This is the international re-release (1980) poster for Sergio Leone Duck, You Sucker which uses the same design as the original release poster (1971) with only a handful of changes to the credits block and a lack of NSS details.

The artwork is by Robert McGinnis, one of the all time great poster artists, who is perhaps best known for his work on some of the best James Bond posters, including Thunderball (with Frank McCarthy), Live and Let Die and Diamonds are Forever. This great gallery showcases many of his finest pieces.

If you look closely at some of the images of this poster you’ll see the fold lines from the original poster that United Artists must have copied in order to print this re-release (this version is rolled). I’m assuming this is because the original printing plates were lost and it would have been too expensive/impossible to recreate them.

Whilst not as beloved as the films that make up Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollars Trilogy’, this is still an excellent action adventure featuring many memorable scenes and I’m hoping that it will get released on blu-ray soon with both of the versions on the disc.

The original US trailer can be watched on YouTube.

One of several copycat zombie films made following the success of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, this effort by Italian director Bruno Mattei (under the pseudonym Vincent Dawn) shamelessly features many of the same types of characters and situations seen in the earlier films (SWAT team, zombie kids, hostages), and even uses sections of Goblin‘s score for DotD.

It sounds like the production was something of a nightmare, with botched filming and script-altering that rendered much of the film’s plot incomprehensible. The film features several sections of documentary footage taken from other productions and the original script apparently had a much grander scope:

In the first draft, Claudio Fragasso had followed the idea of an entire Third World made up of an army of zombies against whom the armed forces of the industrialized nations would have had to fight. However, the script had to be altered considerably due to budget limitations.

This quad features artwork which Sim Branaghan, author of the great book British Film Posters: An Illustrated History, believes to have been adapted from the original Italian poster. Ted Baldwin, who was the regular illustrator used by distributor Mircale Films, is likely to have made several changes to adapt it to the quad format.

Here’s the original trailer.

Lurid artwork by the late, great Tom Chantrell on this UK quad for the release of Italian director Umberto Lenzi‘s 1980 entry into the then burgeoning cannibal subgenre of horror, Eaten Alive! (here just Eaten Alive). This is not to be confused with Tobe Hooper’s 1976 film of the same name about a redneck killer with a pet alligator. Eaten Alive wasn’t Lenzi’s first foray into the subgenre and the director is regularly credited with kickstarting it all with his film Deep River Savages (AKA Sacrifice!) in 1972. This film was released the same year as Cannibal Holocaust, directed by fellow countryman Ruggero Deodato, which is today considered to be the pinnacle of the genre and remains notorious to this day. Not to be outdone, Lenzi filmed one of the subgenre’s most unapologetically nasty entries, Cannibal Ferox, only a year after this film was released, but by that point the subgenre was beginning to fade and only a few more obscurities were made during the 1980s.

Unlike Ferox and Holocaust, Eaten Alive is more of a jungle adventure film and isn’t told in the pseudo-documentary, mondo style of the other films. Not only did Lenzi utilise stars from other cannibal films, including the American pornstar-turned-actor Robert Kerman (who appeared in Holocaust and Ferox) but he also borrowed footage from other films such as his own Deep River Savages and The Mountain of the Cannibal God. Like other entries it also depicts scenes of real animal torture and killings which have always proved controversial and are deeply uncomfortable to sit through today (at least for this viewer). Eaten Alive sees an American woman called Sheila (Swedish actress Janet Agren) who travels to remote New Guinea in search of her missing sister Diana (Paola Senatore) accompanied by Vietnam veteran Mark (Kerman). They discover that Diana has joined a cult deep in the jungle which is being led by a Jim Jones-style guru called Jonas (cannibal flick regular Ivan Rassimov) who rules over his subjects and the local natives using physical and sexual abuse. Sheila, Mark and Diana attempt to escape from the cult’s clutches and there follows several scenes featuring all manner of barbarities.

Today Eaten Alive is considered one of the lesser cannibal films, certainly compared to Holocaust and Ferox, but it’s not without merit for gorehounds looking for a slice of sleazy entertainment. It’s arguably worth a watch as a curio of a film that would never be made today, not least because of the animal cruelty and breathtaking levels of misogyny on display.

