Category Archives: movie ads

Cap’s back: ‘Winter Soldier’ teaser poster

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captain-america-the-winter-soldier-poster

So this is cool.

The teaser poster for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was released today.

And we’re told a new teaser trailer comes out in a couple of days.

The poster confirms some things we had already heard:

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is mostly (or entirely) set in the present day.

It’s mostly set in Washington DC.

It’s a political thriller in some respects (that follows, considering the setting).

SHIELD is heavily involved, and it looks like Cap is about to jump out of a SHIELD aircraft and the helicarrier is visible.

The movie’s to be released April 4.

‘Avengers’ animatics, ‘Man of Steel 2’ fan teaser trailer

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man of steel 2 teaser trailer logo

Ah, what might have been.

And what might still be.

Part of the fun of being a movie fan is thinking about what our favorite movies might have looked life if things had gone in a slightly different direction. Not to mention what we wish future movies might look like. So there’s a lot of talk online about a look back at an almost-was and a look ahead at what-might be.

First, some video animatics – animated storyboards, basically – that were apparently produced for “The Avengers” show how some scenes might have come out differently if they’d been filmed as originally considered.

avengers animatic w wasp

Among the big changes: Hawkeye in a more traditional costume and the presence of Janet Van Dyne as the Wasp, one of the founding members of the Avengers in comics who hasn’t made her way into the Marvel movie universe yet.

The drawings in the animatics are credited to Federico D’Alessandro and, if accurate, show not only the Wasp in an early version of the story but a scene in which Tony Stark’s Jarvis is trash-talking the other Avengers behind their backs. Some online commenters have said it’s an early indication confirming rumors Jarvis might turn into artificial intelligence villain Ultron in time for “Avengers 2,” but I think it’s more likely it’s Loki was just yanking Iron Man’s chain.

affleck man of steel 2 teaser trailer

The other fun stuff is a fan-made teaser trailer for “Man of Steel 2.” Using nicely edited clips from other movies and the TV series “Breaking Bad,” the fan trailer not only introduces Bruce Wayne (as played by Ben Affleck) and Superman/Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) to each other but shows us Superman’s Big Bad, Lex Luthor, in the person of “Breaking Bad” actor Brian Cranston.

It’s a pretty fun trailer. Cranston is an obvious choice for Luthor, of course – maybe too obvious – but the fake trailer’s creator should get hired cutting previews.

 

‘SharkNado,’ ‘Ghost Shark’ and great exploitation movies

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screamers advertisement

I still remember my expectations when I saw “Screamers” at a drive-in theater in 1981.

They were pretty damn low.

After all, “Screamers” was sold with the catchphrase “Be Warned: You Will Actually See a Man Turned Inside Out” on the poster. When a movie is sold on that kind of pitch alone you know it’s got problems.

When that scene doesn’t even happen in the movie, you know the suckers who paid admission have problems.

Anyway, “Screamers” – which was actually an Italian movie called “Island of the Fish Men,” made two years earlier, then released with some footage added by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures – was pretty weak stuff.

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It’s appropriate that the universally liked Corman has, in recent years, produced cheap sci-fi movies for the SyFy channel, home of “SharkNado,” a huge hit on SyFy a few weeks back, and inspiration for “Ghost Shark,” which aired Thursday night. Neither were Corman productions but might have been. That’s because the mix of inspiration and desperation that went into the writing, filming and marketing of these movies was vintage Corman.

“SharkNado’s” best marketing tool was one that couldn’t have been planned or bought by SyFy. The Twitter reaction to the movie the evening it aired added greatly to the movie’s impact on the pop culture landscape.

When SyFy aired “Ghost Shark” – an inferior movie to “SharkNado” but one with some funny and audacious scenes – the channel seemed to try to prime the Twitter pump by superimposing lame “Tweets” in the upper left corner of the screen.

Didn’t work.

I often wonder how modern technology and social media who have affected the plots of movies that predated their invention. In the case of “Screamers” back in 1981, I can only imagine how my friends and I would have digitallly picked the movie apart there from our drive-in vantage point.

