THE SCI-FI AND MONSTER MOVIE POSTERS OF REYNOLD BROWN (1955 - 1960)

 

In 1994 they made a movie called "The Man Who Drew The Bug-Eyed Monsters." It was a documentary about a truly astounding artiste named Reynold Brown, who was responsible for creating many of the everlasting movie posters from Science Fiction and Monster Movies of the 1950's and 60's.

 

 

This Saturday Night Special is dedicated to that man! Prepare to be amazed!

Let's get started with the classic "Creature From The Black Lagoon" from 1955.

We've shown you many of these posters before, mostly because of the studio, but not the artist, who for the most part, always stayed sinfully uncredited!

 

Just keep reminding yourself that this is all the work of one man, because it really is a little bit hard to believe! Again in 1955, here's the poster from "Revenge Of The Creature."

 

Another from 1955, here's Reynold's poster for "Tarantula!" I like the weird double spacing on the stars names they did to get the composition right. Reynold paid great attention to the expressions on all the little people in the background, but the posters were printed so cheaply, a lot of his detail was lost!

 

 

Still from 1955, here's "This Island Earth," a color film that deserved an even more colorful poster. Reynold's compositions are starting to also get busier.

Probably one of the reasons that Reynold could paint such good flying saucers was because "during World War II he worked as a technical artist at North American Aviation."

 

In more than one instance Reynold's poster art was more exciting that the actual movie. "Curucu, Beast Of The Amazon" from 1956 is a perfect example!

 

This is how cool Curucu could have really looked!
 

 1957 was a big year for Reynold like this killer poster from "The Deadly Mantis."

Reynold did not only paint posters for the monster movies, he did over three hundred, and many of them were for mainstream films like "The Alamo."

 

 

Small or tall, Reynold got the call, and every one of these films is a classic! Again in 1957, he did the poster for "The Incredible Shrinking Man." And never forget this was long before the internet or Photoshop, and this all had to come out of the mind of one man!

What a great poster for the 1957 film "The Land Unknown." Actually a whole lot of kids were pretty disappointed seeing movies like this after seeing a dynamic poster like this one.

Now this is one of my favorites from 1957, "The Monolith Monsters." The movie is wack, and this poster of Reynold's explodes with excitement. It's almost three dimensional! I need to take a break, I think I'll go watch it for a while right now!

This poster for the 1957 adventure film "The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent," aka "Viking Women And The Sea Serpent," is ten times more exciting than the movie. 

 

You'd think that would probably be enough for most people, but Reynold was just getting started, and 1958 was really a banter year for him!

Is there a more classic poster than "Attack Of The 50 Ft. Woman?" Maybe, but it's debatable!
 

From attacks by giant women to puppet people, there was no stopping Reynold!

Again in 1958, this was the poster from "Attack Of The Puppet People."
 

 

This "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" poster also from 1958 was a beaut!

Believe it or not, Reynold didn't really like making these monster movie posters that much. It was just a job to him, that considering everything, didn't even pay that well, but that didn't stop him from putting his all into each and every one of them, many times to find his artwork chopped up by some art director.

 

 

What kid in 1958 wouldn't want to go see "Monster On The Campus" after viewing this poster?

Reynold developed this style where the images popped out at you, almost in 3D. This 1959 "Atomic Submarine" poster is a good example of that.

 

Some of Reynold's early work was drawing cartoons, then he turned to illustrating magazines with artwork like this, and his work also appears on the covers of a score of paperback books!
 

This 1959 poster from William Castle's "House On Haunted Hill" is way beyond classic!
 

By 1960, the face of horror was changing, and the films based on the tales of Edgar Allan Poe became a popular subject. This "House Of Usher" poster is as equally amazing as the monster posters were.

Also in 1960, the Italian horror films like "Black Sunday" were becoming very popular, and Reynold came up with this incredible imagery.

By 1970, the movies were becoming too sexy and violent, and Reynold decided after creating the poster for "The Dunwich Horror," that he had just had enough, and he went back to doing the art that he loved, painting cowboys, and enjoying life as best he could.

To find out everything they never taught you in school or history class, go to

The Reynold Brown Website

where you can find out so much more about this great man and gifted artist!

