Unique artwork by Tongdee on this Thai poster for John Carpenter‘s excellent sci-fi film They Live, in which a drifter (played by former wrestler Roddy Piper) finds a set of special sunglasses which reveal that aliens have taken over the earth and are subduing the general population through subliminal messages and signals. The film is famous for being the inspiration behind graphic designer Shephard Fairey‘s famous OBEY street art and clothing label, which is based on the hidden alien slogans only visible when the sunglasses are worn.

The film also features the infamous line “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum.”, which can be viewed here. There’s also the legendary fight between Nada (Piper) and Armitage (Keith David) that lasts over five minutes and was apparently proposed and choreographed by the two actors themselves.

Here’s the great original trailer.

Tongdee Panumas (he signs his posters with just his first name) was an incredibly prolific Thai film poster artist during the 70s, 80s and 90s but I’ve been unable to find out much about him, other than that he was born in 1947. If anyone has any more information please get in touch. A knowledgeable collector of Thai posters told me that the artists would rarely if ever see the film they were creating the poster for and would instead paint images based on still photos or posters from other countries. This led to some wild designs and even some artwork with characters and elements that didn’t even appear in the actual film!

To see the other John Carpenter posters I have collected click here.

This is the UK quad for a 2008 digital re-release of The Spy Who Loved Me, which was the tenth James Bond adventure and the third to star Sir Roger Moore as the legendary spy. Felt by many to be the best Moore era film, it shares only the title with Ian Fleming’s original novel (at the author’s request) and the screenplay was written by Christopher Wood and Bond regular Richard Maibaum. When Russian and British submarines mysteriously disappear whilst on patrol, each country sends their top spies to discover who is responsible. The trail leads Bond to Egypt where he discovers that the plans for a submarine tracking device are on sale to the highest bidder.

Whilst in Egypt, Bond encounters his Russian rival, the KGB Agent Triple X (!) Major Anya Amasova (played by the beautiful Barbara Bach) and after a few initial hostile encounters the pair agree to team up to track down the plans and deal with the mute but deadly assassin Jaws (the late Richard Kiel‘s first appearance as the fan-favourite baddy). The pair identify shipping tycoon and scientist Karl Stromberg (Curd Jürgens) as the man behind the device and travel to Sardinia on his trail. There they visit Stromberg’s underwater base, Atlantis, posing as husband and wife scientists but their cover is soon blown and Bond’s infamous Lotus Esprit-cum-submarine makes an appearance. Eventually Bond and Anya are onboard a submarine captured by Stromberg’s submarine-swallowing supertanker and a final showdown takes place.

The Spy Who Loved Me opens with arguably the best pre-credits sequence of any Bond film that apparently even had Prince Charles on his feet applauding at the Royal Premiere back in 1977. The locations, sets and special effects work (particularly the models) are all first rate and you really feel that the budget was well spent. The ridiculous camp humour of later Moore outings is thankfully restrained too. The film was very well received by both critics and audiences and raked in healthy worldwide box-office takings.

The UK distributor Park Circus was responsible for organising the digital re-release and this quad was printed in very limited numbers. It’s near enough identical to the original quad and features American artist Bob Peak‘s brilliant artwork that featured on posters around the world, including the US one sheet. The original quad was printed on paper with a silver metallic sheen and this quad is glossy and printed double-sided (see the last picture and note that the credits text is missing on the back).

Bob Peak was born in 1927 in Denver, Colorado and grew up in Wichita, Kansas before heading off to serve in the military during the Korean War. Upon his return Peak enrolled in the Los Angeles-based Art Center College of Design where he began to hone his craft as an artist, moving to New York after graduation where he began his career as a commercial illustrator, first working on a campaign for Old Hickory Whiskey. For the next few years the artist worked on a string of successful advertising campaigns, magazine editorials and more, but it was when United Artists hired Peak to work on their campaign for the release of West Side Story in 1961 that he began what would prove to be a fruitful and almost unrivalled career in film poster creation.