Movie classic: ‘Francis in the Haunted House’

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francis in the haunted house poster

More than a half-century later, it’s hard to imagine a movie studio building a series of films around the exploits of a talking mule and his human sidekick.

Yet Universal, home of classic monsters and classic funny/scary movies, released seven pictures about Francis, an Army mule voiced by veteran character actor Chill Wills (in the first six) and accompanied by straight man Peter Stirling (Donald O’Connor in the first six flicks).

The movies were based on a book and were sent into theaters beginning in 1950 mostly as a post-war military comedy. Francis and Peter went to West Point, joined the WACs and the Navy. Inevitably, Peter got into some kind of jam, Francis dispensed wise-cracking good advice and nobody believed that the mule could talk. Until he did.

My introduction to the series was a 1960s showing on an Indy TV station of the last film in the series, “Francis in the Haunted House,” released in 1956.

francis in the haunted house leads

My view is no doubt skewed by the fact that this, the first in the series that I remember seeing, had a different star – Mickey Rooney – and a different voice – veteran voice actor Paul Frees – replacing Wills as the voice of Francis.

But for a kid who grew up loving not only Universal monster films, including “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” I found the mix of laughs and chills perfect.

In the movie, David Prescot (Rooney) meets Francis and, after the initial surprise at the fact this is a talking mule, they set off on an adventure. The two try to help a woman win her inheritance by staying in a supposedly haunted mansion.

In a formula that became familiar through “Scooby Do,” the haunting is being staged by crooks who want to win the mansion and Prescot is a patsy in more ways than one.

There is, however, a foe that Francis and Prescot can fight together: A ghostly knight on horseback.

It’s no doubt true that the Francis formula was more than a little tired by this point. O’Connor bailed from the series before this entry was made and was widely quoted as saying he knew it was time to go when the mule got more fan mail.

But there’s a lot of pleasure to be found in the final “Francis” movie. It’s perfect for “Abbott and Costello” fans.

Classic schlock: ‘The Brain That Wouldn’t Die’

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the brain that wouldn't die ad

Believe it or not, I hadn’t seen “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” in its entirety until just recently.

It is, after all, one of those classic schlocky horror movies, those cult drive-in classics, that everybody is familiar with even if you haven’t seen it. It was the first Mike Nelson “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” for pete’s sake.

Yet I managed to never see more than random clips until I sat down to watch it on DVD the other day.

And what a treat.

Filmed in 1959 but not released until 1962, the movie’s original title was “The Head That Wouldn’t Die,” who was probably more accurate.

The movie stars Jason Evers – a familiar face from the “Star Trek” series episode “Wink of an Eye” – as Dr. Cortner, an arrogant surgeon who is secretly experimenting, Frankenstein-style, on creating life after death. He’s been saving random body parts and assembling a creature that’s kept in the laboratory closet downstairs in his family’s summer home.

Early in the movie, even Cortner’s surgeon father criticizes his lack of humility and unpleasant ambitions.

Then Cortner and girlfriend Jan are in a auto accident and Jan is decapitated. Jan is beheaded in the kind of car crash that is usually found in low-budget movies: Lots of shots of the car careening along a country road, then quickly approaching a guard rail. The crash itself isn’t seen. Neither is Jan’s head, which Cortner wraps up in his sportcoat and rushes from the scene (with as much footage of him running, bunched up jacket in his arms, as there are shots of the car speeding down the road).

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So Cortner put’s Jan … in a pan … at least her head … in his basement lab. Then he begins scouting out a replacement body.

The movie certainly seems to have inspired scenes in “The Re-Animator,” with its head in a pan motif. And “Jan in the Pan” is apparently the nickname for the female lead once she’s … in a pan.

brain that wouldn't die monster in closet

Every cheap horror movie needs a monster and a woman’s head in a pan just wasn’t going to cut it. Hence … the stitched-together monster in the closet.

diane arbus the jewish giant

The creature, the result of Cortner’s previous experiments, is played by seven-foot, six inch Eddie Carmel, subject of a photo by renowned photographer Diane Arbus that depicts Carmel as “The Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents.”

