Trailers from Hell Xtra

The first coproduction between England's Hammer Films and American International Pictures is an appropriately lurid affair, with many heaving bosoms showing the telltale marks of Carmilla, the lesbian vampire. Not as arty as Roger Vadim's superior "Blood and Roses", this was a big enough hit in 1970 to spawn two pulchritudinous follow-ups, "Lust for a Vampire" and "Twins of Evil".

If you want monsters, this last gasp (circa 1957) of the old-fashioned mad doctor movie delivers in spades. Made for a division of ABC television.

Writer Jack Nicholson and star Peter Fonda told Roger Corman he couldn't make a movie about LSD without trying it at least once. So Roger took a caravan of pals to Big Sur, where he dutifully dropped acid and communed with the elements. Out of it all came his most personal and revealing film, a pop art time capsule that was banned in Britain for nearly a decade.

George Pal's greatest work finds the humanity in H.G. Wells' classic, ably served by Oscar-winning fx, Russ Garcia's memorable score and Rod Taylor and Alan Young's warm performances. A touchstone for a generation. Paul Frees seems quite enthusiastic about it!

This 1963 offshoot of Roger Corman's popular Edgar Allan Poe series has slipped into the public domain and is available on countless video labels, usually in crummy looking prints... this is from an original 35mm Technicolor print.

Having added some comedy to his earlier Poe trilogy "Tales of Terror", Roger Corman went all out for humor in this popular 1963 entry, which was nevertheless sold basically as a straight horror film. But the image of Peter Lorre in a bird costume was kind of a tipoff...

Long before Gordon Gekko told us "greed is good", Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) embarked on a mad quest to prove that everyone has their price. Terry Southern transforms his cynical novel into a nihilistic lark full of celebrity cameos and Monty Python-esque gags, some contributed by actual soon-to-be Python members.

Philadelphia-born Director Richard Lester sandwiched this wacky paeon to Swinging '60s London between "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!". Based on Ann Jellicoe's play and notable as the fleeting screen debuts of Jacqueline Bissett, Jane Birkin and Charlotte Rampling.

In 1961 Roger Corman took a flyer from his exploitation roots and made one from the heart, from Charles Beaumont's angry novel inspired by the rabble-rousing exploits of Southern racist John Kasper. When exhibitors refused to book it, Corman returned to Edgar Allan Poe and the movie disappeared into grindhouse hell under titles like Shame and I Hate Your Guts. William Shatner stars, but Corman's first choice was...Tony Randall!

Jack Clayton's masterpiece, one of the greatest cinematic ghost stories, is ill-served by this lowbrow trailer that sells it like a cheap Eurotrash import. Film debut of the lovely and talented Pamela Frankin.

Former animator Frank Tashlin sums up the 1950s in this hilarious live-action cartoon, a Mad Magazine parody come to life. The first major studio picture to showcase breakout rock&roll stars.

The subtle terror techniques that Robert Wise learned from his mentor Val Lewton are on uncanny display in the creepiest haunted house movie of them all. (The trailer's not too subtle, though.) Compare the original to the lamentable remake to see the difference between art and CGI junk.

Shot near Tarrytown, New York as "The Head That Wouldn't Die", this sleazy little gem sat unreleased for two years until AIP picked it up in 1962. Their numerous censor cuts for reasons of "good taste" (as if!) have been since restored and the whole sordid farrago is now available pretty much everywhere in its full, fuzzy public domain gory, er, glory.

A great cast swashbuckles its way through Henry King's piratical spectacular with an assist from Leon Shamroy's Oscar-winning Technicolor cinematography. Splendid hokum in the overstuffed Darryl Zanuck tradition.

Lightning in a bottle: AIP's penchant for making bargain- basement movies based on title and poster research paid off in spades with this hugely influential amalgam of juvenile delinquent and monster genres. The surprise hit of 1957.

Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman's corrosive look at Power in America as typified by an unscrupulous and possibly insane Broadway columnist modeled on Ed Sullivan and Walter Winchell. Brilliantly directed by the underrated Alexander Mackendrick. A must-see.

Universal was the leader in slickly produced 50s genre pix, and here's another eerie desert-set chiller from Jack Arnold with good special fx and creepy makeups. Leo G. Carroll, one of Hitchcock's favorite actors, classes up the joint as the scientist whose serum results in big buggery.

