A seminal film, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) brought together horror stars Lon Chaney, Jr., and Bela Lugosi as Universal’s fiercest monsters, paving the way for portmanteau Monster Rallies, eventually throwing Dracula, mad scientists and hunchbacked assistants, and even an Invisible Man cameo into the mix, culminating with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and leading to countless multiple monster films still essayed to this day, notably in the 2004 bastardization, Van Helsing.
Universal’s ad campaign for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf
Man was singularly dramatic, its posters
dominated by a rip-roaring pulp-style painting of the two horrors having at it.
Here, a beautifully done Belgian version in French and Flemish reprises the
monsters battling over a spilled blonde, with a tacked-on glamour clinch portrait
of non-monstrous leads Ilona Massey and Patrick Knowles.
The artist, unfortunately, is unidentified. The printer, L.
F. De Vos & Cie of Antwerp, was a major publisher of books, and travel and
film posters. Perhaps the company’s most famous contributor was René Magritte
who designed a couple of straight, workmanlike movie posters during a make-ends-meet
fling with commercial art in the mid-Thirties.
1 comment:
What a great movie poster.
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