As Cortner goes to a burlesque house to pick out a new body for Jan, he doesn’t seem like a tortured soul looking to save his girlfriend. He seems to be enjoying the view a little too much.

Adding to the overall aura of sleaze: Two dancers get into a catfight, boobs jiggling. Cut to drawings of two cats and a dubbed meow.

Jan, meanwhile, wakes up – well, her head wakes up – and she immediately begins talking to the still-unseen monster in the closet, talking up their mutual need for revenge.

There’s some choice dialogue:

“An operating room is no place to experiment.”

“Very well. The corpse is yours.”

Said during operation: “I’ve been working on something like this for weeks.” Well, tons of research then.

“I love her too much to let her stay like this.” Well, a disembodied head in a pan, yeah.

“The line between scientific genius and obsessive fanaticism is a thin one.”

“Horror has its ultimate … and I’m that.”

And cackling by Jan in the pan. Lots of cackling.

The end credit slide on the copy that I watched still had the original title: “The Head That Wouldn’t Die!”

Images: Electro, ‘Man of Steel,’ ‘Star Trek’

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star_trek into darkness trailer ships

We’re at the point I’m ready to quit watching clips and previews for movies like “Iron Man 3” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” because they seem so spoiler-intensive. Even if they’re really not.

But new trailers for the “Star Trek” film and “Man of Steel” have come out in advance of their summer openings. And news about “Amazing Spider-Man 2” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” has broken.

So, herewith, some images.

At the top is a shot from the “Star Trek Into Darkness” trailer. That’s the Enterprise on the left. But what’s the ship on the right? Some futuristic version of the Enterprise? Is it what the crew ends up piloting – not unlike the Klingon ship they sported in “Star Trek IV” after the Enterprise was destroyed?

So is Benedict Cumberbatch a time traveler?

On to comic book movies.

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The “Man of Steel” trailer released this week didn’t feel as much like a solemn affair as the previous ones did. A little more action, a little more human (and Kryptonian) emotion. I’m beginning to look forward to this.

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I’m not sure what to think about Jamie Fox here as Electro from “Amazing Spider-Man 2.” He’s very … blue.

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But it seems unlikely they would put him in this, his traditional comic-book outfit.

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And then there’s news that our beloved Michael Rooker of “The Walking Dead” will appear in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” in 2014. But not as the voice of Rocket Raccoon.

No. Rooker will be playing Yondu, another member of the Guardians.

I wonder if he’ll be as blue as Electro?

I think director James Gunn’s film is getting trippier all the time.

Roger Ebert RIP

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roger ebert

It was ironic but delightful that when Roger Ebert lost his voice, he gained another.

Ebert, the longtime Chicago Sun-Times movie reviewer, who died today at 70 after a long battle with cancer, was – as was former partner Gene Siskel – one of the most familiar faces and voices in film criticism for decades beginning in the 1970s.

After operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin in the past decade, Ebert lost much of his lower jaw as well as his ability to eat solid foods and speak.

But coincidentally to those losses, Ebert – who had written thousands of movie reviews during his career and several books – became a frequent blogger and even more frequent Twitter user. Hundreds of thousands of people – including me – followed him on Twitter, and I would venture a guess that most of us enjoyed his pithy comments on not only movies but politics and art and life.

The best thing that can be said about Ebert is that he was always fun to read, educational and entertaining. The other best thing is that, thanks to his drive and his embracing of social media, he was always relevant.

The balcony is closed.

Del Tenney, director of ‘Horror of Party Beach,’ dies

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horror-of-party-beach

Word has reached monster movies fans of the death of director Del Tenney, who passed away in February at 82.

del tenney

Tenney produced and directed several films, including a drive-in double-feature classic, “I Eat Your Skin,” but he was best known as the director of “The Horror of Party Beach,” a grandly silly 1964 exploitation movie that was often shown on a double feature with “The Curse of the Living Corpse.”

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Tenney’s “The Horror of Party Beach” is one of those movies that could only have existed in the wild exploitation days of the 1960s, when drive-in theaters meant that even the lowest-budgeted, most ludicrous movies could be seen by millions of teenagers.

