The 1980s and 1990s were a golden era for film trailers. Not only did they have less spoilers compared to our modern counterparts, they were also edited in such a unique frenetic MTV-Michael-Bayesque-way that it gave even the most mundane movies a sense of gravitas, especially when the majority of these trailers were accompanied with a domineering and gorgeously gruffy voiceover giving us the lowdown of the plot, most of which were done by legendary voiceover artists Don LaFontaine and Hal Douglas. Their dulcet tones added a sense of wonder and mystique to the films they accompanied, and you could argue that these expositional audio bullet points made the viewer take notice of what was being shown. But more than that was the fact that their vocal prowess added an extra level of grandeur to the content, elevating it just a little notch above what it already was.

Movies like Dark Angel and Monolith, Night of the Running Man and McBain all looked and felt more intriguing and grittier and edgier than the B-Movies they ultimately were. This meant that people who saw these trailers sought out the films and rented them, which helped the movies recoup some income and gave the actors some welcoming residuals in the post. A lot of actors up to the early 2000s relied on their residuals from video and DVD rentals and purchases, but then that all changed big time when streaming services came along and physical media in the rental market became obsolete.

Images: Don LaFontaine (courtesy of Wikipedia). Poster for Dark Angel (courtesy of IMDB). Hal Douglas (courtesy of IMDB)

And whilst Don LaFontaine and Hal Douglas weren’t the only voiceover actors out there, they were certainly the most prominent and recognisable (LaFontaine reportedly voiced over 5,000 film trailers), giving their tonsils a workout on a hefty number of not just movie trailers, but TV ads and promotions and video game trailers – anything that required a V.O. they were the guys to get!

Posters: Monolith (1993), Night of the Running Man (1994), McBain (1991). All courtesy of IMDB.

By the early 2000s the trend of utilizing voiceovers in movie trailers was already waning, with studios using expositional soundbites taken from particular scenes of their films to convey the essence of the movie to the audience. Ever since then the majority of film trailers followed suit using that method, which consigned the ones that were accompanied by voiceover to being a product of the 80s and 90s. Don LaFontaine died in 2008 at the age of 68. Hal Douglas passed away in 2014 at the age of 89. Their legacy lives on in the digital celluloid of many a movie trailer they voiced (that are predominantly uploaded onto YouTube and other video sharing sites).

But who knows – maybe someday there’ll be a resurgence of trailers using voiceover again in the future. And whatever your thoughts and opinions on modern trailers (versus the ones from the last two decades of the 20th century), I think we could all agree that the ones Don LaFontaine and Hal Douglas gave their voices to were a helluva lot better because of their contribution, and they sure did make the movies look a whole lotta fun (Project Shadowchaser and Nemesis looked amazing when they first aired back in the day!).

As to which of these movies are worth viewing in their entirety beyond the trailers themselves, well…we’ll leave that for part 2 of that article, in the meantime enjoy a playlist of some trailers featuring the voiceovers of LaFontaine and Douglas. Although before you press play on these videos let me say this: it proved difficult to ascertain which ones were voiced by whom (IMDB doesn’t really credit LaFontaine or Douglas for their film trailer work), and not all of these trailers are voiced by them (one or two of them sound different from the rest), but hey-ho, enjoy nonetheless…