How they used to hype movies

March 31st, 2009 at 02:03pm Will Pfeifer

If you want to see how imaginative movie advertising used to be, point your browser in the direction of SCENES FROM THE MORGUE, a great lil’ blog collecting all sorts of old movie ads. This month has been a salute to Alfred Hitchcock (a guy who knew how to promote a movie), but they’re all pretty good. Here, for example, is Hitch himself hyping PSYCHO…

The deal with PSYCHO, in case you don’t know, was that Hitchcock “insisted” that no one could enter the theater after the movie had started. I have no idea if anyone was kept out — I can’t imagine theater owners turning down a paid admission — but the hype worked, PSYCHO was a hit and the rest was history.

Entry Filed under: hype