PRIME EVIL: CLASSIC HORROR TRAILERS (2007) **

(By the way, this is the thumbnail picture on Amazon Prime for this compilation, but the movie doesn’t even have a trailer for Frankenstein, which should give you an idea of the quality of this flick.)

You all know me.  You know movie trailer compilations are my kryptonite.  I’m especially susceptible to compilations of horror movie trailers.  When I stumbled upon this compilation on Amazon Prime, I knew I had to get my trailer on.  Now, I don’t ordinarily mind compilations that cross over various genres, particularly if they’re of the grindhouse and/or exploitation variety.  It’s just that… well… Classic Horror Trailers is one of the most confounding compilations I’ve ever seen.

It all starts out just fine and dandy with trailers for such classics as Tales of Terror, The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Unearthly, The Cyclops, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, From Hell It Came, She Demons, The Bride and the Beast, The Cosmic Man, The Fiendish Ghouls, and The Raven.  Then, about twenty minutes in, there’s a trailer for… Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night?!?  What the what?  

Okay, maybe the editor fell asleep at the wheel and one of his art house buddies slipped it in.  I mean, I guess you could consider it a cult movie.  It’s certainly far from a “Classic Horror” flick though.

After that, it’s back to business.  There’s Queen of Outer Space (sure, it’s Sci-Fi, but there’s giant spiders in it, so I’ll allow it), Carnival of Souls, Tarantula, Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, The Mole People, and… High Plains Drifter?!?  I mean, I guess it could be considered a horror movie if you believe Clint Eastwood’s character is a ghost (which is possible because of the movie’s ambiguity), but still…

Okay, so after that brief detour into Clint Eastwood territory, we get back on track with trailers for The Masque of the Red Death, The Village of the Damned, Macabre, Dr. Cadman’s Secret (AKA:  The Black Sleep), Black Sunday… wait, didn’t we already see a trailer for Black Sunday?  Yup.  I’m not really complaining because who wouldn’t want to pass up an opportunity to see the sultry Barbara Steele, but it reinforces my theory that the editor had a case of narcolepsy when he was cobbling this together.

That’s followed by trailers for Caltiki the Immortal Monster, Frankenstein 1970, Black Pit of Dr. M, Monstrosity (AKA:  The Atomic Brain), Daughter of Horror (“Not one word is spoken on screen!”), Blood Man of the Devil (AKA:  House of the Black Death), The Vampire Lovers, and The House on Haunted Hill.  We also get a second trailer for The House on Haunted Hill, which plays up the “Emergo” gimmick.  Unfortunately, it’s also around this time where the audio gets out of synch and the actor’s dialogue rarely matches their lips, which gets quite annoying.

Trailers for Diary of a Madman, Flower Drum Song… FLOWER DRUM SONG?!?, My Name is Nobody… MY NAME IS NOBODY?!?, Privilege… PRIVILEGE?!? I’ve got to stop and go lay down to get my head straight.

Okay, I’m back.  What’s next?  Mondo Balordo (a Mondo movie narrated by Boris Karloff… Okay, I’ll guess I can accept that), The Last Wagon (a western with Richard Widmark), Taras Bulba (a Cossack action flick with Yul Brynner), The Projected Man (another Sci-Fi flick, but certainly closer to the theme of the compilation than Flower Drum Song), Long John Silver (WTF), and The Big Gundown (a western with Lee Van Cleef).  Seriously, why wasn’t this called Classic Horror Trailers with a Bunch of Western Trailers and Other Shit Thrown in?  Or, even better, just cut out all the trailers that weren’t remotely horror related?  And would it have been too much to ask for to have the audio synched up correctly?  Jeez. 

Things wrap up with trailers for Colossus:  The Forbin Project, Hammer’s version of The Mummy, The Brain Machine, Money, Women, and Guns (another western, but at least Lon Chaney, Jr. is in it), The Haunted Palace, A Bucket of Blood, 13 Ghosts, Man of a Thousand Faces, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Dementia 13, The Hanging Tree (a western with Gary Cooper), The Curse of the Faceless Man, Marnie, and The Tingler.  

If the compilation ended at about the hour mark, this would’ve probably have been a *** or *** ½ movie because some of the trailers are really quite cool.  I particularly liked seeing trailers for familiar movies under their alternate titles.  Too bad the inexplicable use of non-horror trailers in the second hour, coupled with the out-of-synch audio eventually did a number on my brain and drove me batty.