Unique artwork features on this Japanese B2 for the release of the fifth entry in the much-loved horror franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5. The film’s subtitle ‘the Dream Child’ hints at the plot for the film, which sees Freddy attempting to return from hell by using the mind of an unborn baby. The child belongs to Alice (Lisa Wilcox) who was the main character in the previous film and the father is her boyfriend Dan (Danny Hassel) who also returns from Part 4. The Dream Child was only the second film directed by Stephen Hopkins, the Jamaican-born English-Australian director best known for helming Predator 2 and the 1998 reboot of Lost in Space.

Set a year after the previous film, the story sees Alice and her friends graduating from high school with Freddy Krueger seemingly vanquished for good. Alice begins to have strange dreams in which she finds herself in the asylum where Freddy’s mother, a nun named Amanda, was attacked and raped by the inmates. Later she has another dream in which she witnesses Amanda giving birth to a strange, deformed baby. The creature scuttles off and ends up in the church where Alice vanquished Freddy in Part 4 whereupon it grows into an adult Krueger. He immediately begins to taunt Alice, claiming he has found a way to return for good. When she wakes from the dream she immediately summons Dan to her but he falls asleep at the wheel of his motorbike and Freddy attacks and, during a gruesome sequence, melds him together with the bike before crashing him into a truck. Soon afterwards she learns that she is pregnant with Dan’s child and immediately begins to fear for its safety.

Alice and her friends must once again battle together with the spirit of Amanda Krueger to stop Freddy before he is able to return and take over the mind of Alice’s unborn son (Jacob). To be honest, the film gets very confusing and it’s hard to follow what’s happening most of the time, never mind how an unborn baby suddenly becomes a ten-year-old child in some of the sequences. The usual dream deaths are pretty dark and there are some gruesome moments for horror hounds, but the story barely hangs together, with choppy editing and hammy acting not helping at all. Although not a box-office disaster, the film failed to take anywhere near the box-office of Part 3 and 4 and audiences were certainly cooling towards the franchise by this point.

This artwork is a modified take on the photographic image of Freddy with the pram seen on the German A1 poster. I’m not sure who was responsible for the painting so if anyone has any ideas please get in touch. The small illustrated figure in the bottom right is actually from the alternate style Japanese B2 poster which I also have in the collection here.

This is the one sheet for the release of the third film in the Amityville series of horror films, known as Amityville 3-D (or Amityville: The Demon). In an unusual step, the producers of the film were forced to add a line of text to the bottom of the poster asserting that it’s not a sequel to the Amityville and Amityville II. This was because legendary Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis was in the middle of a lawsuit with the Lutz family that were part of the original hauntings that inspired the first films. In the film the original story is referenced, as is the murdered family at the centre of the story, the DeFeos.

Amityville 3-D was one of three big horror releases of 1983 that were presented in 3D (the others being Jaws 3 and Friday the 13th part 3). It’s fair to say that the results were hardly spectacular and audiences and critics alike complained about the blurriness of the 3D content, particularly in this film. Notably, this is the only film released by the now defunct Orion Pictures to be given the 3D treatment.

The plot focuses on the journalist John Baxter (Tony Roberts) who, along with his partner Melanie (Candy Clark), has recently exposed a pair of conmen that were living in the infamous house on 112 Ocean Avenue. He is persuaded to buy the house by a local estate agent and after he agrees to do so a series of events occur that all point to a supernatural presence in the home. John is unconvinced and ignores the pleas of Melanie who is convinced that something lurks inside the house. After his daughter Susan (Lori Loughlin) dies in the lake near the house he is finally convinced to allow his friend, the paranormal investigator Doctor Elliot West (Robert Joy) to check out the house. 

This one sheet features artwork of a demonic claw bursting out of the famous house, presumably giving potential ticket buyers an idea of what they’d be in for with the 3D. I’m unsure who designed or painted it (I believe the hand to be an illustration but may be wrong) so if anyone has an idea, 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 UK quad for the original release of ace British writer/director Clive Barker‘s 1990 film Nightbreed. Based on Barker’s own 1988 novel Cabal, which was the sixth and final entry in his celebrated series ‘Books of Blood‘, the film was notoriously a flop upon its original release. The director has been candid in the years following its release and maintains that studio interference and a lack of understanding of how to market the film ultimately hampered its release. Having scored a hit with Hellraiser (1986) on a budget of just under $1m, 20th Century Fox gave Barker over 10 times that for Nightbreed, but with it they took away the freedom he had on the previous film. Ultimately the studio made extensive cuts to the film just before release without Barker’s input and marketed it as a slasher film, which was far from accurate.

The story focuses on a man named Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) who has been having vivid dreams about a city called Midian where monsters are accepted and live peacefully with each other. We learn that his girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby) has encouraged him to see a psychologist named Dr. Phillip Decker (the cult Canadian director David Cronenberg). Decker tells Boone that he’s been suffering from a type of psychosis, is responsible for multiple murders and that he should turn himself into the police. In reality, it’s Decker who is a serial killer and he’s attempting to use Boone as a shill to cover his crimes. After being hit by a truck on his way home, Boone wakes in hospital where he meets a man named Narcisse who talks about accessing Midian before mutilating himself with a pair of blades. 

Boone follows Narcisse’s instructions and makes his way to an old cemetery in the middle of nowhere (the film is set in Canada). Once there he is confronted by a pair of monsters, Peloquin (Oliver Parker) and Kinski (Nicholas Vince), who block his request to enter Midian. Peloquin attempts to eat Boone, biting his shoulder before the latter breaks free and escapes the cemetery. Outside he is confronted by Decker and a squad of police officers and when Decker falsely shouts that Boone has a gun, he is gunned down by the squad. After Lori visits the morgue to identify Boone’s body, the bite given by Peloquin causes him to reanimate. He returns to Midian where he meets a whole host of monsters who call the city home. This time he is accepted into the city after being touched by the blood of their deity Baphomet. Meanwhile, Lori wants to understand why Boone traveled to Midian. She is eventually allowed into the city and discovers that it is a refuge for monsters after centuries of them being hunted to near extinction by humans. Unfortunately Decker has tracked her down and he plans to destroy the city and the monsters within.

