A largely forgotten entry into the blaxploitation genre, Book of Numbers was written, directed and produced by its star Raymond St. Jacques, who is perhaps best known for his role as Coffin Ed Johnson in the film Cotton Comes to Harlem, as well as the street preacher in John Carpenter’s They Live.
The film sees two African-American waiters set up a numbers racket in a small town in Arkansas, raising the ire of the white gangsters in other towns nearby. Despite being something of a critical success it appears the film was a financial flop and put paid to further films that Raymond St. Jacques had planned with his recently established production company.
The great artwork on this US 30×40 features a signature but I’ve had a hard time identifying who it belongs to. Take a look at the signature picture and let me know if you can identify it.
Artwork by the great Drew Struzan on this US one sheet for French director Jean-Jacques Annaud‘s 1986 medieval whodunnit, starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater in one of his first major film roles. Based on the book by Italian novelist, semiotician, philosopher and critic Umberto Eco, the film focuses on the investigation of a series of mysterious deaths in an isolated abbey by the monk William of Baskerville (Connery) aided by his novice Adso of Melk (Slater). The pair must race against time to prevent falsely accused suspects, including Ron Perlman‘s demented hunchback Salvatore, being punished at the hands of the inquisitor Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham).
Struzan’s portrait of a balding Connery is absolutely spot on and easily on par with the one he did three years later for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. According to IMDb, the presence of the ugly characters in the film (and on the poster) is due to Annaud “casting the ugliest actors he could get because he wanted the characters to appear “real”, based on the men in the village where he lived. When he returned to his village, some of the men asked him if he really considered them to be as ugly as the actors, and he said, “Yes.”
Several other international posters for the film, including this German one, depict Connery looking extremely serious and glum.
To see the other posters I’ve collected by Struzan click here.
The original trailer is on YouTube.
A unique montage on this Japanese poster for the second in Italian horror maestro Dario Argento’s ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy of films. The series began in 1977 with the brilliant Suspiria and would end 27 years after this film with the disappointing Mother of Tears. Set in New York and Rome, Inferno focuses on a brother and sister and their investigation into a mysterious coven of witches, with predictably deadly consequences.
Like many of Argento’s films the plot is often secondary to the incredible visuals and inventive death scenes, but it’s definitely up there as one of his best and now has a well-deserved cult following. The film was partly financed by 20th Century Fox, following the success they had distributing Suspiria, however they declined to give it as wide a release as the previous film and Inferno suffered as a result. I’ve been unable to find out much about the UK cinema release, although this is what the poster for it looked like.
I’m a fan of the original Italian poster, which can be seen here.
British distributor Arrow Films released a lavish 30th anniversary edition blu-ray here in the UK (in 2010) and the US home video label Blue Underground also released the film last year.
The spectacularly nuts original US trailer can be viewed on YouTube.
