Coming Soon

My review was written in September 1983 after watching an MCA video cassette.

Already telecast, John Landis' compilation of Universal Pictures trailers "Coming Soon!" is a fast-paced, entertaining homevideo item, perfect for collectors.

Avoiding the pitfalls of digressing or becoming condescending, Landis lets the coming attractions speak for themselves: splashy graphics, action-packed footage. Jamie Lee Curtis (later to be featured to good advantage in Landis' "Trading Places") warmly delivers the spare narration, filling in the historical background and setting up funny juxtapositions of trailer excerpts featuring repetitive motifs, e.g. , screaming, answering phones. She is also a good foil for various surprise sight gags as she poses at Castle Dracula and other Universal Studios backlot sites.

Unlike Paramount's unwieldy excerpts compilation, "It Came from Hollywood", "Coming Soon!" is tightly focused on U's legacy of horror films, arguably that studio's most lasting achievement. Besides the trailers from the great 1930s and 1940s films of Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Junior and Bela Lugosi, the program's highlight is a priceless, approximately five-minute Alfred Hitchcock trailer for "Psycho" in which he takes us on a tour of Bates Motel and mansion. It's a must for all fans of the late master of suspense (and black humor?).

Another treat, in one of several inclusions of sci-fi/fantasy pics, is a glimpse of Steven Spielberg directing Henry Thomas on the set of "E. T.", in which the director's cogent and strictly grownup vocabulary with the child actor is quite revealing.

Pic ends with a montage of recent Universal titles, climaxing in Landis' favorite nonexistent film "See You Next Wednesday" as an obscure in-joke derived from a dialog scene in "2001: A Space Odyssey".