Excellent artwork by Carl Ramsey for the 80s zombie classic featuring the memorable Linnea Quigley (represented here in her undead form). When I first saw the film I was a little mystified by her ‘Barbie doll’ look (smooth bump) when she’s naked in the graveyard and only later found out that one of the producers made her wear prosthetics to cover up her privates. I can only imagine that it confused a lot of impressionable teenagers who were watching this back in the 1980s.

I recently bought the blu-ray and have to say the film still holds up really well – the creature designs and music are particular standouts. I’m definitely going to pick up ‘The Complete History of the Return of the Living Dead’ book, which is meant to be excellent.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Legendary director David Lynch‘s surreal nightmare Eraserhead celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2012 and its fair to say cinema has seen nothing else quite like it in the years since it was released. Lynch’s first full-length feature was five years in the making and was begun whilst he worked at the American Film Institute school in Los Angeles. The initial grant of $10,000 given to the director quickly ran out and he was forced to spend the following years using money from odd jobs, as well as donations from friends and family to continue work on it.

Ben Barenholtz, the owner of Libra films saw the completed film at the Filmex Festival and, after declaring it was a ‘film of the future’, decided to help Lynch get the film into cinemas. The first screening took place at midnight on the 29th of September, 1977 and, like Jodorowsky’s El Topo before it, Eraserhead became a staple of Midnight Movie shows in Los Angeles, New York and London.

This Japanese poster is from the first release of the film, which took place in 1981, and features an image of the ‘baby’ with its head wrapped in bandages. This particular copy of the poster isn’t in the best of condition, as should be obvious from the pictures, but I think it quite suits the nature of the film.

Having just watched the recent UK blu-ray release of the film, which was apparently supervised by Lynch, I can highly recommend picking up a copy of it as the film has never looked or, perhaps more importantly, sounded as good.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Norris versus Carradine was always going to be a good match and this is definitely one of Chuck’s better films. His character, a Texas Ranger named J.J. McQuade, was the inspiration behind his successful TV series Walker, Texas Ranger that began 10 years after this film. This US one sheet features great action artwork by C.W. Taylor.

The uncensored trailer can be watched on Youtube.

Someone has made a clip called Lone Wolf McQuade in four minutes, handy if you never intend to watch the film in full. Also, here’s the film’s body count.

An extremely low-fi poster for the UK release of the excellent 1985 horror comedy The Return of the Living Dead. The image is of Jerome ‘Daniels’ Coleman who plays the rather terrifying legless zombie who chomps on a paramedic before chasing Don Calfa. A clip of him in action is on YouTube.

Apparently Coleman was an amputee who could run on his stumps and was discovered by one of the film’s producers living on the streets of L.A. The effect is extremely effective, particularly when coupled with his blood-curdling screams. It’s one of the few truly creepy moments in the whole film, in my opinion.

The US one sheet is markedly different and can be seen here.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Lurid, no-bullshit artwork by Japanese artist Seito for this 1975 schlockfest, The Giant Spider Invasion. From IMDb:

A black hole hits North Wisconsin and opens a door to other dimensions. Giant 15 meter spiders emerge from it, who have an appetite for human flesh! Dr. Jenny Langer and Dr. Vance from the NASA try to save the world.

As featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, the American TV series which lampoons bad movies, the film sounds absolutely legendary:

In a scene depicting the giant spiders attacking a little league baseball game, the spiders are obviously Volkswagen Beetles with puppet legs attached. Tread marks can be seen in several shots. 

Incredibly, the remains of these spider cars were recently found in the woods near where the scenes were shot.

“Pfantz’s steel framework was covered with black Fun Fur to make the spiders both hairy and scary. The mechanical nature of the beast required seven people to be stuffed within the cramped confines of the VW floorpan – a driver and six children to work the spider’s legs.”

Here’s the original trailer.

2012 was an important year for several of cinema’s biggest franchises with the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, appearing four years after the last, plus Christopher Nolan bringing his Dark Knight trilogy to a spectacular close with The Dark Knight Rises. However, unquestionably the cinematic event of the year was the much anticipated release of Marvel’s superhero team-up The Avengers.

Even before the successful release of Iron Man in 2008, the production team in charge of what is known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, had planned to release a series of films focusing on individual superheroes based on Marvel comic characters, with the intention of establishing their backstories, and popularity, with fans before uniting them together in a ‘crossover’ film. The original Avengers comic, which brought together previously stand-alone characters including Thor, Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man, was first released in 1963 and has been in print since then so it was no surprise that it was chosen to the be the crossover film following the first five standalone stories.

