Monster-movie drive-in poster

A near-perfect example of the monster-movie drive-in poster-maker's art.

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: ad • design • happy mutants • horror • illustration • Monsters • Old school • poster • sign

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orwell

with a bit of photoshopping, could make an interesting primaries commentary… no change to the text, just the imagery… :)
http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11

Terror of Mechagodzilla (Mekagojira no Gyakushū). Best kaiju movie EVER.
- Donald Petersen
  
  Sez you. Destroy All Monsters FTW. Terror of Mechagodzilla starts out great, but Titanosaurus spends his last fifteen minutes having a lie-down due to a splitting headache? Pfft!
  - http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my
    
    Destroy All Monsters is certainly one of my top picks, too. Reptilicus is ridiculously terrible, unless you are afraid of wriggly severed tails and emulsion scratches.
yupgiboy

It’s not a poster. It’s more likely a handbill using an AIP ad slick, but it looks to my eyes like a newspaper ad.
Pickleschlitz

What giant ape movie was deleted at #2?
Pickleschlitz

I figured it out. Konga (1961) didn’t make the cut.
- http://twitter.com/SleazyMartinez Martin O’Gorman
  
  Yep, it’s Konga:
  http://www.impawards.com/1961/posters/konga.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

I wonder what year this was?

I remember when Destroy All Monsters was playing in theaters. The advertisements on TV fascinated me. My sister got to go . . . I had to wait several years to see it on TV.
- yupgiboy
  
  DAM played the USA from 1969 into 1970, so this is probably from 1971-72.
pgt

Reptilicus? Reptilicus! Possibly the worst kaiju movie ever made. A Danish/US co-production, it has a dragon flying (on strings) menacing Copenhagen, and trashing the Tivoli Gardens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilicus

It’s in the same league as ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’, except worse.

pgt
Dougall

I loved the rubber monster [stomping through Tokyo] school of movies when I was a kid, and I wish I could go back and watch that triple feature in the front seat of the car (bench seat of course!) with a giant bag of popcorn, a hot dog from the concession at intermission, and a cold bottle of pop, dripping condensation in the warm summer night.

I think one of the best feelings was that expedition to the concession. Standing in line, worrying that you were going to be late and miss some of the movie, then back across the dark lot. The screen glowing with some lame ad, the sound echoing from the loudspeakers at the concession and hundreds of tinny car speakers. You walked back across the ups and downs of the ridges in the lot (so you could drive your car on to them and raise the front end for better viewing). You worried a bit, that you might not find the car in the near dark, but there it was! What a great feeling to slip back into the seat, ready for the next feature.
- Donald Petersen
  
  My family would back in the station wagon, fold down the back seat, and open the tailgate so we could watch while sprawled out on sleeping bags. Made it easier to see the screen that way.
  
  Last time I saw a movie in a drive-in was 1991. Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man at the (now defunct) Van Nuys drive-in. Not the best way to go out, but a few months previously I’d tried to watch The Hunt for Red October at the (strangely non-defunct) Santee Twin. My recommendation: avoid seeing dark submarine movies at the drive-in. You can’t see squat.
planettom

I note that apparently The Thing in GODZILLA VERSUS THE THING is Mothra.

Which makes me want to see Mothra versus John Carpenter’s THE THING.
http://twitter.com/SleazyMartinez Martin O’Gorman

That’s a hell of an evening.

I really like Reptilicus. It’s nice to see a monster trash another city in another country outside of the US or Japan and the wonky effects are strangely charming.
- princeminski
  
  It also had the RACIEST “novelization” ever. The guy must have been more accustomed to writing soft porn. Quite a rush for a teen in a hick town.
Rider

There is a facebook group devoted to these ads. They have hundreds of them posted. My favorites are the ones with weird give aways like “Free Ham Night”

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nostalgic-Drive-In-Theater-Newspaper-Ads/134504123231363
Donald Petersen

And by the way, for lovers of drive-ins and horror movies, there’s a must-read short story in David Schow’s superlative 1988 horror anthology Silver Scream. The book is packed full of great cinema-related short horror stories from the likes of Barker, Bloch, Skipp, Spector, Matheson (the younger), and Lansdale, but the final story in the collection, Mark Arnold’s “Pilgrims to the Cathedral,” is the most balls-out entertaining, hilarious, profane, and splatterific story about drive-in movie theaters (and what makes them so damned awesome) you’ll ever read. The rest of the book is kickass as well, but this one story alone will gross you out, offend your every sensibility, and tickle every last rib you’ve got. Find it and read it, and thank me later.
http://undulantfever.blogspot.com/ Bruce Arthurs

I remember the Acres Drive-In on Van Buren. This was back when there were at least a dozen drive-ins around the Phoenix area. (The Indian Drive-In had a huge and memorable war-bonnet design, in NEON!, on the street-side of its big screen. I was saddened when tht one was torn down.) Most drive-ins showed the same movies as regular theaters, if a bit later, almost always on a double-bill, and could provide cheap nights out for the whole family. The Acres, if my aging memory recalls correctly, usually showed “B” movies, was even cheaper to get into, and was the primo drive-in for teenagers to hang out and make out at.