Well, it's time to have another delve into the Devil Priest set of Horror Top Trumps, and this time we have a couple of faces very familiar to B movie buffs! First up, we have this metallic fellow!
One of the more obvious steals in the deck, and surprisingly even featuring the correct name, this horror originated in the 1958 SF flick Colossus of New York. Directed by Eugène Lourié, who had previously helmed Ray Harryhausen's Beast from 20, 000 Fathoms (1953) and would later bring us the giant monster movies Behemoth, The Sea Monster (1963) and Gorgo (1961). Colossus of New York told the tale of a grieving father who transplants the brain of his genius son into a huge robotic body, so that his gifted child can continue his vital scientific research. Of course, to absolutely nobody's surprise, the brain begins to lose its humanity, and the cyborgian Colossus decided going on a rampage and stomping humanity might be more fun than saving it.
As you can see, the mystery artist for Horror Top Trumps actually just got out the tracing paper and did the card design from this well-known publicity still. Still it is a nice felt-tip portrait I'll give it that... And there was to be further blatant tracing paper antics with our next card...
Now surely I don't need to identify this one... Even if it is appearing under an assumed name! For this is one of the great space monsters of 1950s SF - indeed it is one of the most iconic cinematic aliens ever to lurch across the silver screen - the Metaluna mutant from the classic This Island Earth (1955).
However despite its iconic status, the Mutant only appears in the movie briefly at the end, with most of the action featuring the almost human-looking Metalunans. However in a strange parallel, around the same time Top Trumps were lifting the Mutant for the Horror set, another company was pinching its large foreheaded masters for a long running ad campaign... One which led many SF obsessed '80s kids (alright, maybe just me) to believe a major manufacturer of household appliances was actually a front operation for an alien species to relocate to Earth and destroy our free will in Thought Transference Chambers...
Judge for yourself - here are the Metalunans from This Island Earth
UPDATE!!!!!
Eagle-eyed reader Mr Griffin Madill got in touch to alert us to ANOTHER guest star in Creature From Outer Space! In another get-tracing-paper-out incident, the chap in the background suffering from a vicious head-stabbing is none other than cult icon Ian McCulloch, star of Fulci's Zombi II AKA Zombie and Zombie Flesh-eaters, Zombie Holocaust (our Zombi Zombi podcasts for more details) and Luigi Cozzi's Alien knock-off Contamination. The bloodied victim is actually copied from a still of Mr McCulloch's in the 1975 Tyburn horror The Ghoul (hear all about this flick here) which also starred Peter Cushing, John Hurt, Veronica Carlson and Don Henderson. And here's the splatastic original pic!
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