Why the weird dry gulch years of movie trailers? — a general observation here. Trailers in the 1930s through 1950s/60s seem to be a classic mishmash of screen projections (“A CAST OF THOUSANDS! LIONS EATING EXTRAS!”), random collages and sudden tremulous closeups where Rip Clint could tell Lana Lake something soppy. The ones these days are hyperedited music videos in all but name on the one hand and loadsa quirk on the other (“Chris Cooper and Mark Ruffalo in The Wandering Wondermint“). But somewhere around the seventies and eighties it was all…sorta dull, based on the evidence of the trailers now regularly included with Very Special MaxiEditions of DVDs covering the time. Not always — Alien, notably, had the advantage of both a striking chief image with the cracked egg as well as an honestly hackles-raising main trailer. But usually either the deep voiced narrators of the time weren’t up to the task or the graphic designs usually just plain *sucked* in comparison to the main ones being dreamed up. Maybe they figured that people were still getting used to the idea of commercial art.