Trailer of the Week: Zontar: The Thing From Venus

Fred Olen Ray has dug into his vault and made another 50 or so copies of his RetroMedia Beast Collection DVD set available on Amazon (get 'em while you can). The set is a cornucopia of regional horror flicks, including Ed Adlum's Shriek of the Mutilated, Bill Rebane's Capture of Bigfoot, Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot, Larry Buchanan's The Eye Creatures, and the subject of our trailer of the week, Zontar: The Thing From Venus. Since Zontar was originally a made for TV project, we've posted a series of homemade trailers below that range from sublime to ridiculous.

The Fine Art of THE BRIDES WORE BLOOD

I posted a newspaper ad for the premiere of The Brides Wore Blood awhile back, courtesy of former Florida filmmaker Fred Olen Ray. A few months later, Fred sent me the fantastic artwork below, which he originally commissioned for some advertising, but ultimately never used. ("I think people were turned off by the idea that a pregnant woman was stabbing herself in the stomach," Ray told me.) It looks much closer to the image in the original film (but not much like what was used on the video box above). The artist was Chet Collom, who also did work on Satan's Cheerleaders, The Phantom Empire, and Cycle Vixens.

Always a Bloody Bridesmaid...

I have watched the Florida flick The Brides Wore Blood dozens of times. I can't begin to tell you why. It's cheap, it's dull, it barely  makes any sense. But I keep ... coming ... back. That's one of the reasons I interviewed producer/effects artist/actor Tom Rahner for my upcoming book, and why I was so excited when none other than Fred Olen Ray sent me a quick scan of this newspaper ad for the film's preview screening at the Fernandina Beach Municipal Auditorium and Recreation Center in June 1972.

Unfortunately, the scan is too fuzzy for us to read the accompanying article, but I like the nice big advertisement. The only other screening for this film that we know of was a Midnight show at the University of South Florida in May 1975 as part of the "Head Theater" program.

Fred also claims he used to have some stills from the film, but I've yet to see them. I've pasted the DVD cover below, along with the Goodtimes label VHS cover (I first saw the film via this release, which was available at Kmart for a mere $3 back in the late 1980s), and a few quick screen grabs for your edification.