Peak’s immediately recognisable style was soon much in demand and his painting appeared on posters for films such as My Fair Lady (1964) and Camelot (1967), but it was his work in the area of sci-fi and fantasy for which Peak is perhaps best known, with the iconic design for the first Superman film (1978), the classic image he created for Rollerball (1975) and the colourful poster for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), amongst several classics of the genre he was responsible for. His paintings for Apocalypse Now, however, arguably saw the artist working at the top of his game and in the recently published must-own bookThe Art of Bob Peak (put together by one of his sons), he is quoted as saying, “Of all my movie work, it is my work on Apocalypse Now that I am most proud of.”

To see the other posters in the Film on Paper collection that were painted by Bob Peak click here.

Damnation Alley, released internationally as Survival Run, is a dystopian sci-fi adventure (set after the nuclear destruction of World War 3) that pretty much disappeared at the box office, but later gained something of a cult status. It’s interesting to note that the studio, 20th Century Fox, were making two sci-fi films in 1977 and saw this as their big hope for a box-office blockbuster. The studio suits didn’t have much faith in the other project, a little film called Star Wars…

The film features a couple of infamous scenes with mutated creatures, including ‘giant’ scorpions (terribly composited using the blue screen process) and killer cockroaches. It also featured an interesting vehicle known as The Landmaster.

In some cinemas the film was shown with something called Sound 360°. From IMDb:

20th Century-Fox developed a rival to Universal’s gimmicky ‘Sensurround’ sound process (popularized in the theatrical release of Earthquake (1974)) that was only used for the theatrical release of “Damnation Alley” called Sound 360°. This process was basically a variation of Magnetic-Optical Stereo sound. This technical advancement/gimmick in sound did not last past “Damnation Alley” although it was planned for Walter Hill‘s The Driver (1978) and Damien: Omen II (1978). If you look at the one sheet of “Damnation Alley” the “Sound 360°” declaration and logo are prominent at the bottom.

This teaser one sheet was painted by noted American sci-fi illustrator Paul Lehr who was born in 1930 and studied at the prestigious Pratt Institute before beginning a career that would last up until his death in 1998. He painted hundreds of celebrated book covers for authors including John Wyndham, HG Wells and Frank Herbert and also contributed to several notable specialist magazines including Omni and Weird Tales. In addition he worked on content for more mainstream publications such as Time, Fortune and Playboy. The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction has an entry on him which can be read here. Check out a gallery of his work here.

There’s an international style one sheet that can be seen on IMPAwards and was apparently also painted by Lehr. The Japanese poster was a repaint of the one sheet by the artist Seito. Lehr also worked on the one sheet for Prophecy (1979).

Note the colour bars on the left of the poster which indicate that this is an untrimmed printers proof one sheet. Proofs were used by the printing house to check that the colours and other details were correct. The final ready one sheets would have been trimmed down to the correct size. A handful of printers proofs have survived for a few different one sheets.

The film was recently released on blu-ray (in the correct aspect ratio) and a trailer for that can be watched here.

A little-seen horror from 1973, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf was the last film that director Nathan H. Juran (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) worked on and it paired him for the final time with leading actor Kerwin Mathews who was a regular collaborator (he played Sinbad, for example). The plot sees Mathews play Robert, a divorced father who takes his estranged son Richie (Scott Sealey) to the family’s holiday mountain cabin for a short break. Whilst walking in the woods at night the pair are attacked by a werewolf and during the struggle Rob is bitten before the beast falls down a ravine and is impaled on a fence.

When they discover the body it has changed back to a man whom the local police don’t recognise. Richie’s insistence that it was a werewolf is laughed off by his father and the police and later his mother speaks to a psychologist who suggests the boy is struggling to accept that he witnessed his father killing someone and is making up a fantastic story to cope with the situation. The psychologist then recommends Robert and Richie return to the cabin to help with the healing process, but they happen to visit during the next full-moon cycle and that bite comes back to haunt Robert and Richie. Will anyone believe the boy before it’s too late?

