11491
Current Talk '24 I / Re: Happy 50th Anniversary, Night of Dark Shadows
« on: August 08, 2021, 05:48:27 PM »
The interesting thing when it comes to theaters'/drive-ins' newspaper ads for NoDS is that the vast majority of them, at least in New England, all used variations of the B Poster (Angelique's rotting face/hanging woman with man kneeling before her) rather than the A Poster (various images of Angelique/pallbearers carry coffin/Collinwood). I've really wondered why that was. What was it about the B Poster that they thought would attract more people to come to see the film?
However not all ads were the B Poster because in its Sunday edition to announce the opening of NoDS on the upcoming Wednesday, the Boston Herald Advertiser (which has been out of business for decades but used to be a hugely popular newspaper in Boston) used the A Poster. And rather than scan the ad and then share the same version from the NoDS PressBook, I just going to share the Pressbook version (and you're not missing any sort of text because there wasn't any added to the ad):
And given that seemingly no specific theater was promoting the film's upcoming opening, I've often wondered who made the decision to go with the A Poster? And because there was no specific theater in mind with the ad, instead there was a listing of most of the theaters/drive-ins where NoDS was to open, and I've included that at the bottom just as it was in the actual ad. Not all 130 are there, but I know there were to be 130 because the newspaper also published this:
Who knows why most are listed but not all? But it could have possibly been that the listed theaters/drive-ins joined forces to pay for the cost of the ad and the missing ones didn't.
Also, because the quality of the newpaper version is terrible, here's a somewhat cropped but much better version of that photo of Quentin:
However not all ads were the B Poster because in its Sunday edition to announce the opening of NoDS on the upcoming Wednesday, the Boston Herald Advertiser (which has been out of business for decades but used to be a hugely popular newspaper in Boston) used the A Poster. And rather than scan the ad and then share the same version from the NoDS PressBook, I just going to share the Pressbook version (and you're not missing any sort of text because there wasn't any added to the ad):
And given that seemingly no specific theater was promoting the film's upcoming opening, I've often wondered who made the decision to go with the A Poster? And because there was no specific theater in mind with the ad, instead there was a listing of most of the theaters/drive-ins where NoDS was to open, and I've included that at the bottom just as it was in the actual ad. Not all 130 are there, but I know there were to be 130 because the newspaper also published this:
Who knows why most are listed but not all? But it could have possibly been that the listed theaters/drive-ins joined forces to pay for the cost of the ad and the missing ones didn't.
Also, because the quality of the newpaper version is terrible, here's a somewhat cropped but much better version of that photo of Quentin: