Gossip Rag Bitch-Slap -- Part Three

"Let's do something other than read!"

Both Us Weekly and Photoplay feature full-page ads for various and sundry post-literate media. Us tends to focus on TV shows and videogames.

Nothing impressive or particularly risible here. Modern marketing at its most mundane.

Photoplay's got it going on, though, with movie ads like this one. I've never seen "Vendetta," but it certainly seems to be an attention-grabber.

Who needs that HBO black-and-white minimalist crap when you can have a four-color Faith Domergue, star of "This Island Earth" and "The House of Seven Corpses," clutching a knife with her dress half torn off? Plus, grown men smacking each other with riding crops or blackjacks or both!




You don't even need color photography when you've got copy as vivid as that promoting "Storm Warning" (or "I Frenched a Bigot"):

"The kiss of a Klansman...! This is the story of a pretty girl who spends a night in "friendly" little town...Suddenly out of the dark she is faced with the fear only a girl can know. Here is a picture more tense than words can describe -- as fresh as the ink of tomorrow headlines!"

Yow! All that, and Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan and Doris Day!

I never knew that the Klan spent all their energy menacing perky blondes. Guess that's why there are no African Americans in the supporting cast.

Photoplay is way ahead in this category, but I'm not finished yet. More hyperventilating movie ads have an appointment with the scanner.