Last month I wrote about specific movie trailers of the 1970s and 80s that had a big impact on me as a kid.  Looking back on that post now, however, I regret that I unwittingly gave short shrift to coming attractions of an earlier vintage and to the particular brand of hyperbole they brokered in order to get butts in seats.  So join me, won’t you, in a celebration of HORRIFIC… GHASTLY… INCREDIBLE HYPERBOLE!

This Realart rerelease trailer for Karl Freund’s THE MUMMY (1932) is a pisser.  I love the hyperbole of the ad copy.  “You’ll know!  You’ll see!  You’ll feel the awful creeping, crawling terror that stands your hair on end” — and can you remember another movie preview that uses the word “incredulous”?  I love old time movie trailers.  In less than two minutes they could serve you up such an invitation to the dance, so beguile and charm you, so creep you out and challenge you – they were a work of art quite apart from the movies for which they fronted.  Movie trailers nowadays are elephantine short subjects that prattle on ad nauseam, telegraphing every shock, every CGI effect (check out this preview for THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT – did the rotten fruit really need to be in the trailer?), every allegedly big moment and as such serve as a Cliff Notes cutdown of something you’re probably better off not seeing.  I admit, I’m prejudiced.  I cut my teeth on the classic Universal monster movies of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.  When I was growing up in the late 60s and early 70s, these movies were ubiquitous on late night TV or afternoon creature feature programs.  They were my catechism, my sentimental education.  I think in some way they were a rejection on my part of the Day-Glo, hippie dippie times in which I was an impressionable tweener.  I hated the slobby, slovenly fashions of the post-Woodstock Me Decade and warmed instantly to the natty style of the Prohibition era and the years leading up to the Korean War.  Sharp fellas in double breasted suits and hats, swell gals, snappy dialogue, lots of brass in the musical score and monsters in pants.

Okay, so FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (1942) isn’t really “a hundred times more terrifying” (you’ll note that the guys who cut this trailer don’t specify what the movie is a hundred times more terrifying than) but by cracky I appreciate the spunk, the ballyhoo, the razzmatazz, the salesmanship.  “Horror twice as grim!”  Who wouldn’t want that?  And all in and out of your face in 1 minute and 36 seconds.  I guess the makers of these two trailers really had to bring it because they were trying to get people to come back and see horror movies they’d already seen and banked on hyperbole bridging the gap between familiarity and curiosity.  To the best of my knowledge, the tack worked a charm and audiences flocked to see these rereleases.

Even more fun than these retrofitted coming attractions are horror movie trailers that incorporate unique footage to sell their wares.  Check out Bela Lugosi in this preview for Tod Browning’s MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935).  “Watch out… they may be hovering… over YOU!”  God, that man was a riot, wasn’t he?  What MonsterKid circa 1935 wouldn’t have answered that summons?  I’ve seen the film several times and own it on DVD but this preview makes me want to sit right down and watch it again.

This trailer for Universal-International’s MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS (1958) benefits not only from superb hyperbole (“A monster leaving behind a trail of death and destruction”) but from a classic Paul Frees voiceover as well. Voiceovers added an extra layer of hyperbole to movie trailers, with unseen baritones acting as Svengalis compelling you, commanding you into the cinema.

I don’t know the artist providing the voiceover for this trailer for Mario Bava’s BLACK SABBATH (1964) but I love the funereal grit of his voice.  And the copy is to die for:  “As ancient as superstition, as modern as the telephone.”  Who wrote that?  Genius!  You’ll notice that this trailer is about as long as the one for THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT but I hope you’ll also note, as I do, how much more alive it is, how much better conducted is its promised symphony of terrors.

Of course, even as I was lamenting the death of the particular style of classic horror trailers in the 1970s, the spirit of morbid hyperbole was being carried forward at home and abroad in fright films that were taking full advantage of relaxed standards regarding violence and nudity – and they sure wanted you to know it!  Sergio Martino’s TORSO (1973) captured my attention with its unforgettable title (American title anyway) and a plotline that reminded me of the then-recent Richard Speck murders.  “Is one of these students a psycho-sexual killer?” the ads asked.  “Or are they just playing erotic games… not-so-innocent erotic games!”  Being only 12 when this movie came out, I had to wait about 20 years to find out exactly what erotic games were (“Are they like Pickle?  Twister?  Gnip-Gnop?”).  It is a nasty piece of work, all right, but not quite the descent into the maelstrom that was/is that other “cutting edge” horror film of the day, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974).

Probably the last trailer to really grab me by the throat was the one for George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), which had me not only running to see it but chasing the film thereafter from cinema to cinema in the circuit of movie houses clustered around my New England home town.  While trailers of this time were more crass, more base and not anywhere near what you’d call classy, I do love the singularly insinuating voices of the narrators, who were like sideshow barkers or those guys who used to stand outside of strip clubs on Times Square and try to get you to come inside.  There was always something disreputable and dirty about 70s horror movie trailers, a taste for which I had to grow accustomed.  But I did.  They all seem so classic to me now, from the creaky chiraroscuro trailers of the 30s and 40s to the grindhouse coming attractions of the 1970s.  Like Woody Allen’s narrator in RADIO DAYS (1987), the voices of these trailers grow fainter in our collective consciousness every year… but how sweet the sound when we have occasion to hear them again, just like it was yesterday.