This is the original poster for the Thai release of John Carpenter’s sci-fi classic Escape From New York. I’d have a hard time choosing my favourite of the three (fictional) characters Carpenter and Kurt Russell created together; R.J. MacReady (The Thing), Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China) and Snake Plissken (EFNY). The latter is the gruff former war hero and convicted bank robber who is sent onto the island of Manhattan of an alternative 1997, which has been sealed-off as a lawless prison, in search of the American President whose plane crashed there after a terrorist attack. He’s arguably the coolest of the three and is a character much imitated in other lesser films featuring a reluctant hero.

This poster was painted by the artist Tongdee Panumas (he signs his posters with just his first name) who 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.

The main illustration of Snake Plissken is unique to this poster but some of the other elements, especially the montage to the left, are based on the final US one sheet for the film that was painted by Barry E Jackson. The set of portraits in boxes are taken from the US advance poster that was painted by Stan Watts.

The rest of the John Carpenter posters I’ve collected can be seen by clicking here.

This is the original poster for the Polish release (in 1983) of John Carpenter’s sci-fi classic Escape From New York. I’d have a hard time choosing my favourite of the three (fictional) characters Carpenter and Kurt Russell created together; R.J. MacReady (The Thing), Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China) and Snake Plissken (EFNY). The latter is the gruff former war hero and convicted bank robber who is sent onto the island of Manhattan of an alternative 1997, which has been sealed-off as a lawless prison, in search of the American President whose plane crashed there after a terrorist attack. He’s arguably the coolest of the three and is a character much imitated in other lesser films featuring a reluctant hero.

The artwork on the poster is by Wieslaw Walkuski who was born in 1956 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Since 1981 Walkuski has worked as a graphic designer and artist for publishing houses and theaters, as well as for the Polish film organisations Polfilm and Film Polski. He’s worked freelance since 1987 and has painted over 200 film posters. He continues to live and work in Warsaw. Walkuski’s official website features galleries of many of his designs and images of his other work.

He’s responsible for some incredible designs and two of my favourites include those he painted for Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves and the Dustin Hoffman comedy Tootsie.

The rest of the John Carpenter posters I’ve collected can be seen by clicking here.

Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi horror Alien may be over 35 years old but its impact on cinema and pop culture is still being felt today. The film featured a breakout performance by Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, a member of a deep space mining crew who respond to a distress signal on an unexplored planet and end up fighting for their lives when a malevolent alien creature is brought back onto their ship The Nostromo. Despite countless imitators over the years no one has yet managed to better the original and Scott himself even tried (and fell short IMO) with 2012’s prequel Prometheus.

An excellent but markedly different sequel would follow with 1986s Aliens and I have a hard time choosing between the two when it comes to my personal favourite. Two other significantly less well-received sequels followed in the next 11 years but they did nothing to dampen enthusiasm for the original. British games developers The Creative Assembly were given full access to the 20th Century Fox archives for the film whilst they were creating Alien Isolation, a critically acclaimed first-person survival horror set 15 years after events in the original film and released in 2014.

This screen print by the Uruguayan artist Martin Ansin was released by the incomparable Mondo, the Austin-based purveyors of limited edition posters and film merchandise. The print was one of several created by Martin Ansin for a joint show with fellow artist Kevin Tong held at the Mondo Austin gallery during March 2014. Ansin also worked on a print for Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus and other films covered by the pair included James Cameron’s sequel Aliens and Flash Gordon. Badass Digest (now Birth Movies Death) went to the show and interviewed Ansin and Tong, which can be read here and Collider.com ran an article featuring loads of images from the show. There was a variant of this print available that was printed with a gold colour scheme, also with metallic inks.

A unique design by Bohdan Heblik features on this Czech poster for the release of director Andrea Arnold‘s 2009 film Fish Tank. The British director won an Oscar for her short film Wasp in 2003 and her first feature-length film, Red Road, was released three years later. Like her first film, Fish Tank is a slice of gritty British realism focusing on a female protagonist. The location has changed, however, with East London replacing Glasgow.

