Mr Ricco, a little-seen 1970s crime thriller, marked the last starring role in film for ‘The King of Cool’ Dean Martin (unless you count his cameos in the two Cannonball Run films). The Italian-American entertainer, who had seen great success in several of his earlier roles including Rio Bravo and Ocean’s Eleven (with his fellow Rat Pack members), would continue to make popular TV appearances and music recordings but never headline a film again. After reading the reviews on IMDb it appears he was probably getting too old to convincingly pull-off the action scenes that roles like this one required.

Martin appears in the title role as Joe Ricco, a San Francisco lawyer who successfully defends Frankie Steele (Thalmus Rasulala) a member of a black militant group charged with murdering a woman. Shortly afterwards two cops are gunned down and Steele is implicated in the crime after witnesses describe seeing him fleeing the scene. The detective in charge of the case, George Cronyn (Eugene Roche), is angered that Steele appears to have got away with it again and decides to kill one of the members of the Black Serpents (Steele’s group) and implicate another in the cops’ murder. Ricco agrees to defend the wrongly-accused man but soon after is targeted by a lone sniper who almost kills him. Once again, Steele is implicated in the attempted murder so Ricco sets out to discover why his former client is trying to kill him.

This US 30×40 features artwork by an American artist called Larry Salk about whom I’ve been able to discover very little. A now defunct gallery site described him as a freelance illustrator who worked on around 165 film posters, as well as painting for advertisements, video game covers, record sleeves and more. IMPAwards features a few of his posters (I have his one sheet for the 3D re-release of House of Wax and the advance for Superman III) and he was the artist who painted the famous portrait of Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld. He apparently passed away in 2004.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of the 1973 crime caper Harry in Your Pocket, which marked the directorial debut of Bruce Geller. A man of many talents, Geller was at various points a screenwriter, producer, lyricist and director. He started out writing scripts for various TV shows during the 1950s and later worked as a co-producer on the successful cowboy series Rawhide. During this period he conceived of a series based around the world of espionage and developed it into what would become Mission Impossible, a TV series that Geller executive-produced (and even appeared in) to great success. The show lasted for seven seasons (though not all had Geller’s involvement) and was shown around the world from 1966 to 1973.

Harry in Your Pocket was Geller’s first feature film as director and The Savage Bees (1976) was his last, although technically that started life as a TV movie. Sadly he died aged 47 when his light aircraft crashed in fog near Santa Barbara, California.

The late James Coburn stars as the eponymous character, a professional pickpocket who works with an older man Casey (Walter Pidgeon) who has started to make mistakes due to excessive drug use. A younger man named Ray (Michael Sarrazin) yearns to be as good as Harry and when his girlfriend Sandy (Trish Van Devere) falls victim to the professional pair, Ray decides to track them down and persuade them to take him under their wing. Harry and Casey eventually agree to let the pair work with them as the ‘stalls’, which means their task is create as much of a distraction as possible so that Harry and Casey can get close to their marks and make ‘the dip’. However, when it becomes clear that Harry has an interest in Sandy, and Ray tires of being only a minor member of the team, the group’s allegiances are tested, putting them all in danger from the law.

A wonderfully detailed painting by the American artist Charles Moll features on this one sheet for the release of the 1976 dystopian sci-fi Logan’s Run. Brit director Michael Anderson, perhaps best known for 1955’s The Dam Busters, helmed this loose adaptation of a 1967 novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. The cast also features a number of British actors, with Michael York appearing as Logan and Jenny Agutter as Jessica, as well as the late Peter Ustinov showing up during the film’s second half. Logan’s Run is noted for its award-winning special and visual effects with some ground-breaking technology in use as well as some excellent model work that still stands up today. It also made liberal use of several locations in Texas, where it was predominantly filmed. 

Set in the 23rd century, earth has been through some unspecified event that has wiped out most of the population, whilst those that remain live inside a vast city covered with glass domes. Inside, a computer controls every aspect of life in the city, with the humans free to enjoy all the pleasures on offer without worry. Unfortunately, life inside the city does come with a cost and that is the rule that each human must submit to a ritual upon reaching their 30th birthday, during which they are ‘renewed’ and supposedly start their lives again with the aim of preventing overpopulation. Each person has a tracking device, or ‘life clock’, fitted into their hands that tells them when their time is due and they all wear different colours of clothing to mark their age range too.