It seems like the film was given a limited release and this is the 30×40 poster which will have been used for the film’s showing in venues like drive-ins and larger cinemas. It was also given a UK release as a double-bill with the creature feature ‘Sssss‘, that was out the same year. The film has never been officially released on DVD and is hard to track down, should you wish to watch it.

I’m unsure who is responsible for the artwork on this poster so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

The Sword and the Sorcerer is a 1982 fantasy film directed by Albert Pyun (in his debut) and was one of several entries in the genre that were released the same year, including Conan the Barbarian and The Beastmaster. Lee Horsley appears in his first film role as Prince Talon the song of a King and Queen who are slain by the evil King Cromwell (Richard Lynch) after he uses the black magic of a sorcerer named Xusia (Richard Moll) to overthrow their kingdom.

Over a decade later, Talon returns to the kingdom as a mercenary leading a band of men on a mission to help rebels overthrow Cromwell. Talon is asked to help free Mikah (Simon MacCorkindale), Cromwell’s war chancellor, who is secretly a double agent and is captured and imprisoned. His sister Alana (Kathleen Beller) begs for help from Talon and the mercenary sets out to Cromwell’s castle where the final showdown with his parents’ murderer takes place.

The film was critically derided at the time but still proved a popular box-office draw, easily recouping its relatively low budget and ending up as the most profitable independent film of 1982.

This quad was painted by the British designer and artist Brian Bysouth who I interviewed for this site in 2012, There is also a quad for Willow featuring the same artwork. Brian is one of my favourite artists and worked on multiple classic posters from the 1960s to the 1980s, including the final painted poster for a James Bond film, The Living Daylights. The other posters I’ve collected by Brian can be seen by clicking here.

This poster takes elements from both the Style A US one sheet as well as the Style B one sheet, both credited to the artist Peter Andrew Jones.

Great artwork by Renato Casaro features on this UK quad for the release of the largely forgotten 1985 b-movie Certain Fury. As this poster is keen to point out, the film stars two young award-winning actresses, Tatum O’Neal (daughter of Ryan) and Irene Cara, a singer-songwriter who had won awards for her work on Fame and Flashdance. Tatum plays Scarlet, a tough, young delinquent who supports herself with prostitution and drug-dealing and Irene is Tracy, the daughter of a doctor, who has been arrested for drug possession and resisting arrest. The pair first meet in a courtroom and are waiting to be seen by the judge when other defendants begin attacking the court staff and police, leading to a deadly shootout. Scarlet and Tracy manage to escape the carnage and enter into the city’s sewers whilst being pursued by the police who believe they were part of the shootout. Soon the accidental death of a policeman is blamed on their actions and they have most of the force after them as well as various criminals who Scarlet asks for help before they turn on her and Tracy.

The film was poorly reviewed at the time and hardly set the box-office on fire. It’s never been released on home video since the days of VHS and, if the IMDb reviews are anything to go by, there’s probably a good reason. It sounds like a film that’s not even ‘so bad it’s good’ and this seems like one of those cases where the poster art is the best thing about the film!

One of my favourite artists, Renato Casaro is an Italian with a prolific movie poster output that lasted over 35 years. He began his career in 1953, aged 19, at the famous Studio Favalli in Rome and would go on to design and paint posters for many of the biggest directors in the world. His skill at accurately portraying actors and his brilliant use of colour and composition saw him much in demand from studios and actors alike. His artwork has featured on posters used in multiple countries, including Japan, Germany, USA as well as in his native Italy.

Check out the incredible amount of work on his official website here, which also features a biography of the artist. In March 2014 I published an exclusive interview with Renato and it can be read by clicking here. The other posters I’ve collected by Renato Casaro are here.

