August 26, 2009

Teenage Frankenstein Print Ad



I always loved the old newspaper ads for movies done in stark, black and white, comic book-style spot art.
This admat for I was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957) breaks down and simplifies the movie’s poster featuring the bug-eye, distressed face of the Teen Frankenstein, with an insert of The Monster in silhouette carrying off the girl and a heavy dot pattern for background shading.
With improved printing methods and better paper, today’s print ads reproduce the delicate tones of the photographs that dominate current movie poster art, but they come off as downright bland when compared to the unsophisticated but jazzier old-style ads.

Image source: Held Over


8 comments:

Adam Gott said...

It's been a while since I have seen this movie but, from what I remember, this is a case in which the poster is much much better than the movie.

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Peter Bernard said...

I loved Teenage Frankenstein, Teenage Werewolf, and How I Made a Monster, even though as a kid I already knew they weren't very good films, haha. The Michael Landon one was the best of the 3, but I loved the atmosphere of almost all teen horror movies in the 50's and early 60's.

Michael Jones said...

Was there a movie from the late 50's that Whit Bissell DIDN'T star in?

Christopher said...

..I watched this again not too long ago..for all its low budget cheesiness,the main monster guy manages to generate a certain amount of sympathy..

Michel said...

Somewhere I have a bunch of old b&w movie ads I cut out of newspapers as kid - films I wasn't old enough to see. This really makes me want to look at those ads again!

Patrick Jewell said...

good stuff. I also love the way the old ads look, reduced and crude. the same way the old, badly drawn novelty toy ads look in old comics. i clip old ads i come across, and sometimes they look even better when printed from microfilm - another layer of reduction. i still keep a coney island steeplechase ad - the kind with the grinning face - that i printed from an old nytimes microfilm while i was looking for something else at my job.

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