Edgar has his own thoughts on the very different American trailer that accompanied the US release of Argento's classic.

Billy Wilder royally p.o.'d most of the Hollywood establishment with this devastatingly dark yet moving take on the tragic decline of silent movie queen Norma Desmond (an unforgettable Gloria Swanson), pushed aside by an unfeeling industry. One of the all-time greats. "I AM big! It's the PICTURES that got small!"

Taking up the lurid mantel of Mario Bava, former film critic Dario Argento rocketed to international prominence with this highly influential giallo which spawned countless imitations. This is the international trailer made for export.

Stephen Bochco and Michael Cimino were among the writers of fx wizard Doug Trumbull's melancholy 1971 space odyssey, which has taken on belated luster in our globally steam-heated present. One of Bruce Dern's finest hours.

Everybody's favorite director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is dodging bill collectors who want him to pay for King Kong's Big Apple antics and finds himself back on Skull Island with the lovely Helen Mack in this hastily-produced sequel. A family tragedy during production resulted in fx genius Willis O'Brien entrusting some of the animation to assistants.

The first Video Nasty came not only before video but from the esteemed Michael Powell, whose career was sidetracked into shorts for The Childrens' Film Foundation by this much maligned and misunderstood rumination on the dark powers of cinema. In the US it was relegated to skinflick houses and grindhouse second features.

A most unusual trailer (almost a short subject at nearly 7 minutes long) from 1960, when Hitchcock had merchandised himself a la Walt Disney into one of the most recognizable movie directors on earth. WARNING! MR. LANDIS REQUESTS YOU WATCH THIS TRAILER FIRST WITHOUT HIS VOICEOVER TO ENJOY MR. HITCHCOCK'S NARRATION.

Castaways on a tropical island run by Nazi fugitives who turn native girls into monsters! If that sounds appealing to you, then this threadbare 1958 drive-in cheapie is up your alley!

It's pretty much a bromide that if James Dean had not died at his peak he might have ended up like Troy Donahue, but in this emblematic Nick Ray film, released after Dean's death in a 1955 auto accident, he continues to electrify new generations with his raw emotion.

"Howdya like to drag that one to the High School Prom?" leers a horny astronaut while ogling the shapely acolytes of Queen Yllana, leader of the all-girl Venusian population. "I hate zat qveen", grumbles Chief Scientist Zsa Zsa Gabor, who doesn't appear to be in on the joke. Silly, spoofy and cheerfully chauvinistic, this one has many fans, some of them straight.

Dick Clark produced Richard Rush's ode to the Haight-Ashbury scene, filmed on location by Laszlo Kovacs in Psychedelic Color. Remember, as Dean Stockwell tells us, "all the games gotta go, or else it's just a plastic hassle"!

Anticipating punk rock, Peter Watkins' semi-documentary study of a future society using music to enslave the masses appropriates some unauthorized reenactments from the National Film Board of Canada's groundbreaking Paul Anka docu "Lonely Boy". How Universal ended up distributing this is a mystery even they couldn't solve.

Probably the best known of the AIP Corman/Poe series, circa 1961. Writer Richard Matheson had to concoct an almost entirely new story incorporating Poe's central situation. The great Paul Frees narrates the trailer.

Petrified is right! 30 percent new movie plus 70 percent stock footage equals one of the more outrageous excuses for a feature film since, well, since the previous Jerry Warren picture! But you gotta hand it to Jerry -- he made Ed Wood look like Bernardo Bertolucci, but he got these things made and people paid to see 'em!

Sergio Leone's 1968 masterpiece gives the lie to the term "spaghetti western". In a hastily shortened version it was a box-office disappointment in the U.S.but it played in the same theater in Paris for years.

Albert Zugsmith's shining moment in an amiably disreputable career that nonetheless included producing pix by Sirk, Welles and Jack Arnold. Only Fu Manchu is missing from this hypnotically retrograde yellow peril hallucination starring Vincent Price and half the Asian actors in Hollywood.

Sci fi specialist Jack Arnold's best Western casts Audie Murphy against type -or is he?- as a cold-blooded hit man who just might be Death personified and brings fear to a town full of guilty people. An underrated gem.

Art Gilmore's breathless narration propels us through this classic trailer for the third collaboration between James Stewart and Anthony Mann, a rugged five-character psychological western with a great cast and gorgeous Rocky Mountain locations.