King Kong Lives is the critically-mauled and commercially disastrous sequel to the ill-advised 1976 remake of the classic big ape monster movie, which was shepherded into life by the legendary Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis. I’m not entirely sure why a decade passed before this sequel was put into production, but both De Laurentiis (or at least his company DEG) and director John Guillermin returned and definitely shouldn’t have bothered. The gap is explained in the film by having Kong in a 10 year coma following his fall from the World Trade Center at the end of the previous film.

Linda Hamilton (who should have known better) stars as Dr. Amy Franklin who is attempting to perform a heart transplant with an electronic replacement but Kong has lost too much blood for the operation to proceed. Luckily the adventurer Hank Mitchell (Brian Kerwin) finds and captures another giant ape in the jungles of Borneo and brings it to the US so that the operation can go ahead. It turns out that the new ape is a female and once Kong’s heart is replaced it’s not long before he escapes with ‘Lady Kong’ and chaos ensues. Unfortunately, despite the premise, the entire cast looks as if they’d rather be somewhere else and the shoddy effects can’t paper over the cracks.

This artwork appears on the Japanese B1 and B0 posters. The B0 size of poster is typically used in larger cinemas and in advertising spots in the Tokyo metro. I’ve struggled to find out who the artist is for this poster so please get in touch if you have an idea. There are also two B2 posters for the film (style A and style B).

A great photograph of James Woods looking his devilish best alongside Brian Dennehy on this US one sheet for the 1987 crime film Best Seller. Directed by the late John Flynn (Rolling Thunder) and written by the prolific Larry Cohen, the film stars Dennehy as Dennis Meechum, a police officer who is wounded during an attempted robbery on an evidence locker in 1972. He writes a memoir of his experience which is published to great success. Years later he is shown to be struggling with writer’s block whilst raising his daughter alone after being made a widower.

During a research visit to a court room, one of the suspects escapes the court and Meechum chases after him along with a man called Cleve (Woods). The suspect nearly kills Meechum but Cleve intervenes, shooting the suspect before disappearing. Later Cleve meets with Meechum and trues to persuade him to write a new book about his work as a hitman for a shadowy company called Kappa International. The pair travel around the country gathering proof of the hits that Cleve carried out, but David Madlock (Paul Shenar), Kappa’s founder, understandably wants to keep this sordid history under wraps and the pair are soon in grave danger. Madlock even goes after Meechum’s daughter and the stage is set for a final showdown.

I’m unsure who designed this one sheet so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

A unique design features on this German poster for the release of David Lynch’s cult mystery, Blue Velvet (1986). The film was long in gestation and Lynch has since said the story began to crystallise into a series of ideas as early as 1973. The critical and commercial failure of Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1984) had left the director bruised and deflated, so he was keen to return to an original story in the vein of his 1977 debut Eraserhead. Dino De Laurentiis, the producer behind Dune, agreed to finance and produce Blue Velvet for a relatively low-budget of $6m.

Lynch assembled an eclectic cast ready for production, including Isabella Rossellini, who was known for her modelling and TV adverts, Dennis Hopper and Kyle MacLachlan who had also appeared in Dune and would later gain worldwide fame as FBI Agent Cooper in Lynch’s TV series, Twin Peaks.

MacLachlan plays mild-mannered Jeffrey Beaumont who returns to his small hometown in North Carolina to visit his father who has suffered a stroke. Soon after arriving he takes a shortcut through a vacant lot and discovers a severed human ear on the ground. After taking the ear to the local police detective he becomes reaquainted with detective’s daughter Sandy (Lynch regular Laura Dern) and the pair decide to carry out their own investigation into the mystery.

They soon realise that the enigmatic nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Rossellini) has something to do with the missing ear and Jeffrey decides to start following her but makes the mistake of getting caught in her apartment. Vallens threatens him with a knife but soon afterwards the sociopathic Frank Booth (an incredible performance from Hopper) arrives and Jeffrey hides in the closet from where he is forced to watch Booth’s bizarre sexual proclivities. Jeffrey soon discovers that Booth has kidnapped Vallens’ son and he agrees to help her as he descends further into the sinister underworld hidden beneath a seemingly pleasant town. The film received mixed critical notices at the time but has since gone onto achieve cult status and is often cited as one of the best American films of all time. It’s also one of the director’s more accessible films, certainly in comparison to the likes of Inland Empire.

