The Skull (Paramount Pictures) (1965)

A SKULLFULL OF IDEAS FOR SKILLFUL EX PLOITATION! SAFETY CAMPAIGN Contact your local school board and the local branch of an automobile club for a special, co-sponsored safety campaign using the skull as major art-work on posters and flyers. Such a project would be a natural tie-up for any safety-conscious organization or club. Not only will it perform a worthwhile community service, but it also supplies an additional and highly effective way to announce the arrival of the film. Copy beneath the picture of the skull could read; “Don’t let this happen to you, Drive carefully and stay alive ... so you'll be able to see “The Skull,” an exciting motion picture of horror and terror. SKULLARAMA Schedule one or more special “Skullarama” showings of “The Skull.” These pre-announced runs should begin at midnight and run until dawn. If you have a real live-wire night-time deejay in town, approach him and he might jump at the opportunity to do his program from your theatre and interview payees as they enter. SKULL-SHOCKTAIL PARTY This may be just what is needed for an effective sponsored performance of “The Skull” by your local newspaper columnists, radio and TV personalities. Personal appearances of local celebrities at the party, which includes refreshments consisting of Bloody Marys using plain Tomato juice, are sure ways of attracting large attendance and press coverage. This event could be merchandised to the hilt with sponsorship by a local disc-jockey making a pitch to the kids, even running his show from the party itself. SCREAM CONTEST Arrange with a local radio station to sponsor a scream contest. The station should have a beeper phone system whereby contestants are awarded prizes based on the loudest scream or the screaming could be recorded and the listening audience could indicate which was the most effective scream. MOCK PREMIERE To create a maximum amount of excitement, stage a mock premiere with klieg lights, etc.; arrange for guest monsters to arrive in hearses as well as other odd-ball vehicles and arrange for a TV or radio station to cover the event. Announce that the special guest will be “The Skull” and dress someone suitably for the occasion. Best dressed children in monster costumes are awarded prizes. Alert TV news editors and city desks at newspapers for coverage of the event. DARE CONTEST A local radio station should be contacted to promote a contest whereby a lady could be awarded $1.00 a minute to sit in the theatre starting at midnight and view “The Skull.” The lady, of course, would be alone. This could be a newsworthy item providing you with a number of tear sheets. THE SKULL STOMP Capture that swinging, fun-loving teen-age crowd with the creation of a new dance which would provide an unusual and striking method to promote the film as well as your theatre and playdate. Contact local dance studios to make up “The Skull Stomp.” Arrange for mutually-beneficial promotions. Have signs and posters made which announce the new dance and invite all those who wish to see instructors doing the dance to come to the theatre on a specified night. Advertise a contest to be held on stage or in the lobby of your theatre. Offer free dancing lessons and other prizes to the best dancers of “The Skull Stamp.” 4 EMERGENCY STATION A gimmick that can really pay off on a film such as “The Skull” is a special first-aid station set up in the lobby for patrons. Cover a table with a white cloth and display various drugStore items as smelling salts, bandages, peroxide, etc. Place an usherette, dressed in a white nurse's uniform, behind the table. Place signs outside and inside the theatre explaining that Management vill help, free of charge, all those suffering from shock after seeing the film. Try to rent an ambulance and park it in front of the theatre as an additional item in this sensational stunt. HORROR VIEWING This wild stunt is done with the use of a coffin placed on a table in the lobby. Using a sheet, a few pillows and a skull, you can create the illusion that the coffin is really occupied. Invite patrons to raise the coffin lid and see what's inside. They'll get some shock when they see the skull-headed figure. Use this gimmick as an effective advance or current promotion. HAIR-RAISING IDEA Borrow a “hair-raising machine” from the science department of the college in your town. This is technically known as a static machine. When applied to the human body, it causes the hair to rise straight up. There are no harmful effects, and those who let it be used on them will get plenty of fun from it. Set up the machine in your lobby with a sign inviting patrons to step up and have their hair raised, in preparation for seeing “The Skull’”—a film that will surely raise the hair on their heads. COFFIN CONTEST Install a coffin in the lobby which is completely circled by a chain held together by a padlock. Near the coffin set out a plate of keys. Invite patrons to try their luck at finding the key which fits the lock. One key to a customer and the person who opens the lock can open the coffin and take the prize inside. SHOCK MUSIC There are many L.P. albums which may be employed for a wild shock effect whether used from a soundtrack recording or as the basis of a radio contest or for practically any use. One of the most interesting and blood-curdling is the AB-PT recording of “Shock Music In HiFi.” Get such an album and you might be able to put it with the film’s playdate copy for servicing it to AM and FM stations. CRANIUM HUNT Arrange with a local disc-jockey or radio station to co-sponsor a special scavenger hunt for the missing cranium seen in “The Skull.” Announcements could encourage the listening audience to find the skull and win free tickets to the film as well as a special prize. A series of clues could be given, thus providing a long range promotion. X-RAY STARTLER Contact hospitals and doctors in your community for old x-rays of skulls. This is the kind of item that helps bring the shocking quality of “The Skull” right into the public eye. Take x-ray negatives and put them inside the lobby and in front of the theatre, placing colored lights behind them. Use x-rays for advance as well as current promotion of the film. Place them in store windows with suitable credits. Copy might refer to the skull as something we can x-ray, we can see, but something which defies our capacity to reason when it has evil powers as depicted in “The Skull.”