Movie Info From Wikipedia
Halloween is upon us kids so I thought that it was about time for another installment of my ever so popular monster movie poster features. As usual I have collected a nice mix of the classic and the mind numbingly strange for you to feast your blood-thirsty eyes on.
Enough talk lets get to it!
Revenge of the Creature
For the sequel to "Creature from the Black Lagoon" Universal really wanted to play off the success of movies like "Godzilla" and "Them!" by bringing the Gill-man to civilization where he could go on a rampage. The poster for the film echos this with a giant Creature carrying off a woman while a mass of people in the foreground flee in terror.
A little history:
Revenge of the Creature is the first sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon. The film is notable for being the only 3-D film to be released in 1955; the only 3-D sequel to a 3-D film; and for being the first screen role for Clint Eastwood. The movie was released May 11, 1955, in the United States. It was followed by a sequel in 1956, The Creature Walks Among Us.
Having survived being riddled with bullets at the end of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Gill-man is captured and sent to the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida, where he is studied by animal psychologist Professor Clete Ferguson and ichthyology student Helen Dobson. Helen and Clete quickly begin to fall in love, much to the chagrin of Joe Hayes, the Gill-man's keeper. The Gill-man takes an instant liking to Helen, which severely hampers Professor Ferguson's efforts to communicate with him. Ultimately, the Gill-man escapes from his tank, killing Joe in the process, and flees to the open ocean. Unable to stop thinking about Helen, he soon begins to stalk her and Ferguson, ultimately abducting her from a seaside restaurant where the two are at a party. Clete tries to give chase, but the Gill-man escapes to the water with his captive. Clete and the local law enforcement must now try to track down Helen and her amphibious abductor.
To be perfectly honest .... the only reason I posted this was for the tag line "She Had A Face Only A Mummy Could Love!"
Like I could pass that up?
A little history:
The Gorgon is a 1964 British horror film directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer.
It stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley and Richard Pasco. The film was photographed by Michael Reed, and designed by Bernard Robinson. For the score James Bernard combined a soprano with a little-known electronic instrument called the Novachord. The film marks one of the few occasions when Hammer turned to Greek mythology for inspiration; this time it is the legend of the Gorgon that is respun for the Hammer audiences.
The year is 1910, in the rural German village of Vandorf, seven murders have been committed within the past five years, each victim having been petrified into a stone figure. Rather than investigate it, the local authorities dismiss the murders for fear of a local legend having come true. When a local girl becomes the latest victim and her suicidal lover made the scapegoat, the father of the condemned man decides to investigate and discovers that the cause of the petrifying deaths is a phantom. The very last of the snake-haired Gorgon sisters haunts the local castle and turns victims to stone during the full moon.
Actually I was looking for an excuse to write about this film. When it comes to the classic horror films produced by Universal people always think of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. One name is always missing from that list, June Lockhart. People often forget that there were some female monsters too!
I got your back ladies!
A little history:
She-Wolf of London is a 1946 horror film produced by Universal Studios, directed by Jean Yarbrough and starring June Lockhart and Don Porter. The title evokes the earlier Werewolf of London (1935), although, unlike its forebear, it is concerned more with mystery and suspense than supernatural horror.
Phyllis Allenby is a young and beautiful woman who is soon to be married to lawyer and boyfriend Barry Lanfield. Phyllis is living at the Allenby Mansion without the protection of a male, along with her aunt Martha and her cousin Carol and the servant Hannah. As the wedding date approaches, London is shocked by a series of murders at the local park, where the victims are discovered with throats ripped out. Many of the detectives at Scotland Yard begin murmuring about werewolves, while Inspector Pierce believes the opposite and suspects strange activity at the Allenby Mansion (which is near the park), where the "Wolf-Woman" is seen prowling at night and heading for the park. Phyllis becomes extremely terrified and anxious, since she is convinced that she is the "Wolf-Woman", deeply believing in the legend of the so-called "Curse of the Allenbys". Aunt Martha tries to convince Phyllis how ridiculous the legend sounds, while she (aunt Martha) and Carol are suspicious in their own ways. Phyllis each day denies of Barry visiting her, and when a suspicious detective is murdered soon after he visits the mansion in the same way the other victims perished, Barry begins believing that something else is beside the so-called "Werewolf murders" and makes his own investigations both to the park and to the mansion.
