Below, another treasure from our France trip. Cinémonde magazine published today in 1960 with Elke Sommer in a summery cover shot and interior photos of Marie-José Nat, Roger Dumas, Deborah Kerr, Jeanne Moreau, and more.

Richard Matheson was a well known writer who published many novels and short stories, penned teleplays for The Twilight Zone, and wrote the novel Psycho—which later became Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller—but his 1962 supernatural novel A Stir of Echoes is a bit obscure. It's probably better known as a 1999 movie starring the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon. The story here deals with a man whose talent as a medium is accidentally unleashed when he's hypnotized at a party. The book isn't elegantly written. A typical sentence: He walked weavingly toward the door. But you don't have to be a master stylist to tell a good story and that's what Matheson did over the course of his long career, churning out great concept after great concept, here unspooling the tale of a man who can't control his unbidden psychic talent. With the power to see the future, the protagonist gains unwanted knowledge of kidnapping, adultery, a shooting, and other violent and nightmarish occurrences. It defies belief that all this happens in a week or two on a formerly quiet suburban street, but A Stir of Echoes is an entertaining story with a nice twist ending. We haven't seen the movie but we're curious now.

When we wrote about Psycho a while back we came across this Yugoslavian poster which we're sharing today, finally. Usually we write about films on their release dates but there isn't an exact one known for Yugoslavia. It arrived there in 1963, though, three years after its U.S. run. This two tone poster is about as low rent as it gets, but it's still effective, we think. 

Remember those alpha covers we talked about in the past? This one can be added to that group. It’s a decidedly threatening tableau, and with the extra element of a tool taking on the role of phallic symbol. Robert Bonfils was behind this one, 1965, for Greenleaf Classics/Leisure. 

Vera Miles is most famous as the actress who gets to survive Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. She worked with Hitchcock on many films, but had other worthy roles, including in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Wrong Man, and just about every television detective series of the 1970s. She claims she was never able to never please Hitchcock because she wasn’t sexy enough. This shot proves Alfred needed glasses. It’s circa 1955. 

Here’s a rarity. It’s a poster from the former Yugoslavia (such items are commonly referred to as “Exyu”) for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, featuring a photo, not of doomed Janet Leigh who met her end in the shower, but of Vera Miles, who plays Leigh’s sister. With the help of John Gavin, Miles ends up poking around the Bates Motel looking for clues to her sis’s disappearance. Safe to say she never expected what she found. See a Czech Psycho poster here. 

Various movie posters from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and the former West Germany, circa ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.