One of the things that the studio struggled with is that the monsters are ultimately depicted as being the ‘good guys’ and this was obviously something of a departure from standard horror film tropes. The film has incredible production design and make-up effects, particularly the look of the various monsters in Midian. Despite critical and commercial failure in 1990, Nightbreed quickly garnered a cult following and for many years fans had been calling for the release of the longer cut that Barker had promised existed. An unofficial ‘Cabal cut’ was compiled using VHS-quality material a few years ago but in 2015 the original film elements were found and a special director’s cut released by the American video label Scream Factory, much to the delight of horror fans around the world.

This British quad differs greatly from the disappointing American one sheet and includes several photographs of the Nightbreed and is dominated by an image of David Cronenberg. The minor spoiler (for those that were yet to view the film) that he is the masked killer obviously didn’t bother the distributors! The tagline also makes a deal of the fact that Cronenberg and Barker were working together, perhaps understandably.

A striking image of actress Zelda Rubinstein (best known for her appearance in 1982’s Poltergeist) for the 1987 horror, Anguish. The film was directed by the Spaniard Bigas Luna (best known for Jamón, Jamón, 1992) and was filmed in his native country. As well as Rubinstein, the film also features the American actor Michael Lerner, but the majority of the cast are Spanish actors playing American. Written by Luna, the film has a fairly original concept which sees a film within a film, featuring Rubinstein and Lerner, unfold in front of a Los Angeles cinema audience. They are then subjected to their own horror attack, seemingly influenced by the film they are watching.

Rubinstein plays the character of Mother in the projected film, which is called The Mommy. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, she uses hypnotism to control her loner son John (Lerner) and coerce him into killing people then removing their eyeballs. The Mommy features a frankly bonkers hypnotism sequence which apparently has an effect on some of the audience in the Los Angeles cinema. John is shown to visit a cinema showing the classic film The Lost World where he proceeds to attack staff and audience members. At the same time, an agitated man in the LA cinema kills two women working at the front desk before entering the auditorium and shooting at the audience. Eventually the police are called and a hostage scene develops. All the while The Mommy continues to play on the screen.

Anguish doesn’t hold back on the gore and there are a few shocking scenes which serve to keep the audience on edge. Although the concept of a film within a film is not new, the way Luna edits and develops the story gives it a unique feel. It’s certainly worth a watch, despite it’s clearly low budget origins.

The image of Rubinstein in front of a wall of eyes must have been mocked up for this poster as I watched it recently and didn’t see anything like this. It’s possible that there was a deleted scene with it in but it feels too mocked up for that.

This is a rare cinema advertising guide for the original UK release of John Carpenter‘s seminal horror film Halloween. This guide was, as the name suggests, intended to be sent to managers of the Odeon cinema chain around the UK. It contains multiple pages of suggestions for how to market the film to local audiences and includes competition examples that could have been sent to local newspapers for publication. The guide consists of one outer cover that features unique artwork of the knife-wielding killer (a crude depiction of Michael Myers), as well as printed bloody fingerprints on the back. Inside there’s a stapled together guide which is printed on A4 paper in two colours. The other two items are competition examples, ready for newspapers to print.

The guide was put together, I believe, by the distributor (Miracle films) in conjunction with a company called Marler Haley. They were known for their work with the Odeon chain of cinemas during the 1970s and early 1980s and would create printed items for the promotion of films, which included a quad (30″ x 40″) and typically a set of four double-crown (20″ x 30″) posters, as well as larger exhibition stands and other items. A number of films were promoted this way, including Disney releases such as Tron, the first Star Wars film, and some James Bond outings.

Note the last few pages which detail the kinds of items the cinema managers could order to promote the film, including a ‘roof rack’ display to sit atop a car, trailers, posters and radio ads. The guide features a similar colour scheme and some of the imagery that can be found on the Marler Haley quad, which I have here, and the accompanying double-crown set (which I don’t yet own). Also note there’s an image of the ultra-scarce (but rather boring) Halloween teaser quad, which is text-only and had a panel for cinema staff to manually update the time left until the film arrived. It also features an image of a display stand that has the Marler Haley set along with the final release, full-colour quad that I have in the collection here.

If anyone knows anything more about how and where these guides were put together, please get in touch.

An independent release, financed by one man (Moustapha Akkad), the film was produced on a low budget of $300k and would go on to gross over $70m worldwide. Halloween kickstarted a franchise that would run for seven sequels (and a recent remake) and the masked character of Michael Myers would enter the horror pantheon as one of its most memorable monsters.

Carpenter wrote the screenplay with his then girlfriend, producer Debra Hill and is often credited as being the the first in a long line of slasher films, although films like Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho were obvious inspirations. The film has little in the way of gore or violence and instead uses clever camera work and sound design to brilliant effect, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats throughout. There have been countless imitations over the years but few that match up to the taught, perfectly-paced original Halloween.

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

This is the original UK quad for the release of Frightmare, a 1974 film by the British director, producer and writer Pete Walker, who specialised in exploitation pictures during the 1960s and 1970s. Walker started out making shoestring budget sexploitation pictures, including School for Sex that were often relative hits in the UK. This worked out well for him since his films were almost always self-financed and thus most of the profits were his to keep and plough into the next feature. In the early 1970s, Walker grew tired of feeding the ‘dirty mack brigade’ and turned his hand to horror.

Frightmare, released in the US as Cover Up, was one of two horror films that Walker directed in 1974, with the other being the private-prison set House of Whipcord. Both films saw Walker reuniting with his regular screenwriting partner David McGillivray, and both feature memorable appearances by Sheila Keith, who would become another regular. In this film she plays Dorothy Yates, a cannibalistic killer who at the start of the film is sentenced to 15 years in prison. She is sent down along with her husband Edmund (Rupert Davies) who chose to take the punishment with her, even though he had nothing to do with the killings. The film picks up after their release and we find that their adopted daughter Jackie (Deborah Fairfax) is living in London and struggling to care for their biological daughter Debbie (Kim Butcher) a wayward 15-year-old who doesn’t realise her parents are still alive.

We follow Jackie as she leaves London to visit her parents, now living in a remote farmhouse. There she delivers a mysterious package to her mother who appears frail and innocent. Edmund fears that his wife is up to her old tricks but Jackie isn’t convinced and returns back to London. Soon we discover that Dorothy has put an advert in a magazine offering Tarot Card readings and willing customers are visiting the farmhouse. When she begins by checking that they have no close family or friends, or indeed anyone that would miss them, it’s fair to say that things aren’t looking up for her clueless customers. At the same time, Jackie struggles to control Debbie who is beginning to show signs that she has inherited her mother’s habits.