Tom Chantrell was a celebrated British artist whose dynamic and colourful work featured on hundreds of posters over a forty year period. His official website features a great biography written by Sim Branaghan, author of the must-own British Film Posters. Chantrell illustrated many classic poster designs, including several Hammer posters such as the brilliant quad for ‘One Million Years B.C.’, and was also responsible for the iconic Star Wars quad, the artwork of which ended up being used around the globe. I have a number of other designs by him on this site. The chunky title treatment is one of the artist’s specialties and features on several of his posters, which can be seen on his official site.

Considered by many to be Sergio Leone’s masterpiece – certainly not an easy choice to make when there are films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West to choose from – ‘…America’ was to be the Italian director’s last film. Infamously, it had almost 90 minutes removed for its US cinematic release (in 1984), apparently after receiving terrible notice from American critics at the Cannes Film Festival – the re-cut version was also given a slating when it appeared.

Eventually the full 229 minute version was made available on home video in America. In 2012 it was announced that the film was to be restored to an even longer cut with over 40 minutes of newly discovered material that was thought lost. An extended cut of the film was released on blu-ray in 2014.

I recently visited the same street in Brooklyn that leads down to the Manhattan Bridge and is featured in the film and on this poster. I took this picture, which gives you an idea of how the street looks today.

This is the German poster (style A) that was designed and painted by one of my favourite artists, Renato Casaro, 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. The other posters I have collected by Casaro can be seen by clicking here.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Big Guns, a crime thriller from the late, prolific Italian director Duccio Tessari, starred French acting legend Alain Delon as Tony Arzenta, a mob hitman whose decision to retire angers the bosses and leads to the accidental death of his wife and child. Arzenta sets out on a bloody revenge mission, unleashing his particular set of skills on the criminals who wronged him. Richard Conte, who had starred in The Godfather a year earlier, also features as Nick Gusto, a Sicilian crime boss who wants to bury the hatchet with Arzenta, much to the consternation of his associates.

The film was released internationally (as No Way Out in the US, for example) and this poster was printed for Japan, a country in which Delon has a huge fan base. The main image is taken from a moment during one of the car chases for which the film is perhaps best remembered, and a clip from it can be watched here.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Filmed in Canada by an Italian director (Alberto De Martino under the pseudonym Martin Herbert), Blazing Magnum has multiple alternative titles, including Shadows in an Empty Room, and is an entry into the poliziottesco genre of cinema. The story sees tough Ottawan police captain Tony Saitta (Stuart Whitman) travel to Montreal to investigate the untimely death of his sister at a party. Before long more bodies start to appear, the list of suspects grows and Saitta teams up with Sergeant Ned Matthews (genre stalwart John Saxon) to crack the case.

The film is perhaps best known for it’s insane, nine minute car chase around the streets of Montreal, which was filmed without permits and staged by legendary stunt performer Rémy Julienne, whose work includes six James Bond films and the original Italian Job. The chase can be watched in all its glory on YouTube – it definitely rivals other legendary cinematic car pursuits! It also features a giallo-esque scene in which a murder is committed in the same room as a blind girl, Saitta fighting a bunch of drag queens and a dwarf gangster.

Check out this Motion Picture Purgatory entry on DreadCentral.com.

The artwork on this Japanese poster is by one of my favourite artists, the mysterious Seito. It appears on the Italian poster (image taken from emovieposter.com), as well as others, so it’s likely that Seito may have adapted another illustrator’s work for this B2, unless the other countries used his illustration? The American one sheet is markedly different and plays up the murder mystery side of the plot.

The trailer can be viewed on YouTube.

Considered by many to be Sergio Leone’s masterpiece – certainly not an easy choice to make when there are films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West to choose from – Once Upon a Time in America was to be the Italian director’s last film. Infamously, it had almost 90 minutes removed for its American cinematic release (in 1984), apparently after receiving terrible notice from American critics at the Cannes Film Festival – the re-cut version was also given a slating upon release. Eventually the full 229 minute version was  made available on home video in America. Earlier this year it was announced that the film is currently being restored to an even longer ‘director’s cut’ with over 40 minutes of new material, due for release in 2012.

This Japanese poster features the famous shot of Manhattan bridge from Brooklyn street level, along with the four leads with bandanna face masks and a few other scenes from the film.

Here’s the original trailer on YouTube.