The film was helmed by cult screenwriter/director Joss Whedon who saw worldwide success with TV shows like Buffy, Angel and cult favourite Firefly, but this was his first major studio film and his appointment in 2010 was seen as a surprise, but welcome, choice by many fans. Whedon pushed the studio allow him to begin a new script after reading a screenplay by Zak Penn that they had been tinkering with since 2007 and the studio eventually agreed, with production beginning in July 2010.

Marvel’s faith in Whedon paid off in spectacular style when the film was released in 2012 and broke multiple worldwide box-office records, including highest-grossing opening in the US, the highest opening week earnings and fewest number of days to reach half a billion dollars (23). It was the highest grossing film of 2012 and currently stands at third in the all-time rankings.

To celebrate the release of the film, Marvel once again worked with Austin-based Mondo to release a series of screen prints based on characters from the film. The incomparable Austin-based geek culture outfit has worked on prints for all of the standalone Marvel releases, starting with Iron Man in 2008 and only skipping the same year’s The Incredible Hulk.

The team at Mondo assembled a roster of its most celebrated artists to turn in designs for each of the main characters and these were released over the period of a week in April 2012, beginning with Olly Moss‘ portrait of Black Widow and ending with Thor by Martin Ansin and Iron Man by Kevin Tong. A few weeks later, on the eve of the film’s release, Mondo then revealed a print featuring all of the characters that was designed and illustrated by arguably their most popular artist, Tyler Stout.

As usual, the print came in both regular and variant versions and, despite each having relatively high print runs, the poster sold out within seconds of going on sale on Mondo’s webshop. I was lucky to snag a copy of the print via Tyler’s ‘lottery’, which he now holds on his own site shortly after each print release sells out via Mondo.

Whilst adding the regular version to the Film on Paper collection I wanted to interview the man himself about the creation of the poster as I’ve done previously with his work on the prints for Akira, Kill Bill and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The interview can be read in full by clicking here.

Note that the final image of Iron Man is stamped on the back of the print.

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 the Japanese B2 poster for the release of the 1973 adaptation of the French novelist Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island (1874). A co-production between Spanish, French, Italian and Cameroonian companies, the film started out as a TV miniseries (300 minutes long) and was later adapted into a 96 minute feature that was released into cinemas in USA, Japan and other countries. Omar Sharif plays Captain Nemo, the enigmatic scientist that first appeared in Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which was adapted numerous times over the past century (Mysterious Island has also seen numerous versions released).

Like the novel, this version is set during the time of the American Civil War and follows five prisoners of war who escape captivity by riding a hot air balloon. They are blown wildly off course and end up on a remote Pacific island where they must use their wits to survive. Eventually they meet Nemo who piloted the Nautilus submarine there following the events in the previous story.

The longer version appears to be almost impossible to find today, whilst the shorter version is also poorly served by home video releases.

This is one of two posters that were printed for the release in Poland of Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror masterpiece Rosemary’s Baby, which didn’t take place until 1984. The film, based on a 1967 novel of the same name by Ira Levin, stars Mia Farrow as the titular young housewife who moves into Bramford, an opulent but fading apartment block, with her actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes). At first all seems well, despite Guy struggling to find work, but when another young resident dies in strange circumstances the pair meet elderly neighbours Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) and are invited for dinner.

Soon afterwards Rosemary begins to have strange dreams and hears weird noises from inside the building, whilst Guy begins to spend more time with the Castevets. When Rosemary falls pregnant she begins to suspect that all is not as it seems and a friend of hers called Hutch (Maurice Evans) confirms that the building has a shady history and is concerned for her health. Soon after warning her of the possibility that a satanic group are active in the building Hutch falls into a coma and later dies. When the baby is due to arrive, Rosemary comes to learn the truth and sees that Guy had betrayed her to the satanic group for the sake of his acting career. The ending, which is one of the most infamous in horror film history, is still as disturbing today as it was in 1968. 

The film was a huge critical and commercial success, earning over $30 million in the US alone, which wasn’t significant considering it had a budget of around $2.3 million. Polanski had already been lauded for Repulsion (1966) but it was this film, his first Hollywood production, that really shot him to international stardom. Sadly, a year after its release his wife Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by the psychotic Charles Manson and his gang and it would be three years before his next film was made.

This poster was designed and illustrated by Andrzej Pagowski, a prolific film poster artist who was born in Warsaw in 1953 and studied at the celebrated University of Fine Arts in Poznań, graduating in 1978 under the tutorship of the noted artist Waldemar Świerzy. In 1990 he started his own graphic design studio called Studio P, which he developed into an advertising agency by 1993. According to the biography on his official site, Pagowski has illustrated over 1000 posters during his career and has also done work for books, magazines and music covers. In addition, he is also a TV and theatre stage designer and a screen writer. Undoubtedly a man of many talents! His official site features an extensive gallery of his work, including several of the posters. Polishposter.com also features multiple pages worth of his movie posters and this culture.pl article is well worth a read too.