Logan (York) is a Sandman, the equivalent of a policeman, whose job it is to round up anyone who doesn’t accept this ritual and attempts to escape from the city (dubbed Runners). After killing a Runner one day he finds a strange metallic pendant amongst the man’s possessions (actually an Egyptian ankh symbol) and when later scanning it into the computer he is given a mission to find out more about a secret group of people who are offering ‘sanctuary’ outside the city. After having his life clock forwarded by four years so that he’s near to ‘rebirth’ Logan is forced to go on the run to try and track down the secret group. Jessica (Agutter), a woman whom he met earlier, initially tries to lure him to a place where he can be assassinated by members of the group who want their secret kept, but when she realises he genuinely wants to reach sanctuary she agrees to go on the run with him.

The pair are being pursued by Logan’s Sandman colleague Francis (Richard Jordan) who is determined to apprehend them. They eventually arrive at an exit from the city that is opened using the ankh, and after escaping through an ice cave guarded by a silver robot called Box (Roscoe Lee Browne), the pair find themselves outside in the ruins of Washington DC. There they eventually come across and old man (Peter Ustinov) in the crumbling remains of the Senate chamber who makes them realise that it is possible to grow old and that the renewal ritual has been a lie all along. However, it’s not long before Francis catches up with them and Logan and Jessica must make a fateful decision.

The film was met with strong box-office returns and a reasonable critical reception, which greatly pleased the backers at MGM studio. A TV series followed a year later but was cancelled after only 14 episodes.

I’ve struggled to find much in the way of biographical information about Charles Moll but I do know that he only worked on a handful of film posters and is predominantly known for the many book covers he created for science-fiction novels. RaggedClutches.com features a page with a number of his covers and more of his work can be seen on the artist’s own DeviantArt page. In 2011, Adrian Curry’s Movie Poster of the Week column on Mubi.com featured this poster and also showcased several of the other film posters Moll worked on, which includes an excellent alternative style for The Sting. If anyone has any more information about Moll please get in touch.

Note that this is the international one sheet, which means it was printed in the USA for use in English-speaking international territories. Note the lack of an MPAA rating box and the fact that it has no NSS number. I also have the US advance one sheet in the Film on Paper collection, which features some of Moll’s art.

Artwork by artist Akiko Stehrenberger features on this one sheet poster for the release of director Todd Solondz‘s Life During Wartime. The film is a sort of semi-sequel to Happiness which he directed 11 years earlier. It features the same characters but each one has been re-cast with new actors. The plot mainly revolves around the three Jordan sisters that appeared in Happiness and looks at where their lives are a decade later. Like the director’s other films it straddles a fine line between dark comedy and uncomfortable drama. The performances from the likes of Allison Janney, Shirley Henderson and Michael Lerner are all excellent and, although perhaps not as memorable as Happiness, it’s still worth a watch.

Akiko Stehrenberger is one of my favourite poster artists working today and she’s created several memorable pieces of key poster art over the past few years. As detailed on her official website, Akiko began her career in New York City as an illustrator for various magazines, including SPIN and The Source. In 2004 she moved to Los Angeles and began working on illustrations for film posters as well as other freelance projects. She’s won multiple awards and has created poster designs for some of the most celebrated directors working today.

One of her most celebrated posters is the one sheet for Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s 2008 remake of his own film of the same name, released a decade earlier. When first released, many people assumed it was a manipulated photograph of the actress Naomi Watts but this excellent interview on Mubi confirms that it’s a digital illustration. The article is well worth a read to get an idea of how Akiko works and the process she went through for that poster. The gallery of posters on her website features a mixture of designs that were chosen by the distributor to be used as official campaign material as well as ones that didn’t get chosen but are nevertheless excellent. I particularly love this poster for Blue Ruin and the unused quad art for Under the Skin. You can see from her portfolio of work that she’s not afraid to experiment with new styles for each project.