A striking design on this poster for the 1987 Czechoslovakian re-release of Sergio Leone’s masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West. The epic 1968 Western stars Charles Bronson as the mysterious Harmonica who arrives in a frontier town and is memorably attacked by a group of trench coat-wearing assassins. Meanwhile, the family of Jill McBain (the gorgeous Claudia Cardinale), who has arrived in the town looking for a fresh start, is brutally slaughtered by unknown perpetrators. The prime suspect Cheyenne (Jason Robards) befriends the widow and joins forces with Harmonica to go after Frank (Henry Fonda in an atypical role), the ruthless gang leader protecting the interests of a railroad company.

This re-release poster features a design by the celebrated Czech artist Zdenek Ziegler. Born in Prague in 1932, Ziegler studied at the Czech Technical University and graduated in 1961. He went on to design over 200 film posters during a 26-year period from 1963 to 1989. The website Terry Posters has a page with a biography of Ziegler and a gallery of his work (with some of them being available to purchase). Since 1990 Ziegler has been a teacher at Academy of Arts in Prague.

Some of his most celebrated designs include a 1970 poster for Hitchock’s Psycho and a great design for Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. His take on the poster for Ridley Scott’s Alien is also very unique.

What would have been just another entry in the burgeoning cannibal and zombie sub-genres of horror made popular in the wake of the release of the low-budget but hugely profitable Zombie (1979), Cannibal Apocalypse took the standard formula and attempted to do something different. Prolific Italian director Antonio Margheriti, a veteran of several horror and westerns, including Horror Castle (1963) and Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1973), decided to capitalise on the recent popularity of Apocalypse Now (1979) and begin his screenplay in the jungles of the Vietnam war. The film’s key twist on the typical zombie formula is that the cannibalistic killers are not dead but infected with a virus that turns them into flesh-eaters.

Featuring genre stalwart John Saxon, who has apparently since tried to distance himself from the film, the story begins with Saxon’s American sergeant Norman Hopper attempting to rescue two fellow soldiers, Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) and Tom (Tony King), who have been taken captive by the Vietcong and are being kept in a pit. When he attempts to pull them to safety, the soldiers attack and bite Hopper, much to his confusion. Nevertheless the pair are rescued and returned to America. Several years later, Hopper is back in the States and suffering from flashbacks to the horrors of Vietnam when he receives a call to ask for his help in tracking down Bukowski who has escaped from a mental asylum and is on a murderous rampage. After cornering him in a department store, with help from the police and a biker gang, Hopper manages to persuade Bukowski back into custody, but not before he is informed that he is also infected with the same, (oddly) slow-progressing cannibal virus that the two soldiers caught back in the jungle. Before long, Hopper finds himself succumbing to cannibalistic desires and the real carnage begins.

This is the B2 poster for the Japanese cinema release in 1980. The zombie and cannibal genres were particularly popular in the country at that time and many films were given a cinematic release in Japan that went straight to video (or would be released several years later) in countries like the UK. In the case of Cannibal Apocalypse, the film was given a limited release in the US as Cannibal Massacre in 1981 with an ‘X’ rating, withdrawn and then re-released in 1983 in a heavily edited form, retitled as Invasion of the Fleshhunters. As far as I’m aware the film was never given a cinema showing in the UK and the eventual VHS release fell foul of the ridiculous video nasties situation and was banned from shelves. It took over 20 years before the film was made legally available again to British fans.

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

The full film is available to watch on YouTube, should you wish to get your fill of cannibal fun.

A striking, garishly-coloured design on this international one sheet (printed in the US for English-speaking territories) for the little-seen Italian film Winged Devils (originally titled Forza G). Helmed by screenwriter (of films like For a Few Dollars More) turned director Duccio Tessari, the film follows the exploits of a young pilot who wants to join the Italian air force’s acrobatic stunt team and must prove himself worthy to join the ranks of the ace pilots. As can be inferred from this poster, the story also concentrates on his life on the ground, although McGinnis’ skill at painting leggy beauties probably oversells that part of the plot. The film wasn’t, as far as I can tell, released in American or British cinemas and it appears to have never been released on home video anywhere. There are no reviews for the film on IMDb, which is very unusual.