This is Thai poster for the release of the third film in George A. Romero‘s ‘Dead’ series, Day of the Dead. In a similar situation to Dawn of the Dead (released 7 years earlier) this film had no returning characters from the previous entry due to rights issues, so it’s set in the same universe after the zombie outbreak but shares no continuity with the earlier films. Romero’s original vision for the ‘Day…’ was scaled back to due to budget constraints, but the director has since said he’s very happy with the final product. It’s a notably darker, bleaker effort than the fan favourite ‘Dawn’ but features a unique setting, memorable characters and some of the best special effects of the entire series, courtesy of the legendary Tom Savini.

The story follows a group of survivors who have holed-up in a military bunker in Florida and make regular trips around the area looking for survivors. Underground a small group of scientists and technical specialists, including Dr Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille) and Dr Logan (Richard Liberty), known as ‘Frankenstein’, are working to discover the cause of the outbreak and discover if anything can be done to make the zombies more docile. An uneasy truce is maintained by the scientists and other specialists like helicopter pilot John (Terry Alexander), with a group of soldiers ostensibly there to protect them and deliver them test subjects from a fenced off area of the base. The soldiers are led by the psychotic Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) who discovers that Dr Frankenstein has been secretly carrying out experiments using dead soldiers, including training a zombie known as Bub (Sherman Howard) to follow commands. At this point the truce is shattered and a series of events see the base overrun with the undead, forcing Sarah and the others to try to escape the carnage before its too late.

This Thai poster features a montage of images from the film, including the infamous dream sequence where zombie hands burst through the wall trying to grab Dr Bowman. The artist responsible is known as Jinda and, other than some other Thai film posters he’s painted, I could find little information about him. If anyone knows more biographical details about Jinda, please get in touch.

The Last Dragon is a martial-arts cult classic from the 1980s that (at least in the US) stands alongside films like The Goonies and Back to the Future as a defining youth-oriented film of the era. It’s definitely less well known in the UK and I think that has something to do with the fact that it was released with a ’15’ rating over here, meaning it was out of bounds for the younger audience it clearly attracted in the US (with a PG rating).

That it was rated 15 was probably to do with the video nasties situation of the time and the passing of the Video Recordings Act of 1984 that meant all home video had to be classified by the British Board of Film Classification, designated by the government as the upholders of film ratings. Martial arts films were seen as an undesirable genre as they were (stupidly) thought to have a strong potential to cause cases of copycat violence in school children across the nation. In addition to being given a 15 rating, the film had cuts made totalling almost 2 minutes for the cinema and subsequent home video releases.

To say this action by the BBFC was excessive would be an understatement as, aside from a couple of moments of profane language, the film is really quite mild, with none of the fight scenes being at all brutal. The film was produced by the founder of Motown records Berry Gordy and was intended to mix musical numbers (predominantly hip-hop) with the popular (at the time) martial arts genre. The lead role of Leroy Green (AKA Bruce Leroy), a young warrior who wishes to attain the ultimate level of martial arts skill known as ‘The Glow’, was given to the 20-year-old, single-monikered Taimak, a martial artist who apparently learned to act whilst on the set of the Last Dragon.

Leroy leaves his master on the quest to find Master Sum Dum Goy whom he believes will teach him the final lessons needed to attain The Glow. Along the way he must battle with the malevolent Sho’nuff (a hilarious performance from Julius Carry) another martial artist who sees Leroy as standing in the way of total domination, as well as deal with the machinations of the twisted video arcade mogul Eddie Arkadian (Christopher Murney). Laura Charles (Vanity, single-monikered protege of Prince) the VJ of a popular music video channel is kidnapped by Arkadian’s men in an attempt to convince her to play his girlfriend’s awful music video. Leroy sets out to rescue her and romance soon blossoms between them. He soon learns the truth about attaining The Glow and the final fight with Sho’nuff features the use of rotoscoped special effects.

The film contains a few almost full-length music videos, including the DeBarge song, ‘Rhythm of the Night‘. The fight scenes are all well choreographed and entertaining, with Taimak clearly having skills in that area (if not so much as a thespian). The excellent Last Dragon Tribute site features a recent letter from the man himself in which he explains why he’s not starred in many films since then. It’s not hard to see why the film was so popular as it played to the adolescent fantasy of many a young male teen who dreamed of using martial arts to win the heart of a girl.

This Japanese poster is rather excellent and the artwork is unique to the Japanese campaign. Seito is one of my favourite Japanese artists who was responsible for several fantastic illustrated posters during the 1970s and 1980s. Little is known about the man himself, even in his native country.

To see the other posters I’ve collected by Seito click here.