Frankensteinian : The Walking Dead Reissue Poster

In 1936, Warner Brothers threw a curve ball when they mixed one of their patented streetwise gangster movies with a Frankenstein theme. Framed for murder, executed and resurrected by a scientist, Boris Karloff goes looking for his tormentors with a rigor mortis shuffle, a dead-eyed stare and a chillingly soft voice.

The original ad campaign featured superb art deco posters (see below) distinguished by great art, bold colors and beautifully designed titles. Not so with the re-release campaign of 1942, as evident in the crude paste-up job on the vertical insert-type poster (here at left). Karloff’s reanimated man dominates, with x-ray hand, but the face is actually swiped from the 1931 Frankenstein “Monster is Loose!” poster.

Compare the images of the original publicity photograph and its red poster version from 1931, and the yellow variation of the 1942 Walking Dead re-issue. Neck bolts and heavy eyelids have been removed, but the source still very obvious.

Related:
Frankensteinian: The Walking Dead

Frankensteinian : The Walking Dead

Made in 1936, Michael Curtiz’ The Walking Dead mashes a Frankenstein theme — with Boris Karloff along to sell it — and a gritty Warner Brothers’ hardboiled crime story.

Karloff is framed for murder and gets the chair. Scientist Edmund Gwenn, using among other things a real “Lindbergh Heart Pump”, resurrects the wrongfully executed man, exclaiming “He’s alive!” when Karloff stirs.

No heavy makeup needed here: Karloff wears a shock of electrified white hair and that unmistakable, heavy-lidded, deadpan stare that always says “back from the grave”.

This walking dead man doesn’t actually kill anyone. Just showing up scares the bad guys into fatal accidents, like backing out of a high window. In a unique twist, this character is not a zombie bent on revenge as much as an avenging angel who’s mere appearance serves divine justice.

In a rare, early case of film novelization, The Walking Dead was adapted to fiction by John L. Chambliss in the July 1936 issue of the pulp Movie Action Magazine.

There’s a good review of the film at 100misspenthours.com.

The scrumptious poster is from the collection of Jean-Claude Michel.