Arguably the best of Walker’s feature films, Frightmare is a masterclass in building tension and working towards a shocking final act. The film makes great use of various locations, including several in a London which looks barely recognisable today. Sheila Keith’s performance, in particular, is hugely memorable and her ability to portray frail innocence in one scene followed by genuinely disturbing menace in another has to be seen. In this Guardian article about Walker and his films, he describes his working relationship with Keith and how her on screen presence definitely didn’t match her off screen one; “Sheila Keith was a lady who lived a quiet life with her dogs and her cats and came into work to do, brilliantly, whatever was asked of her,” says Walker. “She was like your nice old aunt who would serve you cucumber sandwiches before ripping into a dismembered limb – without complaining.”

This British quad, which features crude artwork of a menacing Sheila Keith, was clearly designed by the team responsible for the quad for House of Whipcord (see here) and I feel fairly certain that the same artist or artists were involved too. If anyone knows who was responsible please get in touch.

Artwork by the American artist John Solie features on this one sheet for the release of the 1982 USA/Japan co-production, The House Where Evil Dwells. Set and shot in Japan, the film is a horror based on a novel by James Hardiman and is effectively a haunted house tale. It opens in the city of Kyoto in 1840 and sees a samurai warrior return home to discover his wife being unfaithful with another man. In an utterly graceless, slow-motion sequence we watch as he butchers the pair before committing seppuku (ritual suicide). As the house is ravaged by a storm, a miniature figurine depicting a pair of lovers (one a devil like creature) is swept into the foundations, presumably cursing the place.

140 years later, the film picks up as US diplomat Alex Curtis (Doug McClure) meets an old friend, Ted Fletcher (Edward Albert) and his wife Laura (Susan George) and daughter at the airport. The family have traveled there to live for a few months for reasons that aren’t exactly made clear (something to do with his career?) and Alex has found them the perfect house to stay in. Of course it’s the same one depicted earlier and it’s now reported to be haunted. The couple soon begin to experience strange occurrences, with the audience first seeing the ghosts of the butchered lovers and angry samurai moving around the family before things take a dark turn as they begin to possess each one in turn. It soon becomes clear that the ghosts intend to free themselves from purgatory by causing Ted, Laura and Alex to commit a similar sort of murder-suicide. A Zen monk living nearby tries to warn the family and stop the ghosts before it’s too late.

It’s fair to say that The House Where Evil Dwells is no masterpiece and in fact is one of the clunkiest horror films I’ve ever watched. Director Kevin Connor, who is best known for the series of sci-fi fantasies he directed for Amicus productions (e.g. The Land That Time Forgot), has since said that his submitted version was heavily cut by producers, removing many scenes of character development. There’s no doubt this would have helped a bit, but it’s the acting from the likes of McClure and Ted Fletcher that really sinks the film. McClure is famous as an inspiration for the character of Troy McClure on The Simpsons, a Hollywood has-been reduced to appearing in shady infomercials and other such work. The actor himself never really found fame in Hollywood, despite appearances in over 500 films and TV shows. On the evidence of his performance here, it’s not hard to see why. Fletcher is perhaps even worse and Susan George, although great in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, practically phones it in here. The lowlights of the film are undoubtedly the sex scenes between Laura and Ted and later Laura and Alex. Cringeworthy doesn’t quite cover it!

John Solie has been working as an illustrator for over 40 years. Film posters are just one aspect of his output, which also includes book and magazine covers, sculptures, portraits and work for NASA. He continues to paint today in Tucson, Arizona. Another gallery of his work can be viewed on Wrong Side of the Art.

Here are the posters by John Solie I have collected to date.

Nicknamed The Godfather of Gore, the late Italian director Lucio Fulci is responsible for several memorable entries in the horror genre and City of the Living Dead is one of what I consider to be the ‘big four’ Fulci films (the others being Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery), which were all made within two years of each other. The director tried his hand at various genres, including westerns and comedies, but it was horror where he found the greatest success and for which he is best remembered.

City of the Living Dead is the first film in the unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy of Fulci films and was followed by The Beyond in 1981. It stars British actress Catriona MacColl (credited on the poster as Katherine MacColl) who then collaborated with Fulci on the next two entries. The plot sees Father Thomas, a priest in the small New England town of Dunwich, hang himself in a misty cemetery. For reasons that aren’t made clear, this causes the gates of hell to open and the dead to return from the grave. Meanwhile in New York City, Mary Woodhouse (MacColl) is taking part in a séance where she sees the priest’s actions and apparently dies from fright.

A reporter named Peter Bell (Christopher George) hears about the situation and tries to gain entry to the building before being turned away. He later visits Mary’s grave, discovers she has been buried alive and frees her with a pick-axe. The pair then decide to travel to Dunwich where they meet up with a local psychiatrist called Gerry (Carlo De Mejo) and attempt to locate the tomb of Father Thomas to try and close the gates of hell. However, the evil is spreading through the town and ghouls have begun to rise from the ground.

As was typical with all of Fulci’s output during this period, the film features several scenes of brutal, graphic gore and the Thai artist has decided to go for broke, depicting the more memorable moments on this poster. There’s one death scene in particular, featuring a giant drill, that would fall foul of the BBFC, the folks responsible for passing the film for release in the UK. Upon its original cinema release the drill scene was cut from the film, as was the case with the initial VHS release. The film was then caught up in the infamous Video Nasties situation in the early 1980s and, although not on the infamous list (unlike The House by the Cemetery), the VHS had to be resubmitted and had almost two and a half minutes excised from it. An uncut version finally saw UK release in 2001.

This Thai poster features artwork that is largely unique to it which was painted by the Thai artist known as Noppadol, about whom I’ve been able to discover very little. The montage does feature a reproduction of the artwork found on the Italian locandina poster that was painted by the Italian artist Enzo Sciotti. It’s worth noting that there is an alternative Thai poster (version B) with the US release title of Gates of Hell (see here) that features some elements of this poster and which was also painted by Noppadol.

Although folded and not in great condition this is a scarce poster and one that’s getting increasingly hard to find. I’ll continue to try and locate one without the fold lines but suspect it won’t be easy.