Robert McGinnis was responsible for some of the most iconic James Bond posters, including Thunderball,  The Man With the Golden Gun and Diamonds are Forever as well as multiple other classic posters from the 60s, 70s and 80s. He was born in Cincinatti, Ohio in 1926 and was given an apprenticeship at Walt Disney studios before studying fine art at Ohio State University. After serving in the Merchant Marines during World War II, he started work in the advertising industry and later moved into painting book jackets for several notable authors, as well as editorial artwork for the likes of Good Housekeeping, TIME and The Saturday Evening Post. McGinnis’ first film poster was the now iconic one sheet for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, painted in 1962, and he went on to paint over 40 others during his career, including one for The Incredibles in 2004.

To see the other posters I’ve collected that were painted by McGinnis click here.

Unique artwork features on this German A1 poster for the release of Lucio Fulci‘s classic horror The Beyond (1981). Nicknamed The Godfather of Gore, the late Italian director is responsible for several memorable entries in the horror genre and The Beyond is one of what are often considered to be the big four Fulci films (the others being Zombie Flesh Eaters, The House By the Cemetery 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 Beyond is the second film in the unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy of Fulci films that began with 1980s City of the Living Dead and ended with The House By the Cemetery. British actress Catriona MacColl, star of the other two films, plays New Yorker Liza Merril who has inherited a run-down Louisiana hotel and decides to spend her savings on renovating the place. What she doesn’t realise is that it was built over one of ‘Seven Doors of Death’, which are direct pathways to hell, and when people involved in helping her repair the hotel begin to die horribly she is helped by a local doctor (David Warbeck) and a mysterious local blind woman called Emily (Cinzia Monreale). It soon becomes clear that the pathway is letting supernatural evil out and creating bloodthirsty zombies of the dead and Liza must fight for her very survival.

As with many of Fulci’s films, the story plays second fiddle to the striking visuals and gory set-pieces as the body count ramps up. It’s never less than memorable and is often cited by Fulci fans as their favourite of his films. The Beyond also features a great score by regular Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi. The film was butchered heavily for its original US release (as ‘7 Doors of Death’) and was missing most of the gore scenes and a different soundtrack. The UK release was originally heavily cut, despite being granted an ‘X’ certificate. It was finally passed fully uncut in 2001.

A reader of the site got in touch to confirm that the poster was painted by Lutz Peltzer, a prolific German artist who worked on over 800 posters during his career. The German site Archiv für Filmposter features a biography and plenty of images of his work. It details that he was born in 1925 in Mannheim and passed away in 2003.

Unique artwork features on this Thai poster for the release of Lucio Fulci‘s classic horror The Beyond (1981). Nicknamed The Godfather of Gore, the late Italian director is responsible for several memorable entries in the horror genre and The Beyond is one of what are often considered to be the big four Fulci films (the others being Zombie Flesh Eaters, The House By the Cemetery 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 Beyond is the second film in the unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy of Fulci films that began with 1980s City of the Living Dead and ended with The House By the Cemetery. British actress Catriona MacColl, star of the other two films, plays New Yorker Liza Merril who has inherited a run-down Louisiana hotel and decides to spend her savings on renovating the place. What she doesn’t realise is that it was built over one of ‘Seven Doors of Death’, which are direct pathways to hell, and when people involved in helping her repair the hotel begin to die horribly she is helped by a local doctor (David Warbeck) and a mysterious local blind woman called Emily (Cinzia Monreale). It soon becomes clear that the pathway is letting supernatural evil out and creating bloodthirsty zombies of the dead and Liza must fight for her very survival.

As with many of Fulci’s films, the story plays second fiddle to the striking visuals and gory set-pieces as the body count ramps up. It’s never less than memorable and is often cited by Fulci fans as their favourite of his films. The Beyond also features a great score by regular Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi. The film was butchered heavily for its original US release (as ‘7 Doors of Death’) and was missing most of the gore scenes and a different soundtrack. The UK release was originally heavily cut, despite being granted an ‘X’ certificate. It was finally passed fully uncut in 2001.

This montage featuring some of the more memorable moments of gory violence from the film was painted by a Thai artist called Noppadol about whom I’ve been unable to discover very little, other than a few of the other film poster titles he worked on (including Saturn 3 and Evil Dead). If anyone knows any more details please get in touch.

Although folded and not in amazing condition this is a very 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. The blue ink marks on the bottom of the poster relate to showings at specific times in specific cinemas and were stamped on after the original printing.