Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell (Amazon Link)
Director Jim Monaco
Starring Nick Pawlow, Happy Goldsplatt, Michael Townsend Wright, Anthony Kelly, Joe Amodei
Brian’s Rating: 3/5
Listen to the full review in Horror Bulletin Podcast #2
This is a real relic. Back in the day before DVDs and Blu-Ray, back even before VHS tapes, people used to collect movie trailers… on film! These were hard sought after mementos and collectibles from the movies of the 60s and 70s.
Mad Ron has collected forty-seven of these old film trailers and compiled them into this collection. The quality is not great, as these are original unrestored prints from decades ago, but they are all completely real. The various trailers and ads are broken up with modern-day drama from inside a theater that is quickly becoming overrun with zombies.
Our host for this part of the film is a ventriloquist and his dummy, “Happy Goldsplatt.” As is often the case with a ventriloquism act, the jokes are corny and dumb, but serve as a break from the relentless screaming that seems to permeate all the trailers.
The zombie-theater plotline was slow and not very interesting, but the trailers were fascinating. Most people think everything from the 60s and 70s were squeaky-clean and sanitized, but there’s some really raunchy stuff in here that goes well beyond my idea of classic horror.