The posters that dripped blood

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on March 25, 2008

Paul Thomas Anderson's award-winning and widely lauded period drama There Will Be Blood (2007) is no doubt one of very few culturati must-sees with the word "blood" in the title. That attention-grabbing handle never fails to stop me cold and make me think (in the torture chamber of my mind) "There will be blood? There's always been blood!" Visitors to my home(s) have long been intrigued by my movie collection and the perverse pride with which I display, prominently, video and DVD boxes with the "blood" in the title. It's juvenile, I suppose, but it's me.

I mean, let's be honest. How many movies give you the opportunity to Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969)? Subtlety be damned but whoever drew the poster for this later Hammer horror was really bringing it that day, don't you think? (For the record, the film is exceedingly liberal with the Kensington Gore, especially in an early scene in which Dracula is returned to corporeality with a heaping helping of an acolyte's hemoglobin.) I'd be afraid to wear white pants to that movie. Same with Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (1969), whose poster appears at the top. Forget about prudent Hollywood thrillers posing as badass entertainment (I'm looking at you No Country for Old Men)… this thing's a blood bath from collar to cuffs and the poster doesn't even tell the half of it – which is a rare example of a B movie poster actually underselling the carnage.

Things are a bit dryer in Night of the Blood Beast (1958) but that was life in Eisenhower America, where bodily fluids were discouraged. Roger Corman (who executive produced this, with brother Gene sharing a writing credit) always seemed to like having "blood" in the title of films he directed or produced, as in his cult classic A Bucket of Blood (1959), the war film Battle of Blood Island (1960), the sci-fi cheapie Queen of Blood (1966), the cobbled-together Blood Bath (1966), the gansterrific Bloody Mama (1970) and his long-running Bloodfist series. Even lower down on the exploitation scale was Herschell Gordon Lewis, whose infamous Blood Feast (1963) set the gore bar for numerous horror films to come. Lewis followed this invitation to the blood orgy with Color Me Blood Red (1965), A Taste of Blood (1967) and The Gore Gore Girls (1972), along with a number of equally blood-soaked offerings with less sanguinous titles.

I think we can all agree that blood is important …and therein lies the appeal of most horror films. We naturally fear the loss of something so vital to us. Whether you flock to horror movies like a fly to a sugar cube or flee from them in abject disgust, both reactions celebrate the efficacy of fright flicks as cautionary tales that urge us to hold dear to that which is so essential to our wellbeing and yet so easily lost. I prize horror movies because, no matter how bad things are, no matter how many bills are piled up, no matter how many ants are invading my kitchen at any given time and eating my Joe's Os, no matter how many ear infections my son gets during a single season or how many times I have to run to get the cat off the new rug before he wretches… at least I'm not pinned and punctured within Baron Blood's Iron Maiden or hanging exsanguinated in Dracula's castle, with my precious blood pooling in The Undying Count's sarcophagus. Far from behind morbid in the truest sense ("unwholesome, unhealthy, gruesome"), I think an interest in these things is life-affirming. Why else would a title such as Blood and Roses (1960), The Bloody Vampire (1962), The Bloody Pit of Horror (1965), Brides of Blood (1968), Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969), Night of Bloody Horror (1969), Night of the Bloody Apes (1969), The Bloody Judge (1970), The House that Dripped Blood (1970), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Blood Spattered Bride (1972), Bloody Friday (1972), Theatre of Blood (1973), Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974), Mary Mary Bloody Mary (1975), Bloody Monkey Master (1977), Bloodeaters (1980), Blood Beach (1980), My Bloody Valentine (1981) or, best of all, Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968) tickle me so? Why, to enjoy these films for any other reason I'd have to be a ghoul, a freak, a bloody weirdo!

I mourn the passing of the vogue for garish movie posters such as the ones I've included here. Movies are more violent than ever, it seems, and yet their posters are dull and demure to the point of lifelessness, as if the onesheets were apologizing for the movies they are trying to sell. I can't recommend the flick itself but I was pleased to learn recently that certain posters for the torture porn cash-in sequel Saw III (2006), depicting that loquacious serial punisher Jigsaw striking a coy pose within the folds of an inquisitor's red cowl, were painted with a bit of actor Tobin Bell's actual blood. Of course, this bit of trivia may in fact be nothing more than a publicity agent's ballyhoo but I appreciate the effort to inject a little much-needed grue into contemporary movie posterage, which has been more than a little anemic over the past quarter century. Red is such a great color, it goes with everything and, as we all know, the blood is the life!

RHS

who continues to hold a grudge against John Schlesinger, the late director of Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)… for reasons that should be at this point quite obvious.

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2 Responses The posters that dripped blood

Posted By Josem : March 25, 2008 8:44 pm

The "House that Dripped Blood" poster brought me memories of being a boy and seeing the poster at the old Radio City theater in San Juan.

Posted By zed : December 30, 2009 2:16 pm

great posters

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