King Dinosaur
King Dinosaur was hardly the "Mightiest Monster Of Them All" , but he had a great poster!
A little history:
King Dinosaur is a 1955 science fiction film starring William Bryant and Wanda Curtis with narration by Marvin Miller. In this film, four astronauts in 1960 travel to a planet called Nova that has just entered Earth's solar system. The crew begins to study the planet to see if it's able to withstand a possible Earth colony. After first discovering normal Earth animals such as a kinkajou and an alligator, they soon encounter giant insects, dinosaurs, and the titular King Dinosaur.
The Walking Dead
One of my favorite movie posters, it's simple and quite elegant. Well as elegant as a zombie movie poster can be.
A little history:
The Walking Dead is a 1936 horror film starring Boris Karloff as a wrongly executed man who is restored to life by a scientist (Edmund Gwenn). The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
John Elman (Boris Karloff) has been framed for murder by a gang of racketeers. He is unfairly tried and despite the fact that his innocence has been proven, he is sent to the electric chair and executed. But Dr. Evan Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) retrieves his dead body and revives it, as part of his experiments to reanimate a dead body.
Dr. Beaumont's use of a mechanical heart to revive the patient foreshadow's modern medicine's mechanical heart to keep patients alive during surgery. Interestingly, although John Elman has no direct knowledge of anyone wishing to frame him for the murder before he is executed, he seems to have an innate sense of knowing those who are responsible after he is revived. Elman takes no direct action against his framers, and in the end it is their own guilt that causes their deaths.
House Of Dracula
No Karloff as The Monster, no Lugosi as Dracula, instead you get Glenn Strange, John Carradine and the pretty Jane Adams as a hunchback. It's safe to say that the Universal horrors got a little watered down in the forties.
Lon Chaney Jr did play the Wolfman though.
A little history:
House of Dracula was an American horror film released by Universal Pictures Company in 1945. It was a direct sequel to House of Frankenstein and continued the theme of combining Universal's three most popular monsters: Frankenstein's monster, Count Dracula and The Wolf Man. The film was a commercial success, but would also be one of the last Universal movies featuring Frankenstein's monster, vampires and werewolves: after 1945, horror moved toward science fiction, Cold War paranoia, and the Hiroshima syndrome of super science creating its own monsters, themes which would be the hallmarks of 1950s horror and science fiction movies.
Tomoyuki Tanaka really wanted King Kong to battle "Ebirah, Horror of the Deep" but couldn't get the rights to use him from RKO. Instead Godzilla was substituted. This German poster for the film echoes the whole "Kong" theme with Big G chasing after the lovely Kumi Mizuno (The Japanese Fay Wray?).
A little history:
Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, released in Japan as Godzilla, Ebirah, Mothra: Big Duel in the South Seas (ゴジラ・エビラ・モスラ 南海の大決闘 Gojira, Ebira, Mosura Nankai no Daikettō) and known internationally as Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, is a 1966 science fiction kaiju film directed by Jun Fukuda and written by Shinichi Sekizawa. This is the first film in the series with special effects directed by Sadamasa Arikawa. Eiji Tsuburaya, now very busy with Tsuburaya Productions, supervised the effects shoot. The film is the seventh in the original Godzilla series.
After Yata (Tooru Ibuki) is lost at sea, his brother Ryota (Tooru Watanabe) steals a yacht with his two friends and a bank robber. The crew runs afoul of the giant lobster Ebirah, and washes up on the shore of an island, where a terrorist organization manufactures heavy water for their purposes, as well as a chemical that keeps Ebirah at bay. The organization, known as the Red Bamboo, has enslaved natives from Infant Island to help them, but the natives hope to awaken Mothra to rescue them.
