Classic horror movie posters star in online auction Oct. 17

NEW YORK – Original posters for classic horror movies are the main attractions of a Jasper52 online auction on Wednesday, Oct. 17. Items range in time from the silent era (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) through 1988 (Beetlejuice). Absentee and Internet live bidding is available through LiveAuctioneers.

No movie memorabilia auction of this genre would be complete without the ominous presence of Bela Lugosi. Famous for his rendition of Dracula, the Hungarian-born actor also starred with John Carradine in The Return of the Ape Man. The tale involves two scientists on an expedition in the Arctic who find the frozen body of the Missing Link. They bring him to their laboratory and decide to transplant a new brain into the caveman. Offered in the auction is an original half sheet poster (above) from the 1944 Monogram release.

One of producer Val Lewton’s masterpieces, I Walked with a Zombie, is celebrated in an original one sheet poster. A paraphrase of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, the 1943 movie tells of a nurse in the West Indies who discovers the walking dead. The images on this poster are scary and the graphics are bold, reflecting the feel of this suspenseful

Michael Landon is best remembered for his characters Little Joe Cartwright on Bonanza and Charles Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie, but the handsome actor launched his career as a troubled lad in I Was a Teenage Werewolf. The American-International film was a clever take on the delinquent youth genre of the time, combined with the horror and science-fiction aspect. The one sheet poster in the auction is linen-backed and in near fine condition.

The Wasp Woman is one of the best remembered of the early Roger Corman horror/sci-fi thrillers. It’s the story of a woman cosmetic tycoon who cannot accept her natural process of getting older and develops from wasp enzymes her own formula to keep from aging. The formula, when over-used, turns her into a murderous wasp. The low-budget special effects now look tacky, but the film retains a cult following. The graphics and taglines on the one sheet poster are

A rare poster in the auction is from the 1945 British film Dead of the Night, in which guests at a country house take turns telling supernatural tales and the tales are presented in individual segments with different casts and directed by different directors. Piecing unconnected tales together in the horror genre became the norm after this bold experimental film proved to be popular. The nightmarish stories are effectively illustrated in the poster’s art. This poster was made when paper was consistently recycled and conserved for the war effort in England. It is printed on the back of a portion of a poster featuring an image of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Among the modern posters in the auction is the British science fiction movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, which starred rock star David Bowie. An Alien comes to earth to secure water for his dying planet and meets with the greed of humans while falling in love as well. This tri-folded three sheet is for the original British release of the film. The art is highlighted by a portrait of Bowie.

The Jasper52 auction also offers original scripts for Beetlejuice (1988), The Fly (1985) and An American Werewolf in London (1981).