There’s another gallery of her work on IMPawards.

Roger Kastel artwork on this poster for the 1978 heist-caper starring Donald Sutherland and Sean Connery and directed by the late Michael Crichton. The film is based on his book of the same name, which is itself loosely based on an actual heist known as the Great Gold Robbery of 1855 in which a large quantity of gold was stolen from a train by a master thief and his accomplices. Pierce (Connery) works with Agar (Sutherland) to acquire the four keys that are required to break into the storage compartment on the moving train and must then attempt to escape with the loot.

The film is notable for the stunt-work, including walking on the roof of a moving train, that was apparently done by Connery himself. It’s also worth noting that the film was renamed to The First Great Train Robbery in the UK so it wouldn’t get confused with an infamous British train robbery in 1963 in which £2.6 million was stolen from a train in Buckinghamshire. The crime was dubbed The Great Train Robbery by the British press.

Roger Kastel’s website can be viewed here and it features plenty of great images of his brilliant work, including the iconic image that he originally drew for the paperback cover of Jaws, which was later used on movie posters for the film all over the world.. He’s also responsible for the excellent ‘Gone with the Wind’ style one sheet for The Empire Strikes Back.

The original trailer for the film is on YouTube.

Something of a cult classic, Victory (AKA Escape to Victory) is arguably the most famous film to revolve around The Beautiful Game. Based on 1962 Hungarian film called Két félidő a pokolban by director Zoltán Fábri the film, which is set during WWII, tells the story of a football match played in Paris by a team of Prisoners of War against a German side, seen as a propaganda event. The team is led by John Colby (Michael Caine) who is determined to win the game despite the distraction of other POWs who want to use the cover of the game to escape. Sylvester Stallone plays Hatch, an American POW who is at the vanguard of the escape attempt and actually manages to get out of the camp prior to the game to meet up with resistance leaders in Paris. After planning the big breakout, Hatch must get recaptured and returned to the POW camp in order to communicate the plans to the others. When the big day arrives, Hatch is put into goal and Colby persuades the team to see the match through to the final whistle before they make their escape.

The film notoriously features a host of real life professional footballers who were involved in the game and doubled for the actors or played on the German team, including the Brazilian superstar Pelé, Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles and a whole host of players from the English team Ipswich Town, who were one of the most successful British sides at the time of the film’s release. English goalkeeping legend Gordon Banks, who played during the 1966 world cup that England won, worked behind the scenes and coached Stallone to ensure his scenes in goal were realistic enough for the film’s audience.

This US one sheet was illustrated by the artist David Jarvis who is perhaps best known for his illustration on the poster for Walter Hill’s The Warriors. Having completed a degree in illustration at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design, Jarvis went on to work as a freelance illustrator producing over thirty designs for film posters, as well as record sleeves, magazine covers and more. He also worked as an artist for Disney studios on the films Mulan and Tarzan. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

Check out the UK quad that also features Jarvis’ artwork but adds a montage by Vic Fair.

This is the American one sheet for Weird Science, the bonkers 1980s comedy from the late, great director John Hughes. Producer Joel Silver bought the rights to a 1950s EC Comics magazine of the same name and Hughes wrote the screenplay himself. Anthony Michael Hall, a regular colaborator with the director (he appeared in Breakfast Club the same year as Weird Science) stars alongside Ilan Mitchell-Smith as Gary and Wyatt, a pair of high-school nerds who are struggling to be accepted by their peers.

One evening the pair decide to try and create their perfect woman, inspired by a viewing of the classic Frankenstein film and using their computer coding skills. Following a series of improbable incidents, including a lightning strike and the pair’s successful hacking into a government mainframe computer (classic 80s nonsense), the gorgeous Lisa (an unforgettable appearance by Kelly LeBrock) steps out of their bathroom and asks “So, what would you little maniacs like to do first?” The rest of the film sees Lisa using various supernatural skills, including memory manipulation and reality warping to help the boys lose their inhibitions and gain the friendship of their school peers. The film features several madcap sequences, including the moment a bunch of psychotic bikers led by Vernon Wells (of Mad Max 2 fame) crash a house party, and Bill Paxton appears in a memorable turn as Wyatt’s brother Chet.

