Monster of the Day

Was I ever aware of this? If I was, I had completely forgotten until I came across a YouTube video called "The Mystery Behind the Split Anguirus Shell" on the Paper Finz channel. He has a lot of other Godzilla content too. Anyway, it was pretty fascinating, largely because it was a fresh thing…

Continuing our line of "monsters in posters who look like hobos" we have Return of the Ape Man. Apparently Monogram was too cheap to pay somebody to paint a poster, probably because they spent an extra $500 to get both Bela Lugosi and John Carradine (famously, Zucco is not really seen in the film).…

A rather bland poster for a rather bland film. At least they have an excuse; it's a Republic picture, not from 20th Century Fox. I guess it's kind of interesting that they highlight the exotic elements of the film, which (if I can remember waaaaaaaaaay back when) takes place in Africa, presumably to save…

  Here's 20th Century Fox marketing team trying a little harder, although their wolf man just looks like a hobo. I mean, pretty much literally. Meanwhile, the studio was so sniffy about making an actual monster movie that we only get about 20 seconds of the werewolf right at the very end of the…

Here's a great example of how the major studios occasionally tried to grab some of Universal's extremely profitable horror pie, but were too embarrassed and sniffy to really go for it. First, most of their horror movies, like this one, were themselves tepid at best. They really felt monsters in particular were just beneath…

Looking at a poster from a later, '40s Universal, it's interesting that they've gone to a photo montage poster instead of painted artwork. Of course they squeeze in 'sex', by the '40s standard. I do like the skull, it's a nice dark note emphasizing the horror that frankly the movies themselves were less concerned…

We'll revisit these, maybe around Halloween, because man I think they're fun. In any case, Happy Friday everyone. Watch something stupid this weekend. Heck, watch something stupid tonight at our Watch Party. If you haven't attended before and wish to, just send me an email attached to an Amazon Prime account at ken@jabootu.com.

You think these spook shows looked neat, imagine one featuring the great Bela Lugosi. Admittedly, he probably wasn't at his best at this point, but still. I think I'd still use my 'go back in time' card to see a performance by John Carradine's self-funded Shakespeare company, but this would certainly be right up…

No name strikes terror into the heart of Man than...Dr. Neff!

Man, *I* want to go to a mid-nite spook frolic.