In their efforts to avoid capture, Ryota and his friends, aided by a beautiful native girl, stumble across Godzilla sleeping within a cliffside cavern. The group devises a plan to defeat the Red Bamboo and escape from the island. In the process, they wake Godzilla using a lightning rod. Godzilla fights Ebirah, but the giant lobster escapes. Godzilla is then attacked by a giant condor and a squadron of Red Bamboo fighter jets, but destroys them.
The humans retrieve the missing Yata, free the enslaved natives and Godzilla begins to destroy the base. Godzilla smashes a tower that has a self destruct button that makes the island unstable. Godzilla fights Ebirah and defeats it, ripping off both Ebirah's claws and causing it to retreat into the sea. The natives summon Mothra to save everyone, however, Godzilla challenges Mothra when she gets to the island. Mothra manages to push Godzilla away and carry the people off. Godzilla escapes the island just before it explodes.
The moral to this story, don't feed the animals, or more importantly don't feed the animals some mysterious goop you find oozing up from the ground!
What makes for a great monster movie poster? The answer is simple, a giant rat fondling a woman in a tree.
A little history:
The Food of the Gods is a 1976 film released by American International Pictures and was written, produced, and directed by Bert I. Gordon. He had earlier made a movie based on the same novel called Village of the Giants starring Beau Bridges.
The Food of the Gods starred Marjoe Gortner of Earthquake, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker, Jon Cypher, John McLiam, and Ida Lupino. This film was loosely based on a portion of the H. G. Wells novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth. A sequel to the film was made in 1989, entitled Food of the Gods II.
The film reduced the tale to an 'Ecology Strikes Back' scenario, common in science fiction movies at the time. The food mysteriously bubbles up from the ground on a remote island somewhere in British Columbia. The couple that discover it, Mr. and Mrs. Skinner (McLiam and Lupino) consider it a gift from God, and promptly begin feeding it to their chickens. Soon, rats, wasps, and worms consume the substance, and the island is crawling with giant vermin. One night, some of them kill Mr. Skinner.
Morgan, a professional football player (Gortner), and his buddies are camping on the island, and one of them is stung to death by giant wasps. After ferrying his friends back to the mainland, Morgan returns to investigate. Also thrown into the mix are Thomas and Rita, an expecting couple; Jack Bensington, the owner of a dog food company (Meeker) hoping to market the substance; and his assistant Lorna (Franklin), a "lady bacteriologist." Eventually, the survivors are trapped in the farmhouse with the rats swarming around outside, and Mrs. Skinner and Bensington are killed by the rats.
Morgan eventually blows up a nearby dam, flooding the area and drowning the rats, whose size and weight renders them unable to swim. The food, however, survives. It is swept into a river and is consumed by cows, who give tainted milk, which is then drunk by schoolchildren.
Curse Of The Demon
Curse of the Demon features one of the coolest looking monsters to ever grace the silver screen. Unfortunately it only appears in the film for a couple of minutes.
Likewise the poster art featuring the monster is some of the best ever produced.
A little history:
Night of the Demon is a 1957 British horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur, starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins and Niall MacGinnis. An adaptation of the M. R. James story Casting the Runes (1911), the plot revolves around an American psychologist investigating a satanic cult suspected of more than one murder.
The film's production was turbulent due to clashing ideas between producer Hal E. Chester on one side and Jacques Tourneur and writer Charles Bennett on the other. Planned to not show a literal demon, producer Chester inserted a monster over the objections of the writer, director and star Dana Andrews. To accelerate the pace, the film was trimmed down to 83 minutes (and retitled Curse of the Demon) in the US where it played the second half of a double feature with films like The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958).
Slimy monsters always come out of the ocean looking for women with big breasts in bikinis ...... it's part of nature's plan.
Whatever this poster is selling I'm buying!
Humanoids from the Deep (alternatively known as Monster is a 1980 science fiction monster movie, starring Doug McClure, Ann Turkel, and Vic Morrow. Roger Corman served as the film's (uncredited) Executive Producer, and the film was distributed by his New World Pictures. It was directed by Barbara Peeters (aka Barbara Peters). The musical score was composed by James Horner.
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