OSWALD THE RABBIT In "The Merry Old Soul" - 1933

Here's a Walter Lantz cartoon starring Oswald The Lucky Rabbit. In this one, our little guy has to cheer up Old King Cole, who gots da blues!

Get ready for the old bait and switcheroonie. Oswald is at the dentist office but the tooth to be pulled is giving the dentist a tough time.

The dentist has a solution to the problem?  It's anesthesia time!

Oswald wakes up after being knocked and hears on the radio that Old King Cole has the blues. Being a rabbit of action, Oswald sounds the alarm to his Hollywood celebrity friends!

You can carry more stars with a fire truck, ya silly!

At the king's palace , the court jester tries to get the king to laugh at his silly antics to no avail, look at that long face!

Then Oswald shows up with all his pals, time to turn that frown upside down!

Oswald opens the Mother Goose Song Book, that should do the trick!

The cow tried to jump over the Moon but didn't quite make it, nice bloomers!

This Little Bo Peep gag leaves me speechless.

Even Mae West gets into the act... Oswald stares at Mae's spectacular backside the whole time she sings the Humpty Dumpty song!

But, Old King Cole doesn't break out of his shell until Laurel and Hardy start giving  a pie-in-the-face demonstration...

And things get a little out of hand...

And the flying pie race is on!!

Unlike his brothers, you can see that Groucho ducked when a pie was tossed at him, but as he's having a laugh about his cleverness, yeah, he gets a pie in the face.

The court jester gets some advise from his dark side, like, HEY, THESE GUYS ARE TRYING TO TAKE YER JOB!

So, the jester pulls Oswald down into the cellar.

There, he chokes our little pal with a noose! (Jeez!)

Like I was saying, Oswald's actually still knocked out as the dentist pulls with all his might, and the damn tooth finally lets go.

No wonder it was so hard to remove, the tooth was connected to his shoes!! This cartoon is no where as crazy as the real world is nowadays.

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS (1950's)

Whether you like it or not, young or old, we are all influenced by the people spending billions of dollars to get us to buy their products. The TV ads from the 1950's were more entertaining than today's, but boy were a lot of them diabolical. On the other hand, without these sponsors, we'd never have got a chance to see all those great shows, so this Weird Wednesday's offering is a salute to all those companies who, right or wrong, paid the bills.

When Aspirin or Bufferin didn't do the trick, you always had Anacin to turn to for those really big headaches brought on by the threat of nuclear war.

Camay Soap's main selling feature was that it was pink, but not just pink, "Loving Pink!"

"There's never been anything so lingeringly lovely in a beauty soap."

 

"Only Cheer has the blue magic whitener."

And it's a damn good thing, because look how much laundry she had to do!

"Chlorinol was a trade name for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that were once used as dielectric fluids and coolants in transformers and other electrical equipment."

 No wonder it worked so good! 

 

This is a prime example of why you need to stock the shelves in stores correctly, otherwise the packaging would look half ass.

"On top of Spaghetti, all covered with sauce."

I had no idea that Chef Boy-Ar-Dee was a real person! I just thought he was a picture on a label.

Now this is amazing!! You could save a whole twenty-eight cents!

For those of you are aren't good with math, here it is spelled out in black and white!

More soap because people were proud of their hygiene in the 50's.

So when all that cleaning got to you, and that fifteen cents a serving spaghetti has your stomach in a knot, and Anacin didn't do the trick, it was time to break out the Bromo Seltzer!

 

And then there were those nasty little things known as cigarettes!

How did we survive?

Salem cigarettes had special perforations in the paper that made them have "Just the right amount of fresh air that blends with each puff to give you a softer, fresher, more flavorable smoke than ever."

She's enjoying herself so much, it almost makes me want to start smoking again!

Too bad we have no "Aromarama" feature so I could show you how bad her ashtray breath stinks right now!

This guy needed a drag off his Winston cigarette so bad, he couldn't even wait to get out of the water!

 

 

Winston was never my favorite brand of cigarette, and just maybe it's because they were specially processed! That's all they had to tell you back then, no facts, no truth, just meaningless words, "Specially Processed!"

 

But then maybe it was because I didn't have a cool boat to cruise around and smoke them on! Too bad that back then, they didn't have to tell you all the side effects for 30 seconds like they do in all the absurd modern commercials for prescription medicines that some guy fifty years into the future will probably be writing about how equally bad they were!