Katie Jarvis plays the main character, 15-year-old Mia. Jarvis was a first-time actress who was cast after one of the film’s casting assistants saw her arguing with her boyfriend in public. Mia is a troubled teen who has been expelled from school multiple times. She lives with her mum Joanne (longtime Eastenders actress Kierston Wareing) and her younger sister on a council estate. She’s also a bit of a loner and has recently fallen out with her friend Keeley. Mia dreams of pursuing a career as a dancer and practices her moves in an empty flat on the estate. The arrival of her mum’s new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender, just on the cusp of superstardom) into their home unsettles Mia. Although events quickly spiral out of control, Connor will prove to have a profound effect on the direction Mia’s life takes.

This Czech poster was created in 2010 for a yearly film festival called Projekt 100. Each year, AČFK (the Association of Czech Film Clubs) selects a handful of classic films (and recent films of particular note) to be distributed at independent cinemas throughout the Czech Republic.

Bohdan Heblik is a prolific Czech designer who has a personal website featuring plenty of examples of his work. There’s not much in the way of a biography but I believe he was born in 1978 and currently lives in Prague. It appears he’s worked on posters for the Projekt 100 festival three times, including 2010 when this poster was created. If you look on this page you can see the other designs he created that year, including one for the 1971 film Harold and Maude.

This is the UK quad for the release of the Coen Brothers’ 1994 film The Hudsucker Proxy. The script for the film was over a decade in gestation and Joel Coen began writing it with Sam Raimi during the editing of the latter’s Evil Dead (1981). The trio began sharing a house during the filming of Raimi’s Crimewave (1985) and the brothers’ Blood Simple so the script continued to evolve. It wasn’t until the completion of Barton Fink in 1991 that the brothers decided to fully focus on it.

They decided that they wanted to work on more of a more mainstream film and felt the script needed a decent budget behind it. Legendary Hollywood producer Joel Silver, who was a fan of the brothers’ previous films, agreed to help them and pitched it to Warner Bros. Further financial backing came from the now defunct PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, a British-American production company responsible for some of the biggest box-office hits of the 1980s and 1990s, including Batman (1989) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). Note their logo in a prominent position on the left side of the credit block.

The film marked the first time the Coens had worked with big name stars, with most of their previous casts made up of relative unknowns (many of whom would go on to find fame afterwards). Set in 1958 in the world of big business, the story sees idealistic business school graduate Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) arrive in New York City looking for a job. Without the necessary experience he ends up working as a mailroom clerk in a manufacturing company called Hudsucker Industries. When the founder and president Waring Hudsucker commits suicide during a business meeting (a classic scene involving an open window) the nefarious chairman of the board, Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman) realises that all of Hudsucker’s shares are to be sold to the public. 

Mussburger hatches a plan to buy the stock at what will be a knockdown price by installing what he sees as an incompetent in the top role, the titular proxy, hoping to depress the share price. Whilst delivering mail one day, Norville makes a pitch to Mussburger that involves a simple drawing of a ring (“Y’know for kids!”) and the latter thinks he has found the perfect person. Things don’t go exactly to plan when the board agree to produce Norville’s idea, which turns out to be the phenomenally successful hula hoop (invented for real in 1958). Meanwhile, an undercover reporter called Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) has joined the firm as Norville’s secretary hoping to write a juicy article on the man who replaced Hudsucker. She soon discovers the details of the plot but has a hard time convincing her superiors. Norville allows success to go to his head and begins acting like any other uncaring tycoon. However, Mussburger discovers Amy’s real identity and uses this against him. The finale takes place at the top of the firm’s tower, as depicted on this poster, and sees the Coens at their most surreal.

This UK quad features a design that has clearly borrowed from the US one sheet (see here) with an enterprising British designer reusing the image of Tim Robbins holding the hula hoop and replacing the hoop with wads of dollar bills. The same images of Paul Newman and Jennifer Jason Leigh are reused and the cogs seen on the one sheet are also present. If anyone has any ideas who designed it please get in touch.

Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi horror Alien may be over 35 years old but its impact on cinema and pop culture is still being felt today. The film featured a breakout performance by Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, a member of a deep space mining crew who respond to a distress signal on an unexplored planet and end up fighting for their lives when a malevolent alien creature is brought back onto their ship The Nostromo. Despite countless imitators over the years no one has yet managed to better the original and Scott himself even tried (and fell short IMO) with 2012’s prequel Prometheus.

