An Ad Mat Post Dedicated to a Fellow Collector

I've collected ad mats since I was six or seven.I don't know why I started exactly. I have a sense of why I continue; it's the completist mindset, and I'm probably terrified of what I might miss if I stop. It's a hobby whose future is threatened by the death of the real newspaper, so I'm hoping newspapers survive.

It's not often I come across fellow ad mat collectors, but Fred Adelman (active genre fan par excellence), to whom I dedicate this post, has collected, collated, and scanned thousands of ad mats.

While I was cutting up newspapers in Melbourne, he was cutting them up Stateside.

This one's for you, Fred.

Ad Mats For Real Men

This '72 mob movie impressed me when I was ten. I didn't see it at Melbourne's long extinct Chelsea cinema, though; I saw it at the drive-in with my dad. He was a big fan of Bronson, McQueen, and Sean Connery

There are some glaring continuity errors in the movie, but I still appreciate Bronson's performance, and there are some brutal sequences (relatively speaking).


I recently watched this again after I'd watched Dirty Little Billy, one of my favorite American westerns.

I still like it.

Wayne, as usual, is fantastic, possessing a swaggering authority no other actor has ever possessed.

Great poster. Great movie. I saw this for the first time at the Burwood Drive-In in Burwood, Victoria. I called to my dad, held the newspaper up where this poster was ripped from, and pointed to it. He smiled and said: "Saturday night, son."

It wasn't so easy to get him to EuroTrash.

Extremely gritty, enjoyable western based on a novel by Elmore Leonard.

Lancaster is utterly wonderful in this.

I saw this at Melbourne's Metro cinema (as per above ad mat) and wasn't terribly impressed.

Since this screening to my nine year old self, I haven't seen what I'd call a good condition print on VHS or DVD. Perhaps one exists and I'm not aware of it.

What I liked most was the circus setting. Although better exploited in Vampire Circus, I never tire of anything gritty if it's married to Big top shenanigans.