Monster of the Day #1240

Plus he was wearing a shirt with girlie pictures on it.

  • Now I might be wrong here–the math skills aren’t what they used to be–but there seems to be a wee less that 10,000 eyes on display there. But at least the poster has some nice eye candy.

    I leave it up to the informed reader to decide which comment is for which image.

  • Flangepart

    Paul Birch…solid as an Oak, that man. Never left anyone in a Larch.
    Eye candy: Lower left.
    Title: Wish I had his contact account. “Yes, Mr. Beast. The new prescription will be in Friday.”

  • kgb_san_diego

    Is it just me, or does she seem just a wee bit short of terrified? It actually looks much closer to “My! What a BIG boy you are!”

  • bgbear_rnh

    The beast with 999,997 eyes did not listen to his mother about running with scissors.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Having seen the movie, wow but does that poster ever lie about what you’ll see.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Yeah, it’s actually a decent film though. Not spectacular but pretty solid, though the handyman’s backstory really came out of left field.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Oh, it’s definitely well done, and genuinely scary at a few points, but if I’d seen the poster before the film I would have been disappointed at the lack of a dragon-whatever with a million eyes.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Oh yes, the creature at the end doesn’t come close.

    If they could have built the poster creature, it would have been perfect for The Dunwich Horror.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I’m sure a lot of folks Pine for Paul Birch.

  • Wade Harrell

    I seem to remember reading (maybe at And You Call Yourself A Scientist?) that the original cut of this movie had no visible monster at all but the distributors demanded that one be put in so they threw it together at the last minute. This poster is what taught Corman that if the poster promised a monster, there had to BE a monster no matter how lame it was compared to the poster.

  • Rock Baker

    Indeed. The first cut featured nothing fantastic aside from the space ship, and audience reaction was terrible. Corman then tried to soup things up by animating some energy waves over the ship, but the audience still wanted a monster. Finally, he hired Paul Blaisdell (I think for $200) to construct the slave monster and film the puppet in a cramped garage set (maybe Corman’s own garage, if I remember correctly). Still, Corman felt the puppet beastie didn’t work as well as it should, and so he superimposed the swirling vortex and eyeball atop it’s footage, rendering it virtually invisible. Corman did better by Blaisdell with his very next film, THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED. I also remember Corman noting that after the incident he preferred to use full-size monsters in his movies.

  • Rock Baker

    Yeah, I’ve always felt the film was pretty good. Cheap, but effective. Plus, Paul Birch, he’s always a welcome cast member.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    And Forest J Ackerman kept the puppet creature in his fridge to try to keep it from decomposing…it didn’t work, alas.

  • Rock Baker

    At least Bob Burns has some really nice color photos of the original puppet!

  • I still want a copy of Matt What-his-name’s (the comet-landing dude’s) girlie shirt. I could wear it to MarsCon in January and watch all the cognitive dissonance hurt nerdbrains. Then wear it to B-Fest a week later and watch absolutely no-one be bothered because they’ve all heard of the concept of a sense of humor.

  • Gamera977

    A little old but I’ll jump in here. His shirt was handmade but Alohaland had some similar shirts though she’s currently sold out. She’ll probably be getting more though. I have one of her mermaid shirts and love it.