This is the US one sheet for the release of the largely forgotten 1974 horror, The House of Seven Corpses. The film was the sole feature film directing credit for Paul Harrison who seems to have spent more time as a screenwriter. It stars the prolific character actor John Ireland who is known for his many appearances in Westerns (and the 1960 classic Spartacus) and Faith Domergue, star of some 1950s sci-fi flicks such as This Island Earth. John Carradine, the ridiculously prolific actor (351 appearances!) and father of several actors, including David, also appears.

Ireland plays Eric Hartman, a film director who has decided to shoot his next picture in the titular mansion where seven members of the same family met their untimely ends in various ways. Hoping that the location will provide a suitable ambience to the picture, Hartman only has to put up with the cantankerous caretaker Edgar Price (Carradine) and a difficult star in Gayle Dorian (Domergue) who it’s hinted Hartman had a relationship with in the past. The director’s assistant David discovers the Tibetan Book of the Dead in the house (as you do) and decides to suggest some of the text is used in the witchcraft scenes in the film. Unfortunately, this then triggers the reanimation of a zombie from the graveyard outside the mansion and it proceeds to work it’s murderous way through the cast and crew.

Sadly, the film is almost entirely lacking in any sense of tension or horror and it’s over an hour (of a 90 minute film) before the zombie rises up. None of the characters are particularly appealing so it’s a fairly dull watch for most of the time. There’s a twist that’s incredibly badly handled, so much so that I had no idea it had taken place until I read a plot synopsis afterwards!

This one sheet is at least fairly interesting, with a creepy graveyard image that has been made using a cut and paste photomontage technique. The film’s logo is also very 1970s.

The horror anthology The Monster Club was produced by ex-Amicus co-owner Milton Subotsky and was the final feature film from director Roy Ward Baker. Subotsky had seen great success as one half of Amicus (his partner was the screenwriter Max Rosenberg) with the release of several ‘portmanteau’ horrors, including three directed by genre stalwart Freddie Francis; Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1964), Torture Garden (1967) and Tales from the Crypt (1972). Roy Ward Baker is best remembered for his work on the Titanic film A Night to Remember (1958) and several successful horror films for one of Amicus’ rival studios, Hammer, including the excellent Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1972). Baker directed a handful of horrors for Amicus, including the anthologies Asylum (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973), as well as the ghost story And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973).

The Monster Club features American horror legend Vincent Price as the vampire Eramus who bumps into the horror writer R.Chetwynd-Hayes (played by the prolific John Carradine) and feasts on his blood but ‘doesn’t bite deep enough’ to turn him into one of his own. Eramus then invites the writer to visit the titular club claiming that he’s sure it will offer plenty of inspiration as it’s home to all manner of werewolves, ghouls, beasts and other assorted creatures (read: extras in hastily prepared rubber masks). What follows is three fairly dull horror stories featuring several notable actors (Donald Pleasence, Richard Johnson and Britt Ekland) but it’s the surrounding sequences in the club itself that are more interesting with a handful of catchy musical numbers and one memorable sequence in which a stripper takes everything off, including her skin (via a shadowy animation).

The poster was designed and painted by the brilliant British illustrator Graham Humphreys. Because it wasn’t a poster we discussed during our 2011 interview I wanted to speak to Graham to hear the story of the making of this poster in more detail. The interview with Graham can be read here.

A true cult horror classic, Re-Animator was based on H. P. Lovecraft‘s 1922 short story ‘Herbert West–Reanimator‘ and was director Stuart Gordon‘s first feature film. Originally planned to be a TV series set around the beginning of the 20th century, a pilot and a number of episodes were scripted by Dennis Paoli and William Norris. Eventually the trio decided to update the story to present day Chicago since the period setting was increasing production costs, and were then persuaded to make it as a feature film after Gordon was introduced to producer Brian Yuzna. The infamous horror director/producer Charles Band‘s Empire Pictures agreed to help with post-production in return for distribution rights (note the logo on this poster).

One of the reasons for the films cult success was the hiring of Jeffrey Combs to play the lead role of scientist Herbert West, which led to one of horror’s all-time great performances. Coombs’  portrayal of West is pitch-perfect, blackly comic and the film is unquestionably elevated by his presence. At the beginning of the film West’s medical student is dismissed from a Swiss University after a failed experiment to bring his dead professor back to life using a concoction he has been developing for several months.Some time later, West arrives at a New England university and immediately carries on his experiments, enlisting the help of his room mate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott). When Dan’s girlfriend Megan grows suspicious of their activity, a series of events see the body count rising and West is able to test his new serum and ‘defeat death’.

The film has brilliant, gore-heavy special effects that stand up well nearly thirty years on and it’s a perfectly paced horror that was, unusually for the time, lauded by most critics. It went on to spawn sequels and launched Gordon’s career as a horror director of note.

This is the photo style one sheet and features one of the all-time great horror tag-lines. There is also an illustration style one sheet that can be seen here.

This is the style A B2 for the Japanese release of the American horror film Dead and Buried. The film was written by Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon, the two screenwriters responsible for the 1979 sci-fi masterpiece Alien, and was directed by Gary Sherman whose previous film had been the creepy ‘cannibals on the London Underground’ horror Raw Meat (AKA Deathline) almost a decade earlier. The story is set in the seemingly normal New England seaside town of Potter’s Bluff and sees the local Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) investigating a series of mysterious disappearances of strangers visiting the area. The baffling thing for the sheriff is that the strangers are then reappearing some days later now seemingly a member of the community.

The viewer bears witness to a series of gruesome murders beginning with that of a photographer (Christopher Allport) who is seduced on the town beach before being attacked by several people from the town who beat him and burn him alive whilst taking photographs. It soon becomes clear that Potters Bluff’s eccentric mortician William G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson AKA Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) has been practicing some fairly unorthodox patient handling in his morgue and the sheriff sets out to put a stop to his plans.

Apparently, the film went through a number of edits at the request of one of the financiers and was moulded into more of a dark horror film than Gary Sherman had originally intended, with two additional killings inserted and filmed without the assistance of effects maestro Stan Winston (these are noticeably different in tone and quality of execution than the rest of the film). Despite this, Dead and Buried is a solid horror film with a creepy atmosphere, excellent production design and some memorable turns, particularly from Albertson and Melody Anderson as Dan Gillis’ wife who harbours a dark secret.

