Two Designers Walk Into a Bar · Evergreen Podcasts

Scary Good Posters - The Thing and The Creature from the Black Lagoon

·38 min·2 clips

Struzan finished The Thing artwork overnight after a last-minute Universal Pictures call.

A tribute note hangs over the jokes. The opening explains that Drew Struzan died between recording and release, so the praise later on feels less like trivia and more like someone raising a glass. Then, naturally, the start wobbles. A false run at The Thing and Creature from the Black Lagoon turns into hand-rubbing bits, table etiquette nonsense, and that familiar sound of two people trying to begin properly. Once the poster talk catches, it has bite. The Creature one-sheet is treated as a selling object, rare enough that the hosts joke listeners should buy one and send it their way. Painful gift. They put the price around twenty to thirty grand, which makes the collector market sound glamorous, ridiculous, and a little terrifying. The monster keeps meaning more than monster. Their B-movie read circles fear of the unknown: science gone wrong, Cold War paranoia, the atom, racial tension, and environmental destruction. It stays loose in the right way. One host links the tropical setting to atomic testing somewhere; the other keeps noticing how these movies blame mysterious forces when things go bad. Nobody laminates a grand thesis. The idea sneaks in through jokes about beautiful, screaming Julia Adams, the Creature's murky origin, and a genre that could hide national worries inside monster spectacle. Struzan is the emotional hinge. Near the end, the praise turns plain: his work showed artists how to sell a story in one piece of media art. The tribute does not stiffen the room. The close still veers into Halloween nerves, therapy jokes, and a financial planner punchline, which lets the episode stay warm without losing respect for the artists. Nerdy, specific, friendly. If one-sheet, Cold War paranoia, and twenty grand can all make you grin, this is your kind of bar talk.

As heard by us

Two monster posters become a brisk tour of horror, design, and Cold War unease.

Two horror posters do most of the work here: The Thing and Creature from the Black Lagoon open a quick path into Drew Struzan's illustration chops and the logic of B-movie fear.

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Why you'd press play

If you like horror posters and a Drew Struzan tribute, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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