With its mix of Beach Boys-style rock and roll – courtesy of the Del Aires, who perform “The Zombie Stomp” in the movie – frantically dancing teens, beach blanket bingo and a biker gang, the movie had a little something for everyone.

Perhaps typical of a low-budget monster movie from the 1960s, “The Horror of Party Beach” seems pretty vague – or pretty confused – about what its monsters were. In the trailer alone, they’re referred to as atomic monsters, demons, the living dead and zombies. Huh?

horror party beach curse corpse double

The ads for the “Party Beach” and “Living Corpse” double-feature were among those that warned that, in order to see the movie, viewers had to release the theater from liability in the case moviegoers died from shock.

Tenney made his movies in the Stamford, Conn., area, and years after he lit up drive-in movie screens he made a (legitimate) name for himself, according to online obituaries, as a leading light in live theater. Henry Fonda made his last stage appearance in a production at the company that Tenney shepherded.

Here’s to Del Tenney. Our drive-in nightmares were better because of him.

Cool Mandarin poster for ‘Iron Man 3’

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iron-man-3-poster-ben-kingsley

So Marvel has been releasing these character posters for “Iron Man 3.”

The ones for Don Cheadle as Rhodey and Guy Pierce as a baddie are fine.

But this one … this is cool.

tales of suspense 55 mandarin

At the top here is Ben Kingsley as Mandarin. Based on a fairly typical 1960s-era “Yellow Peril” villain from the Iron Man comics, Mandarin seemed like a daunting character to pull off in a modern-day movie without being offensive or silly.

But I wonder if director Shane Black hasn’t gone and done it.

Look closely at that poster.

See the dog tags hanging over the arm of Mandarin’s chair?

He’s wearing the camo pants of a soldier but the regal robe of a king.

He’s a big lover of incense.

He sports both cool shades and a ponytail.

But most of all: The ten rings!

Just the design of this character’s look is cool.

I cannot wait until May. But I guess I have to.

Classic horror movies: ‘Chamber of Horrors’

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I first became acquainted with “Chamber of Horrors” sometime in the 1970s when it aired on TV. Which was ironic since the movie was made for TV in 1966 – it was even a pilot for a series, as the final “what adventure will we get into next time” scenes makes obvious – but was considered too gruesome for broadcast.

So “Chamber of Horrors” was released to theaters and with that release came the opportunity for a great gimmick.

Cesare Danova and Wilfred Hyde-White are the owners of a wax museum in Baltimore in the late 1800s. They are also amateur detectives, investigating killers who might be good displays for their gruesome House of Wax.

The run across a serial killer, Jason Cravatte (Patrick O’Neal, suave in a cast of suave actors), who would make a likely addition to their chamber of horrors.

If he doesn’t kill them first.

Cravatte is a fun Big Bad because of his gimmick. He’s missing a hand, so – like the villain from “Enter the Dragon,” only years before – he replaces the missing appendage with various murderous sharp objects.

To flesh – no pun intended – out the running time of the movie for theatrical release and amp up the gimmickry, the producers inserted the “Fear Flasher” and “Horror Horn,” visual and audio clues to tell audience members when they should close their eyes or turn away.

When Cravatte was about to chop off a body part, the screen would flash red and ungodly noises would begin blasting at the audience.

If we didn’t understand, narrator Wiliam Conrad explained things to us:

“Ladies and Gentlemen … The motion picture you are about to see contains scenes so terrifying, the public must be given grave warning. Therefore the management has instituted visual and audible warnings at the beginning of each of the FOUR SUPREME FRIGHT POINTS … the HORROR HORN and the FEAR FLASHER. The Fear Flasher is the visual warning. The Horror Horn is the audible warning. Turn away when you see the Fear Flasher. Close your eyes when you hear the Horror Horn.”

Of course, if you dared continue watching, you didn’t really see any gore. Not like the decapitations and amputations on your average episode of “The Walking Dead” today.

But it was a great gimmick.

Personally, I wish “Chamber of Horrors” had led to a TV series. It would have preceded “The Night Stalker” as an episodic horror series by several years and would have been a favorite of all us bloodthirsty movie and TV geeks from back in the day.