The film’s original trailer is on YouTube.

Produced and released in the US as Shock Waves, this effective low-budget horror features Nazi super-soldier zombies attacking an unsuspecting group of holidaymakers whose boat breaks down near a mysterious island. Prolific character actor John Carradine plays the crotchety boat captain who, despite his billing on the poster, is quickly dispatched leaving the rest of the group, including Brooke Adams (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, to discover they’re not alone on the island. Horror legend Peter Cushing appears as the former Nazi commander of ‘Der Toten Corp’, a group of super soldiers who were the result of a series of World War II experiments that left them unable to feel pain and breath underwater.

Cushing, sporting a spectacular facial scar, has time for one German-accented explanatory speech and some moments of rambling around the island before he too is offed; a short but memorable performance that also sees him given top billing. That same year the actor would make arguably his most famous non-horror appearance in George Lucas’ Star Wars.

The film features nothing in the way of gory splatter kills seen in other zombie films of the period (particularly 1978s Dawn of the Dead) and most of the deaths occur off screen or see the victims being dragged underwater by the silent killers. What it lacks in gore the film more than makes up for in atmosphere, and this is helped in no small part to the excellent electronic soundtrack that features a pulsing bass rhythm during the moments of tension.

The scenes featuring the Toten Corp underwater are effectively done and the costumes and zombie makeup are also decent considering the low budget. True, some of the acting leaves a lot to be desired and the script is occasionally laughably clunky, but it’s still a horror film that’s well worth seeking out. Sadly it appears that there are currently no plans for a blu-ray release, which is a shame considering the terrible picture quality of the current DVD releases.

The excellent artwork on this quad features on the American one sheet (note the tagline), as well as on the posters for several other countries. In typical 1970s style the artist took certain liberties with both the size of the creatures and the number of bikini-clad beauties in peril. I’m unsure who is responsible for it so if you know please get in touch.

Ted, a friend of the site, noticed that the artwork on the quad has actually been redrawn as it differs in detail from the illustration seen on the US one sheet. Take a look at this high-resolution scan, and in particular the faces of the people, for confirmation.

The excellent trailer is on YouTube.

This is the style B B2 for the Japanese release of the American horror film Dead and Buried. The film was written by Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon, the two screenwriters responsible for the 1979 sci-fi masterpiece Alien, and was directed by Gary Sherman whose previous film had been the creepy ‘cannibals on the London Underground’ horror Raw Meat (AKA Deathline) almost a decade earlier. The story is set in the seemingly normal New England seaside town of Potter’s Bluff and sees the local Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) investigating a series of mysterious disappearances of strangers visiting the area. The baffling thing for the sheriff is that the strangers are then reappearing some days later now seemingly a member of the community.

The viewer bears witness to a series of gruesome murders beginning with that of a photographer (Christopher Allport) who is seduced on the town beach before being attacked by several people from the town who beat him and burn him alive whilst taking photographs. It soon becomes clear that Potters Bluff’s eccentric mortician William G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson AKA Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) has been practicing some fairly unorthodox patient handling in his morgue and the sheriff sets out to put a stop to his plans.

Apparently, the film went through a number of edits at the request of one of the financiers and was moulded into more of a dark horror film than Gary Sherman had originally intended, with two additional killings inserted and filmed without the assistance of effects maestro Stan Winston (these are noticeably different in tone and quality of execution than the rest of the film). Despite this, Dead and Buried is a solid horror film with a creepy atmosphere, excellent production design and some memorable turns, particularly from Albertson and Melody Anderson as Dan Gillis’ wife who harbours a dark secret.

The film’s original trailer is on YouTube.

This British quad for Ken Russell‘s 1986 horror film Gothic features artwork by Paul Dufficey. From what I can gather the artist was a long-time collaborator with the late director and had worked on four of his previous films, including Tommy. It appears from his IMDb profile that he worked as a production and set designer and for Gothic he created ‘portraits’, which presumably included the work on this posters.

Russell’s film was written by Stephen Volk and is a fictionalised retelling of the visit by Percy Shelley (Julian Sands) and his later wife Mary (Natasha Richardson in her first film role) to the Swiss villa of Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne). There they also meet Byron’s friend, the physician Dr. John Polidori (Timothy Spall) One evening, whilst a storm rages outside, the group tell each other horror stories and reveal intimate secrets about themselves. This meeting was apparently the inspiration for Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein and for Polidori to pen The Vampyre, both of which were groundbreaking novels in the horror genre.

The images on this poster are clearly inspired by classic gothic artwork, particularly the woman splayed across a bed. This references a painting called The Nightmare by the Anglo-Swiss artist Henry Fuseli which was painted in 1781. It depicts a creepy imp sitting on top of a sleeping woman and this same imagery features in Gothic. The imp is played by Kiran Shah, a dwarf actor and stuntman who has featured in several blockbusters such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and was a stuntman on all three of the Hobbit films.

Apparently the film was not much of a success at the box office but was popular on home video. I’m certain it has something to do with the distributor using a creepy photo of Shah on top of a woman, which must have enticed a fair few punters to rent the film. I doubt it met the expectations of all out horror that the cover suggested for many though!

Unquestionably one of the truly great British horror films, Clive Barker‘s Hellraiser launched an enduring franchise and established the character of Pinhead (or ‘Priest’, as Barker prefers him to be known) as one of horror’s most beloved villains. Based on the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, Barker made the decision to both write the screenplay and direct the film after being disappointed with how two of his earlier scripts had been treated by other directors. The story begins as seedy hedonist Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) purchases a golden puzzle box from an antiques dealer in Morocco believing it holds the key to the ‘ultimate sensual experience’. On returning to his London home, Frank opens the puzzle box and is promptly torn apart by massive hooks controlled by a group of horribly scarred and mutilated humanoids known as the Cenobites. The lead Cenobite (Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley) twists the box back to its original shape and they pass back into their realm with Frank’s remains with the room returning to normal.

