Werewolves on Wheels
Here’s one of my favorite B-movie trailers, advertising "the most thrilling horror motorcycle movie ever made" — and as it turns out, the first. It seems that by 1971, just two years after Easy Rider, the motorcycle-movie well was running dry, so producers started jumping on gimmicks to liven up the genre. . . and bless ‘em for it. To be honest, I’ve never actually seen Werewolves on Wheels in its entirety, although by all accounts I’m not missing much. Then again, there’s no way anything could possibly live up to this trailer.
Torso
Here’s another classic, all the more so for how it tries to make itself look respectable by advertising itself as a production of Carlo Ponti, "the producer of Doctor Zhivago." After all, a bloated David Lean epic dovetails so neatly with classic giallo fare. Torso is an Eli Roth favorite, and it’s easy to see the film’s influence on movies like Hostel. But the teaser itself had to be an influence on Edgar Wright, who paid homage to the use of the endlessly repeated title in his Grindhouse trailer Don't.
The Shining
The greatest horror-movie teaser ever? Yes, it just may be. This goes to show that you don’t need to sell the story, or even show the actors’ faces, to effectively sell the movie. I love that Kubrick makes us wait for the blood — and that he was somehow able to convince the MPAA that it was actually rusty-colored water that came pouring out of the elevator shaft. Even if you don’t like the movie itself, the teaser is pretty stunning.
— Paul Clark
