Four Poster Bad: Part 2

OK, let's have another edition of FPB (my original idea for today's post involved me scanning all the major scars on my body, but I'm saving that one for my birthday.

Anyway, to the matter at hand...

We focus first on Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows. OK, great movie, and I'm a fan of Truffaut's work. The poster though...well, first of all "Angel faces hell bent for violence"? That sounds more like a blurb for Reform School Girl. Also, the adult man in the picture here looks like the bastard child of Nicolas Cage and the late Roy Scheider (not that it's a bad thing; it just unnerves me imagining the two of them making love, especially since Roy's death and all). Finally, a movie that's called The 400 Blows is already going to get jokes about being a porno film, so do we really have to make it worse by having the title on the movie poster getting fisted? Yeesh.













Now on to one of my all-time favorite movies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I've watched this movie every time it's been on television since I was about 4 years old. Just love it. This particular poster for it weirds me out , though, and for one simple reason. See Lon Chaney Jr. here as the Wolfman about to attack Lou Costello? Y'know why he's so pissed? Look carefully at what Lou's got in his hands. My god, he's neutered the Wolfman! Oh, Larry Talbot, the humanity...


Next up is Around the World in 80 Days. OK, fine film and all, but..."Michael Todd's show makes this a better world"? Criminy, and I thought George Clooney's Oscar speech about the nature of Hollywood was a self-important goonfest! "Makes the world a better place"? OK, sure, ya got your David Niven, ya got your Robert Morley, hell, you got your Noel Coward. But world-changing? Get out of the way, Bono, Cantinflas is shooting for your job!



Finally, the glory that IS Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. OK, I have a special place in my heart for this late 50s schlockfest. It's cheesy, it's goofy, but heck, it's got a really, really big woman in it! And it's a hell of a lot more watchable than the Christopher Guest "remake" of the 90s. My main problem with the poster, though, is simply scale. Sure, a 50' woman is pretty amazing, but even more amazing is the relatively tiny city below. By my estimates, assuming the gargantuan babe is 50', the cars underneath her must be about 6' long, and the citizens must be about 23 inches from stem to stern. A fifty foot woman in a regular town is cool; a fifty foot woman in Tiny Town is just a bully.