Sometime later, Frank’s brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his second wife Julia (Clare Higgins) move into the same house assuming that Frank is in jail in some exotic location. Larry’s daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) declines the offer to move in with her stepmother and chooses to find her own place. When Larry accidentally cuts his hand and drips blood onto the attic floor it somehow reaches Frank in his prison in the other realm and starts to resurrect his body (in a stunning special effects sequence). Later that day Julia finds Frank in the attic and the pair rekindle an affair they had started some years before. Julia agrees to help Frank to fully resurrect himself, which can only happen through blood sacrifices so she begins to seduce and bring back random men to the house before bludgeoning them to death for Frank to consume. Kirsty begins to suspect something is afoot and soon she is having her own encounter with the Cenobites who are displeased to learn that one of their prisoners has escaped and is on a murder spree.

What makes the film stand out is the excellent script by Barker which prevents the characters from being the usual one-dimensional death fodder usually seen in horror films, particularly those being released towards the end of the 1980s. The production, costume and makeup design are all excellent, with all of the Cenobite designs being particularly memorable. There’s only one stop-motion animation sequence at the end of the film that belies the productions low budget and the film stands up extremely well today. Although the series is up to its ninth film instalment, Barker never directed another and was only producer on the first two sequels. After the fourth film (1996′s Bloodline) the series became a straight-to-video enterprise and quality dropped significantly from then onwards.

This is the ‘style A’ Japanese B2 and features the same image of Pinhead that’s on the American one sheet for the film. There’s also a style B B2 for the film that features a montage of other scenes and characters.

Unquestionably one of the truly great British horror films, Clive Barker‘s Hellraiser launched an enduring franchise and established the character of Pinhead (or ‘Priest’, as Barker prefers him to be known) as one of horror’s most beloved villains. Based on the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, Barker made the decision to both write the screenplay and direct the film after being disappointed with how two of his earlier scripts had been treated by other directors. The story begins as seedy hedonist Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) purchases a golden puzzle box from an antiques dealer in Morocco believing it holds the key to the ‘ultimate sensual experience’. On returning to his London home, Frank opens the puzzle box and is promptly torn apart by massive hooks controlled by a group of horribly scarred and mutilated humanoids known as the Cenobites. The lead Cenobite (Pinhead, played by Doug Bradley) twists the box back to its original shape and they pass back into their realm with Frank’s remains with the room returning to normal.

Sometime later, Frank’s brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his second wife Julia (Clare Higgins) move into the same house assuming that Frank is in jail in some exotic location. Larry’s daughter Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) declines the offer to move in with her stepmother and chooses to find her own place. When Larry accidentally cuts his hand and drips blood onto the attic floor it somehow reaches Frank in his prison in the other realm and starts to resurrect his body (in a stunning special effects sequence). Later that day Julia finds Frank in the attic and the pair rekindle an affair they had started some years before. Julia agrees to help Frank to fully resurrect himself, which can only happen through blood sacrifices so she begins to seduce and bring back random men to the house before bludgeoning them to death for Frank to consume. Kirsty begins to suspect something is afoot and soon she is having her own encounter with the Cenobites who are displeased to learn that one of their prisoners has escaped and is on a murder spree.

What makes the film stand out is the excellent script by Barker which prevents the characters from being the usual one-dimensional death fodder usually seen in horror films, particularly those being released towards the end of the 1980s. The production, costume and makeup design are all excellent, with all of the Cenobite designs being particularly memorable. There’s only one stop-motion animation sequence at the end of the film that belies the productions low budget and the film stands up extremely well today. Although the series is up to its ninth film instalment, Barker never directed another and was only producer on the first two sequels. After the fourth film (1996′s Bloodline) the series became a straight-to-video enterprise and quality dropped significantly from then onwards.

This is the ‘style B’ Japanese B2 and features a montage of scenes and characters from the film. There’s also a style A B2 for the film that features the same image of Pinhead that’s on the American one sheet for the film.

Directed by Lamberto Bava (son of legendary Italian director Mario) and produced by horror maestro Dario Argento, Demons is much loved by horror fans for its high quality gore, stylish look and great Claudio Simonetti score. It’s definitely up with the best of Italian horror films (some other examples here). The plot is kept simple; the film focuses on a group of people trapped in an old Berlin cinema as a horde of ugly demons begin attacking and a fight for survival ensues.

The artwork on this poster is by the Italian artist Enzo Sciotti who is responsible for some of the best Italian cult film posters of the past 25 years.

Here’s the original trailer on YouTube.

If I had to choose my top 10 horror films of all time there’s no question that Tobe Hooper‘s 1974 classic would be very close to the top of the list. 37 years after it was filmed it has lost none of its raw power, despite the countless imitations made since, and its impact on the horror genre cannot be underestimated.

To my mind there are few scenes in horror as brutal and shocking as the moment involving Leatherface and the sliding door. The film features little in the way of the kind of gore that modern horrors seem to rely on, yet is no less disturbing for it. The 1986 sequel famously upped the gore and violence significantly.

This Japanese poster features star Marilyn Burns in one of the film’s most disturbing scenes involving ‘Grandpa’, as well as smaller images of Leatherface, Grandpa himself and the infamous meat-hook scene.

Check out the Japanese poster for a 2007 festival re-release of the film and the classic US poster.

Bizarrely, the house featured in the film is now a family restaurant!

Here’s the brilliant original trailer.

British designer and illustrator Vic Fair is responsible for the arresting poster for this 1975 horror film Legend of the Werewolf directed by Freddie Francis and produced by Tyburn Film Productions. Francis is probably best known as an Academy-Award winning cinematographer (Sons and Lovers, Glory), and he worked with David Lynch on The Elephant Man, Dune and The Straight Story. He’s also responsible for directing a slew of films for the British production companies Hammer, Amicus and Tigon, including Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors and Dracula has Risen from the Grave.

Tyburn was apparently set up by Freddie Francis’ son, Kevin, and was only active for a short period, producing three horror films in 1975, including this one, The Ghoul and Persecution. I wasn’t able to discover much more information about the company so please get in touch if you know anything of note.

The story is set in 19th century France and focuses on Etoile (David Rintoul) who is raised by wolves and is later found and adopted by a sideshow troupe traveling through the forrest. He eventually escapes to Paris and becomes infatuated with a prostitute (Lynn Dalby), but when her clients begin to be brutally murdered a police surgeon (Cushing) begins to suspect all is not quite right with Etoile.

