The Man Who Drew Bug-Eyed Monsters

As an eleven-year-old kid seriously addicted to half buck horror movie matinees, one of the biggest thrills of the day was scoping out the lurid lobby cards and posters advertising the day's features. Somehow, the cheesy special effects and threadbare plot lines of the actual movies never did quite match the gloriously overblown and frenetic action blasting from the surface of those graphic wonders. The Man Who Drew Bug-Eyed Monsters is a wonderfully entertaining elegy to Reynold Brown, the influential pen-and-brush whiz behind many of those 1950's and 60's B movie posters. Brown's early career as a genteel, formally-trained graphic artist and as a respected teacher are chronicled, as well as his induction into the legion of anonymous toilers in studio art departments in the mid-50's, and his eventual retirement from Hollywood to pursue a more personally-satisfying (and more mundane) artistic path. A good sampling of Brown's posters are shown throughout the video, interspersed with clips from the fabulously goofy films which they flack. Wrapped around this biography are frequently cumbersome helpings of social context--discussions of the Cold War psycho-social and political anxieties which informed the movies and movie art of the times. Also thrown in are the seemingly mandatory words of analysis and insight about the nature and significance of Brown's work from art scholars and industry types (including schlockmeisters Roger Corman and Samuel Z. Arkoff), none of which seriously gets in the way of enjoying this nifty little video. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)