This German poster was created by a French designer who goes by the name Benjamin Baltimore (I’m assuming that’s not his actual name). I’m not quite sure why the German distributor used a French designer and the majority of the work in Baltimore’s portfolio is for French posters – Blue Velvet’s French poster is completely different in style. Blue Velvet is the rare film that has a unique poster for practically every country it was released in and emovieposter.com’s archive is a good way of viewing them all – see here. According to this article he’s responsible for over 600 film posters and has worked for a number of legendary directors during his career.

A colourful design features on this UK quad for the release of the 1986 cult flick Something Wild. Directed by Jonathan Demme (best known for Silence of the Lambs) the film is a difficult one to categorise as it has elements of comedy, action and also something of a road trip setup. The script was written by E. Max Frye whilst he was still at film school and made its way into Demme’s hands, with the director committing to filming it straight away.

Jeff Daniels stars as the straight-laced financier Charles Driggs who lives in a New York suburb and commutes every day into Manhattan. We first see him inside a greasy spoon diner from where he sneaks out without paying (in what he later calls a small act of rebellion) but not without attracting the attention of a sultry brunette who calls herself Lulu (a sexy turn from Melanie Griffith). Although reluctant at first, Charles is persuaded to accompany her on a spontaneous road trip out of the city.

Lulu first seduces him in a hotel room and then the pair continue on to her home town in Pennsylvania where she introduces Charles to her mother, saying that the pair have recently married. Lulu, who reveals her real name is Audrey, takes Charles along to a high school reunion. Whilst there Audrey’s ex-husband Ray Sinclair (an electrifying Ray Liotta), who she thought was still in prison for a string of robberies, appears and is initially friendly towards the couple. Things soon take a dark turn as Ray forces Charles to leave and drives off with Audrey. However, Charles realises how smitten he is with her and begins to tail them with a plan to prize her away from Ray.

The artwork on this UK quad is the same that is featured on the US one sheet and was clearly originally painted for that poster. I’ve struggled to identify who the artist is so if anyone has any ideas please get in touch. The colour schemes are similar on both posters but the logo is different and the quad has the additional photo of Ray Liotta.

This is a British quad poster for a 1993 re-release of Martin Scorsese‘s 1973 film Mean Streets. Whilst not the director’s earliest full-length feature, it’s certainly the one that put him firmly on the map ahead of 1976’s global hit Taxi Driver. Co-written by Scorsese, Mean Streets is also a film that is very personal to the director because the film is set in and around the Manhattan neighbourhood he grew up in. The story was shaped by his experience of living in Little Italy and the encounters he had with the various types of characters that live there, including members of the New York Mafia, with whom his father had dealings.

Scorsese also peppered the film with the kind of music he’d been listening to as a youth, which included the likes of the Rolling Stones and The Ronettes. It’s reckoned that half of the film’s budget was spent on clearing these songs for use in the soundtrack, but their inclusion makes for some memorable moments. One such example is the entrance of Joey (Robert De Niro) into the club soundtracked to the Stones’ ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’.

Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, a small-time member of the mafia who spends his days collecting protection money on behalf of his uncle, the local boss Giovanni (Cesare Danova). He’s also torn between his feelings of Catholic responsibility, and devotion to the church, with his desire to move up the chain in the outfit. Charlie is also hampered by his friendship with the unhinged Johnny Boy (De Niro), an inveterate gambler who owes money to various unsavoury loan sharks around the neighbourhood. Johnny’s behaviour becomes increasingly erratic and threatens Charlie’s position as a wiseguy and his secret relationship with Johnny’s cousin Teresa (Amy Robinson). As tension rises, the group try to escape to Brooklyn but the neighbourhood has other plans for them.