Sim Branaghan, author of the excellent book British Film Posters: An Illustrated History is a fan of the film and sent this through to me shortly after I added the poster to the site:

I actually know a large amount about this film – and Tyburn – for the simple reason that a book was published by the BFI back in 1976, which exhaustively documented its production. The film happens to be one of my personal favourites and I think it is witty, thoughtful, and finally genuinely moving (if only in a small way). Tony Hinds’ script is classic dark-fairy-tale, the acting fine, Francis’s direction skilfully-unobtrusive and Harry Robinson’s score absolutely terrific. Cushing gives his usual model, controlled performance (rather more light-hearted than usual), Ron Moody is excellent, and David Rintoul fresh and sympathetic as the werewolf.

The supporting cast is a bit mixed, but nobody actively embarrasses themselves. Yes, the film is painfully low-budget and sometimes looks pretty threadbare, but it has HEART. Historically, it’s hugely significant as the last Costume Gothic produced in the UK (almost exactly eighteen years after the first, Curse of Frankenstein, back in autumn 1956). Hinds and Cushing worked on both of course, and the sense of fin-de-siecle here is palpable, and very poignant to a true fan of the genre.

Obviously all criticism is subjective, and you might well find plenty of other horror fans who’ll cheerfully tell you Legend is a pile of shite.  But they’d be wrong. 

The pictures of the poster don’t do the striking neon colours justice and I believe it was done with a type of screen-printing as they are particularly solid and bright in person.

Here’s a clip from the film featuring a red-tinted werewolf-vision attack.

If I had to choose my top 10 horror films of all time there’s no question that Tobe Hooper‘s 1974 classic would be very close to the top of the list. Decades after it was filmed it has lost none of its raw power, despite the countless imitations made since, and its impact on the horror genre cannot be underestimated.

To my mind there are few scenes in horror as brutal and shocking as the moment involving Leatherface and the sliding door. The film features little in the way of the kind of gore that modern horrors seem to rely on, yet is no less disturbing for it. The 1986 sequel famously upped the gore and violence significantly.

This is the British quad for a 1998 re-release of the film at the ABC Shaftesbury avenue cinema in London. Despite the BBFC declining to issue the film a certificate back in 1975, which effectively meant the film was banned from release, the Greater London Council decided to allow cinemas to screen a pre-cut ‘X’ version of the film. A few other councils around the UK also ignored the ban but many upheld it. An uncut VHS was apparently released on the Wizard label in 1981.

In 1998 the London Borough of Camden passed the film uncut with an 18 certificate and began showing the film in cinemas. Shaftesbury avenue is just inside the Borough boundary so the ABC was well placed to screen the film to central London audiences. The fact that this poster has a December date on there indicates it’s from 1998 and not 1999 when the film was finally passed uncut by the BBFC and given a wider release.

The censorship website Melon Farmers features a great write up of the situation.

The ABC is now an Odeon cinema and it has changed owners several times in its history. Check out this fantastic set on Flickr, which contains photos of the cinema over the years . The same Flickr user has uploaded a veritable gold mine of British cinema photos – see here.

This poster is practically identical to the original 1975 quad (aside from the certificate) and I’m pretty sure they simply scanned the original to create this one. This re-release poster often appears with the cinema snipe at the bottom having been removed.

Nicknamed The Godfather of Gore, the late Italian director Lucio Fulci is responsible for several memorable entries in the horror genre and The House by the Cemetery is one of what I consider to be the big four Fulci films (the others being Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond and City of the Living Dead), which were all made within two years of each other. The director tried his hand at various genres, including westerns and comedies, but it was horror where he found the greatest success and for which he is best remembered.

The House by the Cemetery is the third film in the unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy of Fulci films that began with 1980s City of the Living Dead and was followed by The Beyond. It stars British actress Catriona MacColl (credited on the poster as Katherine MacColl) who had collaborated with Fulci on the previous two entries. The story sees Dr Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco), a professor at a New York University, being sent on research trip to New Whitby, Boston, taking his wife (MacColl) and young son with him. Their base is a big old house situated, as the title suggests, in the grounds of an old graveyard. After moving in and meeting a few of the locals, it soon becomes clear to the family that they aren’t the only ones living in the house and slowly but surely the dark secret of the previous occupant is revealed.

As was typical with all of Fulci’s output during this period, the film features several scenes of brutal, graphic gore and there’s one death scene in particular that would fall foul of the BBFC, the folks responsible for passing the film for release in the UK. This page on IMDB details the various cuts the UK release of the film was given over the years; in 1984 the film was caught up in the infamous Video Nasties situation and the VHS was banned outright. When it was re-released on tape in 1988 there were almost five minutes cut from its running time and it wasn’t until 2009 that a fully uncut version was available.

This is the UK quad poster for the first release of the film in British cinemas in 1982. It features artwork that is based on the Italian poster that was painted by the great artist Enzo Sciotti who has painted countless fantastic horror, sci-fi and exploitation posters over the years. As anyone who has seen the film will know, the knife-wielding character that dominates the poster doesn’t actually feature in the film itself. It’s said that the decision was taken to depict a psychotic killer that resembled Jack Nicholson’s character in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining after that film had proven such an international success only a year previously.

It is my belief that this artwork has been adapted from Sciotti’s original by a British artist, quite possibly Ted Baldwin who is thought to be responsible for the art on the quad for Zombie Creeping Flesh. Note the clear differences between the Italian poster and the details seen on this quad, particularly the evil character, the orientation and size of the house, and the layout of the graveyard. Obviously the original poster is in a portrait format so the decision may well have been taken to redraw it to better fit the landscape format of the quad.

Enzo Sciotti‘s official site has galleries of his work, some of which is for sale. Wrong Side of the Art has a selection of some of his work, and Eatbrie.com also features several of his designs. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

Director George A. Romero was hired to direct this horror anthology and was paired with legendary horror author Stephen King who was on screen-writing duties (hence the top tagline). The film is an homage to boys’ comics of the 1950s, including Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, and features five short stories that are bookended by scenes featuring a young boy (played Joe King, son of Stephen) who is berated by his abusive father for reading those ‘crap’ comics and who later takes deadly revenge on his father. As with any anthology some of the stories are stronger than others and arguably the best is the one called ‘The Crate’ that sees an ancient creature unleashed from its titular prison, whilst ‘Something to Tide You Over’ a seriously creepy tale of revenge starring Ted Danson and a villainous Leslie Nielsen.

