Recent TV spots for the remakes of FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) and MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981) have got me thinking back to the g(l)ory days of 70s and 80s grindhouse and drive-in horror and exploitation, when movie trailers had a greater ability to beguile, to attract and to frighten. 

I don’t know if this preview for CUT-THROATS 9 (1972) is the one I saw as a kid but the thing terrified me.  I accidentally tape recorded the trailer for “the most violent motion picture ever portrayed on the screen” and used to run that tape when I was alone at night in my room with the express purpose of scaring myself witless.  The rather graphic violence in this coming attraction makes me think it isn’t the TV spot I remember… but this one has the same promise of unparalleled brutality that put me in my place at the age of 10.

This “teaser” for Larry Cohen’s IT’S ALIVE (1974) hardly shows anything – and that’s what’s so scary about it!  You can’t take your eyes off of that slowly revolving bassinet, knowing that once it completes its arc something is going to pop out.  You can’t look!  You can’t not look!  Genius advertising that we still talk about 35 years later even though nothing happens!

Directed by Richard Attenborough from the novel/screenplay by William Goldman, MAGIC (1978) was and remains no great shakes.  As Mr. Peel of Mr. Peel’s Sardine Liquour said recently, the Catskills-set chiller is more depressing than scary and doesn’t even come close to making good on the promise of “a terrifying love story,” but that dummy!  Egad, is that the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen in a fisherman’s sweater?  And you just know those eyes are going to pop open again at the end, you just know it!

“Orgy of the Living Dead” was a repackaging of three European horror movies long after they’d come to and gone from the first run theaters.  All of the features were given new titles: Mario Bava’s KILL, BABY… KILL (which had been called OPERAZIONE PAURA in Italy) was called CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD, Elio Scardamaglia’s THE MURDER CLINIC became REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD and Amando de Ossorio’s MALENKA was rechrisened FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD.  The ad slicks for this “triple avalanche of grisly horror” were pretty cool but the TV ads were the coup de grace.  It was unknown until fairly recently that this campaign was the brainchild of Alan Ormsby, writer and star of the cult classic CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (1972) and later responsible for penning Paul Shrader’s 1982 remake of THE CAT PEOPLE.  In May 0f 2007, Tim Lucas broke the news that the footage of the unfortunate “John Austin Frazier” was shot by Ormsby and Bob Clark, who had directed CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS and went on to the greater glory of the timeless holiday classic A CHRISTMAS STORY (1982).

That’s Academy Award-nominated actor Adolph Caesar narrating this trailer for BLACULA (1972).  Before his late life (and sadly short-lived) celebrity as one of the stars of A SOLDIER’S STORY (1984), Caesar voiced a lot of grindhouse coming attractions and his gravely delivery really got your going.  So many of the voice artists of those days had hard, insinuating voices that clawed their way into your brains and made you pay attention.  I don’t know why we ever got away from that style because it’s so, I don’t know, wicked!

In 2007, Eli Roth, Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie and Robert Rodriquez created fake vintage trailers for Rodriquez and Quentin Tarantino’s GRINDHOUSE.  Obviously, these guys are well-schooled in the gnarly particulars of 70s exploitation fare (the emulsion scratches, the choppy editing, the sinister narration) but it’s funny how, for all the grace notes they’ve larded into their bogus coming attractions, the things are clearly not the real thing.  They’re too self-indulgent, too impressed with their own cleverness, too busy winking when they should be selling, selling, selling.  70s and early 80s trailers never made that mistake.  They knew where you lived.  They knew what you were thinking.  They knew your secrets, your shame.  They knew you didn’t slow down at a roadside accident to offer help but to gawk and gape.  Those old coming attractions had you coming and going.  They went for the throat… and more often than not came away with your whole head.