They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: I DISMEMBER MAMA and THE BLOOD-SPLATTERED BRIDE (1972)

My belief is that a trailer should be like a great pop song--it should be brief, it should have momentum, and it should leave an impression on you that makes you want more.  The absolute best trailers, like the best songs, give you an experience you’re anxious to re-experience right away.  They can use different tools to get their message across, and they can be unique in and of themselves....

....which brings us to one of my favorite trailers of all time, an artifact I saw once on a television screen at a convention party out of the corner of my eye and literally never forgot.  I did spend some time not remembering what that artifact was selling, but I remembered the elements it was using to sell it vividly. 

You might want to sit down for this one, because It. Is. Awesome.

This is a trailer for a horror double feature billed as ‘The Frenzy of Blood.’  I Dismember Mama is a thoroughly forgettable proto-slasher with a very uncomfortable pedophilia angle.  Blood Spattered Bride is a film based on Le Fanau’s Camilla that was one of a number of quirky horror films to come out of Spain in the early 70‘s and was namechecked by Quentin Tarantino.  They pretty much have nothing in common. And trying to sell a double feature of the two may seem problematic.

The genius behind this trailer--whose name, like the names of all the actors involved, is lost to antiquity (Bob Clark is rumored to have done it, but I've found no corroboration)--decided to pull a William Castle and make the trailer about the experience of seeing the films rather than the films themselves.  It’s a mock television news report about a man going insane while watching this double bill.  At no point does anyone actually tell you about the films during this four minutes.  There are super-quick cuts to scenes from both films that indicates nothing about them except they’ve got blood and boobs.  There are strange close-ups of the actors looking awkward and weird.  The characters are broad. 

Boy are they broad, but....It’s the characters that not only make this trailer watchable, but makes you interested in the double bill.  The aggressively Brooklynite couple who argue over which moment of gore triggered the man’s insanity, the attractive blonde obsessed with the ‘Up Chuck Cup’ (which was actually given out by theaters), and the cop who seems to have a sudden gas attack in the middle of doing his duty are all amusing, and all add little bits of intrigue to this pitch. 

The star of this rodeo, however is The Man Who Laughs, a frizzy-haired, bespectacled goof who shows up at the 2:20 mark and gives us this chittering, rat-like giggle that seems to go on for longer than the twenty seconds of screen time it takes up.  We have no idea who this person is (he’s definitely not Jeffrey Katzenberg, as Eli Fucking Roth would have you believe), or why he’s motivated to express himself in this way--but damn, are you curious about these movies after his appearance.  I think we needed that hippie-dippie blonde afterwards to ease us down from the creepy high we’ve just been given.

It’s a shame that this kind of out-there filmmaking is lost to time.  This is the kind of trailer that needs to be preserved for all time.  And to the forgotten director and actors who made this wonderful gem of amazement?

I salute you.  I salute you all!