Romero once again collaborated with the special effects guru Tom Savini whose work on Creepshow definitely stands up as amongst the finest of his career. His cockroach-wrangling during the final story ‘They’re Creeping Up On You’ deserves special mention. The director assembled a very impressive cast that includes the likes of Ed Harris, Hal Holbrook and genre-favourite Adrienne Barbeau. Stephen King himself even makes an (overblown, hammy) appearance as an unlucky yokel who gets more than he bargained for after discovering a strange meteorite.

The artwork is unique to this British quad but is based on artwork (source) by the American artist Bernie Wrightson that was painted for the title page of the tie-in comic book adaptation. The artwork has recently (July 2013) been confirmed as having been painted by the British poster art stalwart Tom Chantrell. Confirmation was made after the job books of Alan Wheatley, the design agency account handler for the distributor Alpha Films Ltd, were checked and Chantrell’s name was assigned to it. The poster’s artist identity had previously been unknown, although Chantrell’s name had been put forward despite the lack of his usual signature.

Note that there is a printed code upside down on the top left edge of the poster (see last picture). I’m not sure why this was added but it’s possibly to do with it being part of a poster dealer’s inventory – someone cataloguing posters may stamp them with a number to keep track of them – but why stamp it on the front? I know of at least one other copy of the poster with the number on the top so it’s a bit of a mystery.

The character of The Creep depicted on the poster also features on both the excellent advance one sheet and the final version, as well as the Japanese B2.

Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1973) marked the end of an era for British film in more ways than one. It was the last gothic horror to be produced by the original incarnation of the British Hammer Films studio and followed on from a series of six feature films based around the character of Baron Frankenstein portrayed by the late, great British actor Peter Cushing (the less said about 1970s Horror of Frankenstein, with Ralph Bates in the lead role, the better). Director Terence Fisher had worked on many of Hammer’s best-loved horrors, including their first gothic feature, 1957s The Curse of Frankenstein (starring Cushing and Christopher Lee as the monster) as well as the original Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1959) and two other Frankenstein features for the studio. He was to effectively retire from film-making at the end of production on FATMFH, and he wasn’t the only one of the Hammer alumni to do so. This was also the last Hammer feature film that screenwriter Tony Hinds, who had worked on many of the studio’s most successful horrors, would supply a script for. Other crew members who had been instrumental in the production of dozens of Hammer horrors also called it a day once this film was released.

Originally produced and shot in 1972, it eventually limped into cinemas in 1974 well after the appeal of British gothic horror films had dissipated. Cinema-goers were keen to experience the visceral thrills of the new wave of films coming out of Hollywood, including William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece The Exorcist, which made British efforts like FATMFH seem positively antiquated. Because of the fall in demand from distribution companies who were previously happy to bankroll Hammer’s productions, the budget for this film was a tiny fraction of many of their previous horrors. It would be a lie to say that the lack of money doesn’t show on screen – most of the film takes place on what is clearly a single soundstage – but the skilled craftsmen at Hammer were still able to create a wonderful sense of atmosphere with the modest amount of funds at their disposal. The film is in many ways the perfect swan-song for Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein and his performance absolutely steals the show, from his brilliant crash-zoom entrance to the quiet madness of the denouement.

On the 29th of May, 2013 I was lucky enough to see the film at London’s British Film Institute in a special showing to both celebrate the centenary of Cushing’s birth and also preview a newly restored print of FATMFH. The reformed version of Hammer films have undertaken a series of restoration projects on many of the studio’s classic films, including the original Dracula and the original Curse of Frankenstein. I believe that the new print of FATMFH will see release on blu-ray at some point this year, as well as a new restoration of The Mummy. It was a real treat to see the film on the big screen and be able to revel in a classic Peter Cushing performance.

This British quad was created at the London-based Downtons Advertising agency by one of the principal designers, Eddie Paul, and painted by an artist named Bill Wiggins. Both men are featured in Sim Branaghan’s must-own book British Film Posters: An Illustrated History and are each responsible for several iconic British posters. The designer Eddie Paul was born in Hackney in 1920 and attended Southend School of Art, later beginning his career at Temple Art Studios before moving on to Star Illustrations on Shoe Lane, where he gained a good reputation as a scrapboard artist. After serving in the RAF during the war, Paul joined Pulford Publicity in 1946 and started designing film posters using crayons and coloured pencils. He worked on several successful poster campaigns during the 1960s, including El Cid (1961), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and the famous quad for From Russia with Love (painted by Renato Fratini). He later joined four ex-Downton colleagues and formed the successful agency FEREF in 1968. As Sim notes in his book, ‘He was well liked and respected within the business as a gentleman’. Eddie Paul passed away from a heart attack whilst on his way to work in 1984, just shy of his retirement from FEREF.

Bill Wiggins was born in 1915 and worked installing large cinema displays (on the front of the buildings) during the 1930s and was a special constable during the second world war. He arrived at Downton’s Advertising agency at the same time as another principal designer, Fred Atkins (later a partner in FEREF), in 1951. Wiggins worked in the film department of the studio for 25 years, painting dozens of posters alongside the likes of Vic Fair and Brian Bysouth. Wiggins is mentioned several times during my interview with the latter. He worked on several of the early Hammer films, including Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1959), Curse of the Werewolf, as well as the sci-fi films The Lost World (1960) and Day of the Triffids (1962). He initially retired in 1975 ‘but rapidly found himself so bored that he returned within a couple of months and continued full time for another three years, eventually leaving to paint commissioned oil portraits for an art/photographic business in Bromley’. He passed away, aged 73, in 1988. Sim believes that this poster for FATMFH is likely to be one of, if not the, final cinema poster that Wiggins worked on.

In addition to this single feature quad, there is also a double-bill quad for when the film was released in a pairing with the long-forgotten kung-fu film The Fists of Vengeance. The artwork for FATMFH is actually coloured on the double-bill poster and is therefore arguably superior to this quad. Sim confirmed to me that there was a policy around this time that the single feature quad would usually be monochrome whilst the double-bill was typically printed in full colour.

Finally, this particular copy is rolled and in great condition, which is somewhat unusual for a poster from this era. I recall reading that it may have been one poster that Hammer printed in greater numbers to give away to fans who wrote in to the studio, as was the case with the quads for ‘Dracula Has Risen from the Grave’ and the ‘She/One Million Years BC’ quads (see the bottom of this page for more detail). I’m not certain that this is case though and I’d appreciate more details about it if anyone has them.