An excellent but markedly different sequel would follow with 1986s Aliens and I have a hard time choosing between the two when it comes to my personal favourite. Two other significantly less well-received sequels followed in the next 11 years but they did nothing to dampen enthusiasm for the original. British games developers The Creative Assembly were given full access to the 20th Century Fox archives for the film whilst they were creating Alien Isolation, a critically acclaimed first-person survival horror set 15 years after events in the original film and released in 2014.

This screen print by the American artist Mark Englert was created for the 2012 San Diego Comic Con and was sold at the Gallery 1988 stall. Englert, whose official website is here, first appeared on collectors’ radars with his print for The Thing that was released earlier in 2012. Since then he has worked on a number of landscape format prints (typically 12″ x 36″) featuring scenes from cult films and TV shows. One of his most popular releases was one for The Walking Dead that was released around the same time as this Alien print. Each print is given a name that relates to the property in some way. In this case ‘You are my lucky star’ is the name of the song that Ellen Ripley (Weaver) sings as she’s climbing into the space suit at the end of Alien.

Check out this interview with Englert on Collider.com which was carried out at the same Comic Con and they also featured him in their first ever ‘Limited Paper’ column. Englert’s own site features the posters and other items he’s worked on so far, which includes vinyl sleeves and more. There’s a short biography on his website which mentions he was born in 1979. There’s an excellent interview with Mark on 411posters.com here.

He has a store here and you can follow him on Twitter here.

This is the American one sheet for the release of director Andrea Arnold‘s 2009 film Fish Tank. The British director won an Oscar for her short film Wasp in 2003 and her first feature-length film, Red Road, was released three years later. Like her first film, Fish Tank is a slice of gritty British realism focusing on a female protagonist. The location has changed, however, with East London replacing Glasgow.

Katie Jarvis plays the main character, 15-year-old Mia. Jarvis was a first-time actress who was cast after one of the film’s casting assistants saw her arguing with her boyfriend in public. Mia is a troubled teen who has been expelled from school multiple times. She lives with her mum Joanne (longtime Eastenders actress Kierston Wareing) and her younger sister on a council estate. She’s also a bit of a loner and has recently fallen out with her friend Keeley. Mia dreams of pursuing a career as a dancer and practices her moves in an empty flat on the estate. The arrival of her mum’s new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender, just on the cusp of superstardom) into their home unsettles Mia. Although events quickly spiral out of control, Connor will prove to have a profound effect on the direction Mia’s life takes.

This one sheet was created by the American design agency Indika Entertainment Advertising, which was founded in 1994 by James Verdesoto and Vivek Mathur and is based in New York City. They work on print and web campaigns for films, TV shows and home entertainment and have won multiple awards for their work over the years. One of their most iconic posters is the teaser one sheet for Pulp Fiction. They also designed the teaser one sheet for American Psycho.

This is the original UK press kit for the release of John Carpenter’s sci-fi classic Escape From New York. I’d have a hard time choosing my favourite of the three (fictional) characters Carpenter and Kurt Russell created together; R.J. MacReady (The Thing), Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China) and Snake Plissken (EFNY). The latter is the gruff former war hero and convicted bank robber who is sent onto the island of Manhattan of an alternative 1997, which has been sealed-off as a lawless prison, in search of the American President whose plane crashed there after a terrorist attack. He’s arguably the coolest of the three and is a character much imitated in other lesser films featuring a reluctant hero.

As the name suggests, a press kit was supplied by the film’s distributors to members of the press for the purpose of promoting the release. It offers an outline of the story along with details of the cast and filmmakers involved. This kit also included four 8×10″ stills from the film, with each one having a short cast list and synopsis taped to the back. Some press kits are significantly larger and more detailed than this one so I suspect there may have been other parts to it, but I’m not certain.

The rest of the John Carpenter posters I’ve collected can be seen by clicking here.

