They Don't Make Trailers Like That Anymore: GET CARTER (1971)

A word about what this actually is.

I love old movie trailers.  I like the ones we get now, don't get me wrong; some of those things still get me squidgy and clapping like a grade schooler.  But the trailers of my youth--I'm talking late 60's through the early 90's--were a grade above.  Film companies had departments devoted to cutting the trailers for their films, and some like Joe Dante went on to become directors themselves.  They were creative and they were fun in and of itself.  Some of them featured stuff that wasn't in the film and rare ones--like the one I'll show you soon advertising a horror double bill--were almost complete little comedy sketches in of themselves.  They just don't make them like that any more, and in this particular room of the Domicile, I'll share some of my favorites with you.  Maybe I'll also share some new trailers I think break the mold with you as well.

So onto our featured trailer for the evening....

You can keep your deNiros and your Pacinos--my nomination for the hardest of hardcore movie gangsters is the titular hitman played by Michael Caine' in this early 70's slice of noir crime.  Mike Hodge's film is just an unflinchingly grim revenge thriller set in the British town Newcastle-On-Tyne.  In this trailer, the narrator sells you on the idea of Caine as the ultimate bad-ass over examples of the havoc he's going to wreck on the locals in the movie.

(That's one of the things I miss about older trailers--there was an art and style to trailer narration that seems to have died with Don LaFontaine, but we can discuss that more fully another time).

I find it interesting that we only see female lead--if any of the female characters in this most testosterone-y of films can be called a lead--Britt Eklund at the very end as the trailer (as the narrator intones the excellent catch-line "Get Carter...before Carter gets you").  Eklund was a major get  at the time, and one would think they'd emphasize this more.  No such luck, as this trailer is interested in a different kind of fun and games.

I know this film was remade.  Fuck the Stallone version; it don't exist in my eyes.

Trailer courtesy of Warner Archives.