I’m not totally sure why this film was given a 1993 re-release but it could have had something to do with the success of his 1990 gangster film Goodfellas. It’s also possible that the distributor (Electric Pictures) decided to show the film as part of a particular season of films. Note that all the films mentioned along the bottom of the poster are all based in London so it’s possible it wasn’t a nationwide re-release. The film’s original quad, for the film’s release in the 1970s, is hugely uninspiring (see here) and nothing beats the classic artwork created for the US campaign (see here).

The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue is a sci-fi themed adult film that was directed by the late Gerard Damiano, one of the key figures in the so-called Golden Age of Porn. The name was given retrospectively to a fifteen year period between 1969 and 1984 in which adult films were given positive attention by the general public, mainstream cinemas and film critics. Damiano wrote and directed the legendary adult film Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones, which was one of the top-grossing films of 1973 (in all categories, not just adult films).

This film stars two male actors who were also key figures in the industry; Robert Kerman (AKA R Bolla) and Herschel Savage. Kerman introduced Savage to the industry in 1976 and he would go on to star in over 160 adult titles, including the 1978 classic Debbie Does Dallas. Lysa Thatcher, another prominent character during the golden period also appears.

The plot is described thusly on Wikipedia:

In a futuristic society called ‘Alpha Blue’, sexual needs are fulfilled by a computer. Griffin (Savage) is happy with this state of affairs and spends his time with prostitutes, but Algon (Robert Kerman) longs for the good old days of love and romance. He falls in love with Satisfier 805, Diana (Thatcher).

The artwork on this one sheet is fairly innocent, particularly in comparison to some of the posters for other adult films of the period. I’ve been unable to discover the identity of the artist so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

Richard Amsel artwork features on this one sheet for the release of the biographical drama Nijinsky. The film tells the story of the celebrated Russian ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky who was born in 1889 in what is now Kiev, Ukraine and died in 1950 in London, England. Often cited as the greatest dancer of the 20th Century he was celebrated for his virtuosity, his ability to dance en pointe and his gravity defying leaps. The film was based on the dancer’s personal diaries and the 1934 biography that was written by his wife Romola de Pulszky. It was directed by the late Herbert Ross, a sometime actor, choreographer, producer and director who is perhaps best known for Footloose (1984).

The plot is described thusly on IMDb:
Set in the early 1910s at a time of passionate artistic experimentalism, and based on biographical fact, this is the story of Vaslav Nijinsky, the young and brilliant but headstrong premier danseur and aspiring choreographer of the Ballets Russes. The company is managed by the famous Sergei Diaghilev, himself a controlling and fiercely possessive impresario. The increasing tension between these powerful egos, exacerbated by homosexual desire and jealousy, becomes triangular when the young ballerina Romola de Pulsky determinedly attempts to draw the increasingly mentally unstable Nijinsky away from Diaghilev.

Richard Amsel was born in Philadelphia in 1947 and studied at the city’s College of Art. Whilst there he entered and won a nationwide artist competition to paint the poster for the film ‘Hello Dolly!’. Amsel was just 22 at the time and this win helped him quickly establish a career in New York where he worked on album covers (including one for Barry Manilow) as well as magazine covers and editorial art. In addition, he worked on posters some of the most important films of the 1970s, including Chinatown, Nashville and The Sting. During the 1970s he also worked on a series of covers for the American magazine TV Guide, which are still celebrated to this day.

In the 1980s Amsel worked on what is my favourite Indiana Jones poster, the Raiders of the Lost Ark 1982 re-release one sheet. He had also painted the original release version, featuring a much more serious looking Indy. The artist’s final film poster was the one sheet for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985. Amsel sadly died of AIDS-related complications that same year. He leaves behind a great legacy of unforgettable artwork, some of which I already have in the Film on Paper collection and which can be seen here.