This much maligned and conversely beloved 1953 cheapie, one of the most bizarre and notorious "bad movies" ever, sports some surprisingly imaginative use of 3-D. Sold to tv only a few months after its theatrical release, it provided a surreal video jolt for fifties tykes with its lurid end of the world scenario. With a cool music score by the then-blacklisted Elmer Bernstein.

This time the Corman/Poe series moves to England for what is generally considered the best film in the series. Tabloid news was made circa 1964 when costar Jane Asher's boyfriend visted the set: Paul McCartney.

Although one wag said of director Stanley Kramer's all-star Cinerama extravaganza, "it shows what happens when a man who doesn't understand drama tries to do comedy", the years have been kind to it. Nostalgia for the once-in-a-lifetime ensemble cast alone would get it by, but the extravagant stunt work that seemed so unwhimsical in 1963 is now commonplace in movie comedy.

For their 1957 "Silver Jubilee", Universal offered this occasionally accurate biopic of its biggest silent star, Lon Chaney, as portrayed by the always reliable James Cagney.

Peter Lorre's Hollywood debut is one of the weirder pix ever to come from MGM, or maybe anywhere else. One of ace cinematographer Karl Freund's rare forays into directing, and his last. Gregg Toland photographed it, and years later Pauline Kael would claim he stole a lot of shots from this to use in Citizen Kane!

Jack Rabin and Irving Block were a couple of indie FX mavens whose works ranged from Night of the Hunter to Robot Monster. But one of their most offbeat creations was the giant alien robot Kronos, who wanted not Our Women but Our Energy. On its own terms it's a pretty nifty little picture, with an emblematic 50s sci-fi cast.

Billy Wilder took a lotta brickbats for this "vulgar", "tasteless" and "crude" sex comedy set in Climax, Nevada, which was roundly condemned from pulpits and lecterns countrywide in 1964. Its sleazy reputation has been somewhat rehabilitated over the years as pop culture has raced to embrace such concepts as DNA hair gel and carnal relations with baked goods.

First in Roger Corman's profitable series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, this 1960 excursion into quality from AIP spawned an entire series based on the idea that high school kids could watch them and then do book reports without reading the originals!

Hammer competitor Amicus Films found their mojo with this 1964 multi-story horror omnibus, which led to countless iterations of the same formula, including their biggest hit "Tales from the Crypt". The genius of the portmanteau system was that the actors were often needed for only a few days, which allowed for casts that were almost ridiculously classy.

Former tabloid reporter Sam Fuller's dynamic movies have been called crude and primitive, but at their best they play like a punch in the jaw. Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck believed in him and afforded the indie-oriented Fuller his most mainstream commercial opportunities in the 50s. This is the most exotic of the group.

Terence Fisher's seminal vampire triumph pits Cushing against Lee in their greatest Hammer pairing and sets the pace for the next two decades of movie horror. This is the original Universal theatrical trailer, not the video reconstruction that appears on the Warner dvd.

It's not exactly "The Lost Weekend", but Oscar-winner Ray Milland does pretty well for himself by this low-budget but intriguingly Promethean 1963 sci-fi outing from Roger Corman, which anticipates the alternate reality concepts of his later "The Trip". Of course the trailer is more interested in the "X-ray specs" aspects of the idea, like seeing through women's clothes!

The first of eight collaborations between noir specialist Anthony Mann and a newly flinty James Stewart, this psychological western exudes corrosive post-war anxiety. It also trailblazed a groundbreaking profit participation deal (engineered by Stewart's agent Lew Wasserman) that transformed the industry. Dan Duryea shines in a classic bad guy performance that defined his career.

<!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> AIP toppers were floored by the unexpectedly positive reviews this lightning-in-a-bottle satire garnered in the volatile political world of 1968. The right movie at the right moment, it captured the mood of a country in crisis and propelled star Christopher Jones into a short-lived mainstream career that included a starring role in David Lean's "Ryan's Daughter".

<!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> Sure it's creaky, but this early talkie from poverty row was the first zombie movie and visually it's still pretty cool. Bela Lugosi is the indelibly named Murder Legendre, head zombie master on a Haitian plantation where the dead don't charge for their labor. First takes seem to be the rule, as there are a number of flubbed lines and missed camera moves. This is the 1952 reissue trailer.