This one sheet was art directed by the American designer and artist Tom Jung who is perhaps most famous for his work on the posters for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back but has been working on film advertising for over 50 years, as well as storyboarding for a number of films. The artwork (Lisa’s body appears to have been painted, and the title too) was apparently done by an artist and designer called Duane Meltzer who worked at Universal Studios at the time of the film’s release. According to the about page on his official website he also worked as a creative at Twentieth Century Fox studios before forming POV Entertainment Design in 1988. He has continued to work on key art for films, as well as home entertainment packaging and more since then.

Something of a cult classic, Escape to Victory is arguably the most famous film to revolve around The Beautiful Game. Based on 1962 Hungarian film called Két félidő a pokolban by director Zoltán Fábri the film, which is set during WWII, tells the story of a football match played in Paris by a team of Prisoners of War against a German side, seen as a propaganda event. The team is led by John Colby (Michael Caine) who is determined to win the game despite the distraction of other POWs who want to use the cover of the game to escape. Sylvester Stallone plays Hatch, an American POW who is at the vanguard of the escape attempt and actually manages to get out of the camp prior to the game to meet up with resistance leaders in Paris. After planning the big breakout, Hatch must get recaptured and returned to the POW camp in order to communicate the plans to the others. When the big day arrives, Hatch is put into goal and Colby persuades the team to see the match through to the final whistle before they make their escape.

The film notoriously features a host of real life professional footballers who were involved in the game and doubled for the actors or played on the German team, including the Brazilian superstar Pelé, Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles and a whole host of players from the English team Ipswich Town, who were one of the most successful British sides at the time of the film’s release. English goalkeeping legend Gordon Banks, who played during the 1966 world cup that England won, worked behind the scenes and coached Stallone to ensure his scenes in goal were realistic enough for the film’s audience.

This UK quad takes the central figures from the US one sheet (where the film was titled simply Victory) that were painted by the artist David Jarvis and adds a montage that was illustrated by the British designer Vic Fair, who also designed the poster. Jarvis is perhaps best known for his illustration on the US one sheet for Walter Hill’s The Warriors. Having completed a degree in illustration at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design, Jarvis went on to work as a freelance illustrator producing over thirty designs for film posters, as well as record sleeves, magazine covers and more. He also worked as an artist for Disney studios on the films Mulan and Tarzan. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

One of the most important designer/artists ever to work on British film marketing, Vic Fair is responsible for several iconic posters, including The Man Who Fell To Earth, posters for Hammer horrors like Vampire Circus, and the withdrawn advance one sheet for A View to a Kill. I interviewed the artist for this site and that article can be viewed by clicking here.

Unique artwork features on this British quad for the release of the science-fiction film The Philadelphia Experiment. Based on the urban legend of the same name in which the US Navy was said to have temporarily rendered one of its destroyer escorts, the USS Eldridge, invisible (or rather cloaked) to the naked eye in October 1943. The experiment has never been validated, despite investigations (most famously by an astronomer and researcher called Morris Jessup) and several unverified accounts of the events.

The film takes the experiment as the basis for a story in which two sailors aboard the ship, David Herdeg (Michael Paré) and Jim Parker (Bobby Di Cicco), are transported through time during the 1943 experiment and end up in 1984. A scientist called Dr Longstreet (Eric Christmas) tried to use the same experiment in 1984 to protect a town in Nevada from a missile attack. The plan backfired, causing the town to disappear, David and Jim to be sucked through time and a black hole opens up at the site of the town. David agrees to help the scientist close the vortex before it destroys the planet.

This quad was created by the British designer and artist Brian Bysouth who I interviewed for this site in 2012. He is one of my favourite artists and worked on multiple classic posters from the 1960s to the 1980s, including the final painted poster for a James Bond film, The Living Daylights. The other posters I’ve collected by Brian can be seen by clicking here.

This one sheet, with brutal artwork by Joe Coleman, was supposedly withdrawn from cinemas and it’s not hard to see why.  I watched the uncut version of the film recently and, 25 years on, it hasn’t lost any of its shocking power.