This one sheet for the largely forgotten (and ill-advised) quasi-sequel to the classic 1941 film The Maltese Falcon, The Black Bird, features one of the earliest film poster illustrations by the legendary artist Drew Struzan. The film is the sole directorial effort from David Giler, who is now best known as a producer on pretty much every Alien film in the franchise, up to and including Alien Covenant (2017). George Segal stars as the son of detective Sam Spade, who was played by Humphrey Bogart in the first film. The plot is described on IMDb:

The son of famous detective Sam Spade carries on the family tradition of getting involved with the Maltese Falcon – and with the people who will stop at nothing, including murder, to get it.

The Black Bird was trashed by critics at the time of release and audiences stayed away too. Unless I’m mistaken, the film has never been released digitally and is only available if you still have a VHS player.

Drew Struzan is an artist who barely needs an introduction given that he painted many of the most iconic film posters of all time, including several for Star Wars, Indiana Jones and a slew of other beloved classics like The Thing and The Goonies. The artist’s own site features 4 pages of his work for films and Drew also worked in other areas, including product marketing, book and magazine covers, editorial and multiple paintings as a fine artist. Drew declared that he’d retired in 2008 but has worked on a handful of special paintings since then, including one to announce the most recent Star Wars film in 2015.

To see a gallery of the other posters by Drew that I’ve collected click here.

This is a screen print by the American artist Mark Englert for the 1990 TV version of Stephen King’s classic novel ‘It’, which was recently remade to great critical acclaim (and box office success). Originally shown as a two-part mini series, then later released on DVD and blu-ray as an edited single movie, the film is set in the fictional Maine town of Derry during two time periods (1960 and 1990). The story focuses on a group of children who are menaced by a shapeshifting creature that preys on their worst fears in order to attack and eat them. The creature appears once every 30 years and over the previous century many of the town’s children have disappeared. The group (nicknamed by themselves as The Losers Club) decide to take on It who most often appears as the malevolent clown Pennywise (Tim Curry). After driving it back underground in 1960, the group make a promise to return and put a stop to It once and for all 30 years later.

Note that this is the regular edition and it glows in the dark which reveals hidden details, including Pennywise’s face in a hidden moon, and the spider form of It in the top left corner glows too.

This print was created in 2012. Englert, whose official website is here, first appeared on collectors’ radars with his print for The Thing that was released earlier in 2012. Since then he has worked on a number of landscape format prints (typically 12″ x 36″) featuring scenes from cult films and TV shows. One of his most popular releases was one for The Walking Dead that was released around the same time as this print. Each is given a name that relates to the property in some way. In this case ‘They All Float’ is part of the famous line spoken by Pennywise.

Check out this interview with Englert on Collider.com which was carried out at the 2012 Comic Con and they also featured him in their first ever ‘Limited Paper’ column. Englert’s own site features the posters and other items he’s worked on so far, which includes vinyl sleeves and more. There’s a short biography on his website which mentions he was born in 1979. There’s an excellent interview with Mark on 411posters.com here.

He has a store here and you can follow him on Twitter here.

Cult Canadian director David Cronenberg’s Videodrome was released with this unique poster design when it hit Japanese cinemas in 1985. Like much of the director’s output, Videodrome is definitely not for the faint of heart and contains some utterly unforgettable moments of Cronenberg’s patented body-horror mutations. James Woods stars as Max Renn the sleazy CEO of a minor cable TV station who is constantly on the lookout for cheap exploitation fare to broadcast. Renn is told about Videodrome, a new and mysterious signal apparently being broadcast out of Malaysia which purports to depict real ‘snuff’ movies of victims being tortured and killed.

Renn decides to start pirating the show and broadcasting it to his audience. This soon attracts widespread attention that puts him into contact with sadomasochistic psychiatrist Nicki Brand (Debby Harry) and Professor Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley). When he discovers that the signal is actually being broadcast out of Pittsburgh, Renn decides to investigate further and he plunges into a nightmarish conspiracy that goes deeper than he ever imagined. As the American tagline says ‘First it controls your mind. Then it destroys your body’. Fans of Cronenberg’s proclivity for unnatural cavities and the melding of flesh with inorganic substances are not left disappointed, and the gun on this poster hints towards the finale.

This American one sheet features a great illustration of Woods being torn apart in front of a giant image of Debby Harry’s face. I’ve been unable to discover who is responsible for the art so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

In addition to the one sheet I also have the British quad and the Japanese B2.