They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: BUG (1975 and 2006)

Okay--what do the subjects of my last two trailer articles had in common...besides the fact they both were named ‘William’?

Both William Freidkin and William Castle presented a film called Bug late in their careers.  Granted, they’re two vastly different films, but still...

In the case of Castle, Bug was the last film he had a hand in.  He produced, as well as wrote the script with Thomas Page, writer of the book the film was based on (The Hephaestus Plague, which I actually read!).  It tells the story of a prehistoric breed of insects that burns things up to, and including, people so they can eat the ashes.  It’s not the greatest movie ever made, but it’s heartening to see Castle still had the heart of a showman when it comes to the trailer.  In this film, the gimmick is the titular bugs...played by actual Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, which we see lots of in the two minutes of this pitch.  Keep in mind most people didn’t know what a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach was in 1975, so it might as well be an alien.  The editor of this piece of film hits all the high points of cockroach-ness this little exploitation number has--although I don’t know what it says about me that I was more upset about the cat scene than the ones with actual human beings finding bugs in their ears or hair.

You’ll notice that even at this late date, Castle has his name plastered all over this movie.  It’s displayed more than the name of  director Jeannot Szwarc.  Even two years from his death, the man was branding away.

Flash forward two decades or so, and we have Freidkin directing a small movie based on a stage play about a mentally ill woman who feeds off the madness of an equally mentally ill man her friend fixed her up with to create an alternate shared reality that doesn’t end well for either of them.  It was a one set piece which relied on the performances of its two leads, Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon.  If you haven’t seen it, you should because it’s an intense little number, and in my mind one of Freidkin’s best films.

But how do you sell a movie about two people retreating into an irrational world they’ve put together?  This trailer does it by setting up the story, then allowing Shannon and Judd’s increasingly extreme behavior to speak for itself.  There are only four lines of narration in this trailer, two of which touts Freidkin’s reputation and a positive review.  The other two lines, well...they never out and out lie about the titular ‘bug,’ but they don’t exactly tell the truth, either.  It does serve to hint at the shared delusion of these two broken people while not telling us explicitly the extent of it.  And in that case, this trailer works to intrigue you, to draw you in by raising a couple of questions while promising something remarkable from a remarkable director.

These two movies couldn’t be further apart, but they share more than their name--they share being advertised by dangling a big name before us to sell tickets.