Movie Ad of the Week: HAUNTED MANSION (1973)

Named after the popular E ticket attraction at Disneyland (California) and the Magic Kingdom (Florida), HAUNTED MANSION opened in the New York City area 40 years ago this week (October 6-8, 1973) as another kiddie matinee from Larry Joachim's Trans National Film Corporation. During a recent interview with Mr. Joachim, the veteran producer-distributor revealed to us that HAUNTED MANSION was actually a reissue of WHO KILLED DOC ROBBIN (1948), the second of two attempts by Hal Roach & Robert F. McGowan to revive their OUR GANG kids comedies as 55-minute color b-features.

Ad above courtesy of Fred Adelman

Movie Ad of the Week: BRUCE LEE'S ORIGINAL SCREEN TEST (1974)

Veteran producer and distributor Laurence Joachim first released the 7-minute Bruce Lee screen test in 1974 as a bonus attraction with THE GREEN HORNET (a.k.a. TALES OF THE GREEN HORNET), the first of two feature films he and his son Marco prepared from episodes of the ABC TV series (1966-1967) that introduced Lee to American audiences as Kato, the Green Hornet's sidekick. Joachim kept the screen test in theatrical rotation for the next half dozen years, using it to support his other Dragon-titled releases: FURY OF THE DRAGON (a.k.a. GREEN HORNET II), RAGE OF THE DRAGON, DRAGON'S INFERNO, DRAGON ON FIRE, and CALL ME DRAGON (a.k.a. BRUCE LEE AGAINST SUPERMEN), in which Lee imitator Bruce Li steps into the role of Kato!

Hartford, CT - November 27, 1974

Primos, PA - December 31, 1976

Hartford, CT - October 27, 1978

Los Angeles, CA - October 10, 1980

Movie Ad of the Week: BLACK SAMURAI w/ GREEN HORNET II (1977)

JIM KELLY

May 5, 1946 - June 29, 2013

Al Adamson's BLACK SAMURAI (1976), starring the late Jim Kelly and based on the sixth novel in Marc Olden's Black Samurai paperback series (The Warlock), returned to 15 theaters in the New York area -- edited for a PG rating -- on September 9, 1977. The co-feature was GREEN HORNET II, a retitled re-release of FURY OF THE DRAGON (1976), the second collection of GREEN HORNET television episodes.

Movie Ad of the Week: SKELETON ISLAND (1973)

The Australian children's film STRANGE HOLIDAY (1969), also known as BOYS OF LOST ISLAND and based loosely on the Jules Verne novel Two Years' Vacation, was retitled SKELETON ISLAND when Trans National Film Corp. released it as a kiddie matinee in New York during the weekend of February 24-25, 1973.

One-Sheet of the Week: CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1985)

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980)





U.S. release in 1985, despite the 1982 copyright date on the poster