

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:
The "I Drink Your Blood/I Eat your Skin" double-feature artwork
(Click for larger image)

Also playing: "I Rip Off Your Money"

In early 1971 my young and impressionable 12 year-old eyeballs fell upon the newspaper ads for the double-bill "I Drink Your Blood/I Eat Your Skin," and my brain almost blew up.

Being a lover of scary movies, but too young to see anything other than what I could catch on TV, the closest I could ever get to the movies playing in the theaters was the newspaper ads. So I would clip out and save the them, keeping them in my monster scrapbook. (Go to my other blog, "Held Over!" to see them,) The next year the artwork for "Orgy of the Living Dead" would rock my (admittedly small and sheltered) world, but "IDYB/IEYS" was the first of the truly gory and lurid ads that I had ever seen, and it electrified me. Of course, the movies I imagined were much better than the actual films, but at the time I didn't know that. I believed the posters and ads. I believed that if I went to see them, I would actually witness blood-drinking and skin-eating. Ah, to be young and naive again.

The color poster was what theater-goers saw. The black-and-white ads were what I saw and clipped out. But they were enough to set my insides quivering with the nervous excitement and desire to see what I knew I never could. As it turns out, I was better not knowing at the time that the artwork and ads were pure ballyhoo and not representative of what they were. I've seen both films since on DVD, and although the first was full of shocking images for the time, neither could live up to the ads. The second film was merely an old recycled film from 1964, retitled and released with the first to sweeten the deal. Needless to say it contained no skin-eating.

(Click for larger image)

But no amount of present-day disillusionment can tarnish the youthful memories of the thrills I got, gazing with fascination at the ads as they were displayed in my scrapbook (really, a school notebook with pictures and ads taped in it). A couple of years later, when I began to get "Famous Monsters" and "The Monster Times," I would foolishly cut out the pictures I liked from them and tape them in as well. (Looking back I could kick myself for not saving them in perfect condition, as I began to do a little later.) But at that early time, what I could find in the newspapers was the extent of my collecting. Whenever I take out that old dog-eared scrapbook now, many years later, it takes me back to the time when adding something to it was the hightlight of my day.

A few weeks after the film's release the ads got smaller, but the way they cut together the two was inspired and still made a great graphic.

A more accurate title would have been "I Eat Dead Rats,"
but it probably wouldn't have had the same impact.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.


"Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?"

Watch the R-rated trailer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRNPLD3lh4s

Having seen the movie upon it's recent DVD release, I realise that the violence and adult themes in "I Drink Your Blood" would have indeed been too much for my tender mind to take. And although the title was misleading, the film did push at the boundaries of gore and good taste and deserves to be seen by old and new fans. The cast of the hippie band was populated by memorable characters, particularly (the sadly late) Indian actor Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury. whose performance left me wondering if it didn't inspire Holt McCallany's young American-Indian tough from Creepshow 2. And Lynn Lowry, whose pixie-like face almost rivalled Yvette Mimieux for eye-catching cuteness, brought a weird mixture of innocence and evil to her character.

The DVD release is great, with plenty of fun extras and awesome menus. But would it have been too much to ask to have both films on it, to duplicate the double-bill effect of the original release?

Oh, well, at least we have it now and that 37 year old itch I had to see it could be scratched to satisfaction.

Orgy of the Living Dead

Today's skeletal spotlight shines on..."Orgy of the Living Dead."

Click the images to see a hi-rez versions.

Folks, you are looking at one of the single most horrific, (and to my teen self, thrilling) pieces of artwork for a movie ad ever made, that ever fell under the category of "never appears in the movie." When this showed up in the newspaper on the movie ad page back in spring of 1972, my dark little heart skipped several beats as I feverishly cut it out to put in my scrapbook.

You see, I could never go see the movies they advertised, both because I was underage (13 years old), but also because my parents would never let me. The newspaper ads were often the only thing I could collect in association with the films I could never go see. So, I could only longingly feast my eyes on the promotional artwork, and imagine how awesome the movie must be. Little did I know then, that what I imagined was so much better than the actual movie. As I know now, the artwork was much better than the film, and misleading as to what you would see.

Right up front you should be warned that there is no orgy; not even a petting party... and precious few living dead, and those are of the vampiric variety and not zombies. The titular "orgy" was actually the name of the triple-feature under which all three of the films would show: "Revenge of the Living Dead," "Curse of the Living Dead," and "Fangs of the Living Dead." What I little dreamed was that the three films were not even related! One would think that they were all in a series of films that connected, like the Apes movies making the rounds in the butt-numbing "Ape-o-thons," but no... they were three movies completely unrelated to each other, simply renamed to make it seem that way.

But you have to hand it to the promoters here: they did a great job of packaging and promoting the films to maximum effect. The titles, picked to capitalise on Romero's zombie movie, though there were no zombies; the artwork, depicting an imaginary character that never made an appearance; and the idea of "three-movies-for-the-price-of-one" which made it a real bargain. Similar to a cheap smorgasboard of crummy food, you might complain that it didn't taste that good, but you had to admit you sure got a lot for your money.

The zombie/vampire artwork, indeed, the entire campaign, was created by Alan Ormsby, who was a multi-talented man indeed. Besides being an artist, he was a director and actor. You may have seen one of his more famous movies: "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things," another of those movies talked about in awed whispers on the playground. But I'm most in awe of his artwork for the promotion, which remains famous to this day. Look at the detail on that gruesome death's-head: rotted skin peeling back to show an exposed skull: with a hole in said skull revealing the brain beneath! An empty eye socket! A hole for a nose!

My 13-year-old mind could scarcely conceive of such horror. It was the most gory image I had ever seen, even considering the monster magazines I was beginning to get interested in, as I could find them. This was before I had found the comic magazines such as "Tales From the Tomb" and such, which took gore to a new level. Those I would find later, and we'll take a look at some of the outrageous images available to any kid, in a future posting.

Having such an impact on my impressionable mind, the image stood as the pinnacle in scary movie artwork, and was never surpassed. (Inspired, I drew my own copy of it, being somewhat talented in drawing things I could look at. Using felt-tip markers, I colored in my version, supplying the blood and gore that the paper ad didn't have.) So when, about ten years later as a young man I happened upon the entire press kit for the movies in a south Florida collector's shop, I snatched it up like a starving zombie gnoshing upon a handfull of fresh entrails. This was a true find! And seeing the entire ad campaign made me appreciate even more what went into promoting this event.

Here is the front of the actual press kit:

Inside page of the poster-sized pressbook:

Page three of the kit:

The ad I had seen and saved from the local paper (and still have, taped in my scrapbook) was only a small part of the overall kit.

Included with the kit was a sample "Madman 1 Sheet," that the theater owner could order to hand out to patrons (see below). On the front here was a photograph of a raving lunatic in a straitjacket, presumably a viewer who was driven insane by seeing the movies. The copy on the other side read, in part: "This is John Austin Frazier. It has been reported that he now resides at a Mental Hospital, the result of attending a showing of "Orgy of the Living Dead!" Because of this tragic event, we, the producers, have secured an insurance policy, insuring the sanity of each and every patron. If you lose your mind as a result of viewing this explosion of terror, you will receive free psychiatric care, or be placed, at our expense, in an asylum for the rest of your life! We urge you to take advantage of this protection! The insurance is free - anyone entering the theater without it does so at his own risk. Remember: WE WARNED YOU!!!"

The copy about the handout reads "This hair-raising 'Madman' special one sheet, taken directly from ORGY's key art, is a guaranteed attention-getter! The Madman's distorted face screams out in anguished horror while the text of the poster contains a WARNING note for those about to enter the theater! A guaranteed crowd-raiser that will draw a quick line at the boix office!" I'm sure it did.

Front of the handout:

Back of the handout:

Screengrab from the trailer for the film featuring the raving madman...
There is also copy in the kit about the trailers, TV spots and radio ads that the owner could order to help promote the event. Of particular interest is the language used to describe certain ones of the radio ads: "Two of the spots have been specially prepared for Black audiences, and all convey the spirit of the show-biz excitement that will draw the crowds to your box-office!" One supposes they sprinkled in some jive-talk in those.

Well, if you ever ran across this image of a skull with skin rotting from it in your youth, and it haunted your memory, now you can revel in it till your eyes ache. Thanks, Alan, for contributing not only to success of three movies that were ill-deserving of it, but mainly for enriching our childhoods with such a lasting image.

Here's the infamous TV advertisement itself!