Colourful artwork features on this UK quad for the release of the 1990 ultra l0w budget horror-comedy, I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle. The film remains the sole feature film credit for the director Dirk Campbell who appears to have spent most of his career in television. The majority of the cast are also from TV backgrounds, including lead Neil Morrissey (‘Men Behaving Badly’, ‘Line of Duty’) and the late Michael Elphick. The latter is perhaps best known for playing the titular lead in Boon, which ran for 93 episodes and also starred Morrissey. The production of the film apparently utilised the sets of Boon without the TV company being aware and several other members of the cast and crew were involved.

Set in and around Birmingham, the film opens with a demonic ritual being performed by a biker gang at night. Just as the ceremony is about to be completed they are attacked and murdered by a rival gang led by Roach (Andrew Powell). During the mayhem, the demon is shown to have been summoned and it quickly enters the body of the lead occultist. After Roach’s gang have fled the scene, the demonic presence reanimates the dead body and then drips its blood into the petrol tank of the occultist’s motorbike.

The next day, motorcycle courier Noddy (Morrissey) meets with a mechanic who has taken ownership of the demonic bike and is selling it without realising what is inside. Although everything seems normal to begin with, Noddy and his partner Kim (Amanda Noar) gradually realise that the bike is no ordinary machine, especially when their mechanic is brutally murdered at home, with blood and tire treads found all over the walls. Inspector Cleaver (Elphick) becomes involved in the case, bodies begin piling up, and soon Noddy is turning to a biker/priest (Anthony Daniels) to help exorcise the killer demon.

Despite its low-budget origins, the film is a fun watch and the script has some genuinely hilarious lines in it. There are also some inventive action scenes and the killer machine itself is well handled. There’s also one of the most surreal/gross scenes involving a dream sequence and the contents of a toilet bowl ever committed to celluloid. The film is surprisingly gory and doesn’t skimp on violence – most of the special effects are well done. I’m not saying it’s a classic, far from it, but it’s certainly worth a watch!

Frustratingly, I’ve struggled to find out who was responsible for the artwork on this country of origin poster. I am certain that it’s not the work of Graham Humphreys as I had this confirmed to me in an email from the man himself. If anyone has any ideas please get in touch. Note the rather brilliant quote from Sam Raimi (Evil Dead)!

This is the UK one sheet (sometimes referred to as English one sheet) for the 1978 version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, based on the 1915 magazine serial-turned-book of the same name by the Scottish author John Buchan. The story has been turned into a film a number of times, including a 1935 version by Alfred Hitchcock that was later remade in 1959. This version, directed by the late Don Sharp (Psychomania, a couple of Hammer horror films), is considered to be the most faithful to Buchan’s original book. The film is set in the UK in 1914 and focuses on the character of Richard Hannay (whom Buchan would return to for five other novels) who becomes embroiled in a nefarious plot by German sleeper agents to start a war by assassinating a visiting foreign minister. Robert Powell plays Hannay and a host of notable British actors also feature, including John Mills, David Warner and Eric Porter. 

The film makes great use of real locations all over the UK, including in Scotland where the bulk of the film takes place. It’s most known for a climactic sequence that occurs on the clock face of London’s Big Ben tower (in reality a large scale model on a set) that aped a sequence from Harold Lloyd’s 1923 film Safety Last. The film was a box-office success and would later spawn a TV series featuring the same character and starring Powell, called simply Hannay.

This poster was designed and illustrated by Vic Fair, who was one the most important designer/artists ever to work on British film marketing. He was responsible for several iconic posters, including The Man Who Fell To Earth, posters for Hammer horrors like Vampire Circus, and the withdrawn advance one sheet for A View to a Kill. I interviewed Vic for this site and that article can be viewed by clicking here. He sadly passed away in early 2017 but his great legacy lives on.

It shares some similarities with another poster Fair designed and illustrated for Rank (the production company and distributor), the 1977 horror anthology The Uncanny.

Note also that there’s another version of this one sheet which has a stylised title logo in the space on the right and can be seen here. I’m not sure why some have it and others don’t but I suspect the one without was a printing error, or a first printing.

To see the other posters I’ve collected that were designed and/or illustrated by Vic Fair click here.