While watching Joel, Trace, and Josh promote Cinematic Titanic and discuss their past work on MSNBC’s Countdown recently, they mentioned how the filmmakers behind many of these B-movies would often put a great deal of work into the marketing efforts of the films to attract commercial interest on the distribution circuit of the day. Heavy emphasis was placed particularly on creating unique and stylized-looking posters and taglines. Some of my favorite MSTed movie posters include “The Crawling Eye” because it doesn’t reveal what the titular monsters actually look like in the film while still stirring a mysterious, atmospheric effect. Another favorite of mine is the promotional work for “Village of the Giants” as a notable example of B-movie marketing from the 60s.
If I had to pick one, it would be this one, for Women of the Prehistoric Planet, complete with the little inset scenes. Awesome.
What’s your favorite? By the way, you don’t necessarily have to pick posters for MSTed movies, but let’s keep it in the B movie arena.
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I guess somebody at Lucasfilm didn’t get to see L’uomo Puma/PumaMan as its poster clearly puts the Death Star in the background :roll: :
http://www.mst3ktemple.com/images/puma_man2.bmp
Even funnier Puma Man actually looks READY for action in the poster more than the super-wimp he was in the film. :smile:
All that was left after… THE KILLER SHREWS:
http://www.wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/posters-k/killer_shrews_poster_02.jpg
That one’s always been a favorite. Not only is it eye-grabbing, but Ingrid Goude loses a shoe in the movie, so the poster’s more truthful than most.
@ #52: All B-grade horror/SF movies made between 1950 and 1970 are required to have a heroine lose a shoe in a chase. It was required by screenwriting rules at the time. :lol:
Good point. WGA regulations can get pretty draconian. The rules required she either had to break a heel, or tear the shoulder off her dress.
The German poster for Puma Man deserves a dishonorable mention:
http://www.mst3ktemple.com/images/puma-gator.jpg
Speaking of foreign one-sheets, here’s the Japanese Squirm poster. Look familiar?
http://www.onesheetindex.com/pix/9295_1.jpg
My all-time favorite movie poster is the one for Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. A beautiful woman, a scene that doesn’t come close to appearing in the film, and mayhem. This is the stuff B-movies are made of.
http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/attack50.jpg
@47
Wow, pretty racy for 1936, what with the way Crash is holding that canister/sausage/thing.
I agree with Lark. I mean, who can withstand the might of Puma-Man when he has the dang-nabbed DEATH STAR as backup! :lol: Stylistically though, I actually like how “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies” came out. I also enjoyed the poster for The Giant Spider Invasion……even if it promises much more action than the film could possibly deliver.
#55
Why “dishonorable” mention? The German poster woman seems more
well-endowed then Burt Reynold’s skinnier girl. :grin:
I think the VHS cover of The Final Sacrifice is pretty funny, it has two good looking guys on the cover. Both of the figures do not look anything like Zap and Troy, one of them has a gun, I think.
I have to applaud the poster for It Lives By Night, http://www.mst3ktemple.com/images/it_lives_by_night.jpg at least it is somewhat different and kind of creepy. Too bad the actual movie was a steaming pile of nothing
Here’s the “Manos: The Hands of Fate” poster:
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/File:Manosposter.jpg
It says “We defy you to guess the ending and ask you not to divulge it!” Wow, looks like the folks who attended the grand premiere in El Paso didn’t heed the poster’s warning and revealed the ending to the entire world. Maybe that’s why nobody else ever went to see it!
“Hey, wanna go see that new one called ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate?'”
“Naw, there’s no point. Haven’t you heard about the ending that everyone divulged aready?”
Oops, I misspelled “already”. Sorry.
I don’t own any of these actual posters but do love the imagery. A bunch of them (and many more) can be found in a torrent called “5092 Exploitation Movieposters by kinky queen” which I located when searching for an unedited copy of Robot Holocaust (which I also found, but dubbed in Italian). The collection is 966 MB in size and is an ideal source for a desktop background/screen saver.
movie posters,The poster for The Projected Man is interesting.i think so
I love old movie posters, especially B movie posters. I always liked The Green Slime poster, as well as The Beast From 20,00 Fathoms, Them! and The Blob
And The Fly. I’m sure there’s others I could think of
Okay, I just had to check and see what kind of poster Space Mutiny might have.
http://www.griph.net/bp/spacemutiny.jpg
Ugh, so generically bad, just like the movie. Also, what’s she doing to his butt?
