Archive for Held Over

6 Vintage holiday newspaper ads for non-holiday movies

Posted in Back to the Future, Christmas, holiday, movies, Star Wars with tags , , , , , , , on December 24, 2012 by Paxton

Cavalcade Gazette

Merry Christmas Eve!  Tomorrow is Christmas, let’s celebrate by looking at some awesomely vintage Christmas movie advertisements.

I’ve spoken before of my love of the newspaper movie section. One of the coolest things about this long lost section of the ever fading newspaper is that the ads would be spruced up for whatever holiday was current. But most especially for Christmas and New Years.

So, let’s take advantage of the fact that it’s Christmas Day and look at some vintage Christmas newspaper advertisements for movies that aren’t actually Christmas movies.

Holiday Hits 1 Holiday Hits 2
Showcase Cinemas Holiday Hits (Dec 16, 1983) – Welcome to “Christmastime at the Movies” in 1983.  A full page of movie ads for Showcase Cinemas featuring their “Holiday Hits of 1983”. Not one of which is a Christmas movie.  And the majority of which aren’t even remotely family movies.  Christine? Scarface? Sudden Impact? DC Cab?  Ok, well, who doesn’t love DC Cab, especially during the holidays?  But Christine and Gorky Park are filled with murder.  Sudden Impact?  Rape and murder.  Scarface? Cocaine and murder.  Yentl?  Barbara Streisand.  Not one of these movies would I take a child  or a family member to.

BTTF2 ad
Back to the Future Part II – From Dec 16, 1989, this ad is a particularly fun variation on the second of the famous Back to the Future posters. They’ve added Santa. I don’t know if this modification exists outside of this ad, but I hope and wish that it does.

Star Wars holiday ad
Star Wars – For the 1977 Christmas season the newspaper ad for Star Wars was modified to include “in character” holiday greetings. I love the sh*t out of this.

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Vincentennial: 10 Vintage Vincent Price movie ads

Posted in advertising, movies, pop culture, Vincent Price with tags , , , , , on May 27, 2011 by Paxton


Cavalcade Gazette

It’s the Vincentennial! Vincent Price would be 100 years old this year, so people all over the net are celebrating the films of the godfather of horror. Strange Kids Club has been having Price-centric articles all week. I wrote one about Vincent Price and the origin of the Michael Jackson song Thriller.  Today, I thought I’d continue the celebration with a look at some awesome and vintage movie ads for some of Vincent Price’s films.

Some of these movies are his most popular (The Fly, Masque of the Red Death) and some may surprise you (Beach Party?).  Regardless, they are an awesome bit of marketing and movie history.  So without further ado, here are 10 vintage ads for movies starring Vincent Price.  I’ve put them in chronological order.

The Fly
The Fly (1958) – One of his most famous. And a suitably creepy movie on its own.

Return of the Fly
Return of the Fly (1959) – Rushed sequel that can’t really live up.

The Bat
The Bat (1959) – A serial killer called The Bat terrorizes the residents of a creepy mansion.

Beach Party
Beach Party (1963) – Yes, Vincent Price played Big Daddy in this Annette Funicello-Frankie Avalon beach comedy. I love the art and how busy this ad looks. The ad itself is huge, so click the image to see it FULL SIZE.

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Holy crap, I just ran a marathon!

Posted in exercise, life, movies, running with tags , , , , on December 22, 2010 by Paxton

So, I ran my first marathon on Sunday. It was the culmination of many, many months of preparation and training. I officially signed up for and started training for this race back in May, so I’m glad that it’s all over now and I can say that I have now run a full marathon (26.2 miles). And I am even happy with my time; 5 hours and 10 minutes.  The marathon was not as soul crushing and hard as I expected, but that’s not to say it was easy.  I think the key for me was running the actual race with a buddy.  My friend Mike and I ran the race together and provided each other with much needed distracting conversations and encouragement especially in the later miles (20+).

The marathon I ran was part of a larger group of races called The Tri-2B Tuff Challenge.

The Tri-2B Tuff Challenge consists of three distance races in three months.  You can either do three half marathons or two half marathons and a full marathon.  I did the latter.

The first race was the Jacksonville Marine Corps Half Marathon on Oct 2. Mike and I mistakenly believed that race started at 8am so we showed up ready to run at 7:30am. However, when we showed up people were dismantling the starting line. After asking around we discovered that the race actually started at 7am. Undaunted, we backed our butts up to the dismantled starting line, started our watches and ran the race anyway. It took a while, but we wound up catching up with some of the stragglers and finishing the race anyway.

The second race was the Outback Steakhouse Distance Classic Half Marathon on Thanksgiving Day. We double checked the starting time for that race and showed up early so we started with the official clock. This race was awesome. I enjoyed the course and it was actually fun to run it.

The last race was the Jacksonville Bank Marathon (or you could run the half marathon) on Dec 19 (this past Sunday).  Finish those three races and you win the Tri-2B Tough Challenge.  I’m glad I did it.  Since I was training for the marathon anyway the two half marathons in Oct and Nov kept me from slacking off too much on training.

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Held Over! A new blog showcasing vintage movie print advertisements

Posted in 80s, advertising, movies, pop culture with tags , , , on December 20, 2010 by Paxton

Held Over

I’ve been planning this for a year or so, and now I can finally get it out there.  I’m starting a new blog called Held Over! As you can see from the banner above, it will showcase old movie advertisements.  Many of the ads will be from newspapers (hence the Held Over! catchphrase), but I’ll also include other print media like magazines and comic books.  I’ve been stockpiling movie adverts since the mid 80s, and I finally am getting my s**t together and starting to share them online.

Don’t worry, I’ll continue posting movie anniversary articles on this blog.  The new blog will mainly showcase the scanned movie ads as well as a little commentary (historical context, relevance, interesting trivia, etc) from me.  I’ll even aggregate some of the scans on the new blog into articles on this blog.  When I do that, you’ll see the above banner and the article will be tagged with Held Over.

So, where did this come from?  Well, when I was growing up I loved going to the movies.  I loved them so much, that I would cut out advertisements for my favorite movies from newspapers and magazines.  I also spent a good amount of my time in college at the Auburn University library combing through old newspapers on micro phish looking at movie advertisement sections.  Well, I was also looking up old 80s NBA box scores featuring Larry Bird and John Stockton, not just movie adverts. Wow, could that confession have sounded any dorkier?  No, probably not.

Anyway, throughout the 80s and early 90s, newspapers contained a wealth of awesome movie ads in their movie sections.  Movie sections could take up two or three full pages advertising what movies are currently playing.

For instance, here’s a movie section from the day I was born, May 9, 1974.  Click it to see it bigger on Flickr.

Toledo Blade 5/9/1974

Nearly two full pages are taken up with movies of the day. And there are some good ones like The Sting, Blazing Saddles and The Exorcist. There are also some stinkers like Zardoz and Great Gatsby. Hmm, actually, I just this moment noticed there are three movies playing starring Robert Redford; The Candidate, The Sting and The Great Gatsby.  You don’t see that too often these days.

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