I remember being infatuated with the film “Village of the Giants” as a pre-teen/teenager.
But it wasn’t until I was in high school and found a book about teen movies, did I see the poster art…needless to say, I became a high school delinquent when I made off with that page in the book. I blame YOU, Bert I Gordon!
Years later, when I created my Village of the Giants website, I had the opportunity to interview actress Victoria London, who told something interesting about the promotional materials.
Victoria was originally to have the role that would later be had by Joy Harmon. During wardrobe fittings, one of the producers (Victoria didn’t remember or give a name) asked several of the girls to disrobe to figure out which of them would be used for the posters and other materials. Victoria refused to do such a thing, and word is, her refusal caused her role to be pushed back from the head-girl to the #4 role, in which she was also often kept off the screen for much of the film.
I told this to actress Gail Gerber, and she said she remembered something about that happening as well.
You can find more info about Victoria at my villageofthegiants website, and if you go to the ‘information’ section and then click on ‘interviews,’ you’ll find the full info there” http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/villageoftheg/VickiLondon.html
It’s not a MSTed movie, but my favorite poster is for GODZILLA VS. THE THING; the one that shows something that looks kinda like Godzilla battling this gigantic – well, we can’t really tell what it is, because most of “The Thing” is hidden behind a white box that reads “CENSORED …Behind this panel is “THE THING” The Producers of this Motion Picture take this precaution to spare those who can’t take its full horror… for those who can… see this picture from the beginning!” But there are several gaping, fanged mouths and spiked tentacles poking out from behind the panel to tantalize us with the idea that Godzilla will fight some huge and horrible monstrosity.
Probably the most misleading poster in movie history, because “The Thing” turns out to be Mothra, the giant moth (who possesses no fangs, and no tentacles). I wonder how many people went to that movie and were disappointed that the monster looked nothing like what was supposedly lurking behind that “Censored” panel. (Because that would have been a cool monster!)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124356369@N01/2508389374/
Cabbage #68 There’s a slightly better Space Mutiny poster here:
http://www.mst3ktemple.com/images/820-space_mutiny.jpg
EEGAH #71 – I’m not so sure I like that one better. It does look a bit more professional, but the first poster has railing kills!
@56 – My all-time favorite movie poster is the one for Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, a scene that doesn’t come close to appearing in the film
To this day, it’s that poster that makes clueless B-movie quoters think that the 50FW was some sort of “avenging feminist symbol”, and not some annoying loopy and transparent Joan Crawford wannabe.
The Final Sacrifice VHS cover looks like a cover to a choose your own adventure book.
@68 and 71 – Cabbage, that’s not actually the movie poster for Space Mutiny. It’s a trade ad from a magazine (the site you found it on either has the same magazine or grabbed the picture from my site). The other is the video cover. I actually do have the large 27×41 poster that looks almost like the video cover, but I’ve just been lazy and haven’t taken a picture of it yet to post.
I picked up a 30×40 of Mitchell about 15 years ago when Rick’s Movie Warehouse was doing a purge of 70s posters. It looks like it was painted with feces.
A friend of mine took it to Dragon Con a few years back and got Mike and Kevin to sign it. And by sign, I mean “deface.” Hoping to get the rest of them to add to it at the DC CT show.
Along those same lines of misleading poster art (#70), I remember as a child seeing the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis KING KONG and waiting for the giant ape to straddle the WTC like he does in the awesome poster (http://www.impawards.com/1976/king_kong.html). But he never did, and was too small to even attempt it. My first disappointing experience with the Hollywood hype machine.
Wow, that King Kong poster is completely full of crap. And just how can a remake of a classic film be an “original event” anyhow?
By the way, kudos to Paul for one the best discussion topics in recent memory. Too bad all Pauls are doomed to become ineffectual monsters by the end of the movie.
“King Kong for Christmas” ?
Damn…I wanted a pony!
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