A striking design by the celebrated Polish artist and designer Waldemar Świerzy features on this Polish B1 poster for the release of the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa‘s penultimate film, Rhapsody in August. The story focuses on three generations of a Japanese family who were affected by the 1945 Nagasaki atomic bomb. Kane (Sachiko Murase) is the grandmother of the family who lost her husband to the explosion and she is tasked with looking after her four grandchildren for the summer, whilst her children visit a man who claims to be Kane’s long-lost brother in Hawaii. The children learn about the effects of the bomb and what it meant for their family. Richard Gere appears as Clark, an American-born cousin of Kane’s children, who gets involved in a ceremony to commemorate the bombing.

The late Waldemar Świerzy is considered to be one of the most important Polish designers and artists and it’s estimated he’s worked on over 2500 posters during his career. He was born in Katowice in 1931 and graduated from the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts in 1952. He later became professor in the University of Fine Arts in Poznań from 1965 and Professor in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1994. The artist was one of the key figures in the influential Polish School of Posters a movement to push the level of quality of Polish posters forward which was active for over 30 years, starting in the 1950s. Świerzy won multiple awards during his career and had several exhibitions of his work held over the years. He sadly passed away in 2003.

Polishposter.com has several pages of his work and this biography on culture.pl goes into great detail about his life and work. Poster.com.pl has another gallery of his work.

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.

A striking design features on this Polish poster for the domestic release of At Your Own Request (originally titled Na Wlasna Prosbe). The film was co-directed by husband and wife Ewa Petelska and Czeslaw Petelski, both of whom have since passed away. It must have been granted a release overseas, given that it has an English-language title, but I can find no evidence of which markets it appeared in. It’s fair to say that it’s a little-seen film, especially going by the lack of any user reviews on IMDb but it does have a plot description:

The story is of an engineer in conflict with his superior. He won’t go along with the usual corruption and conformity. He is left to himself amid indifference and ineptitude by his fellow workers and the management.

It doesn’t exactly sound like the most thrilling of dramas but at least this poster is interesting!

The 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 screenwriter. Undoubtedly a man of many talents!

Pagowski’s 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.

To see the other Pagowski-designed posters I’ve collected click here.

This is a Polish B1 poster for a 1987 re-release of the 1962 Japanese drama Harakiri (originally titled Seppuku) that was designed and illustrated by Waldemar Świerzy. Both titles refer to the grisly ritual suicide by slashing a sword across your own belly that was originally practiced by samurai swordsmen in medieval and early-modern Japan. The action formed part of the samurai code and was used by warriors who would rather die with honour than fall into the hands of the enemy, or by disgraced samurai who had committed gross offences or brought shame upon themselves.

The film was helmed by the celebrated Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi who directed a number of notable films, including the superb horror anthology Kwaidan (1964), before he passed away aged 80 in 1996. The story is set in 17th Century Japan and deals with an elder samurai without a master (known as a Ronin) called Hanshirō Tsugumo (Tatsuya Nakadai, star of multiple Akira Kurosawa films). The plot is described thusly on IMDb:

Peace in 17th-century Japan causes the Shogunate’s breakup of warrior clans, throwing thousands of samurai out of work and into poverty. An honorable end to such fate under the samurai code is ritual suicide, or hara-kiri (self-inflicted disembowelment). An elder warrior, Hanshiro Tsugumo seeks admittance to the house of a feudal lord to commit the act. There, he learns of the fate of his son-in-law, a young samurai who sought work at the house but was instead barbarically forced to commit traditional hara-kiri in an excruciating manner with a dull bamboo blade. In flashbacks the samurai tells the tragic story of his son-in-law, and how he was forced to sell his real sword to support his sick wife and child. Tsugumo thus sets in motion a tense showdown of revenge against the house.

The film won multiple awards upon its release in 1962, including the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and received excellent reviews when released around the world in the following years (1964 was its first release in the USA). Japanese director Takeshi Miike released a remake in 2011 with the title Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai.

The late Waldemar Świerzy is considered to be one of the most important Polish designers and artists and it’s estimated he’s worked on over 2500 posters during his career. He was born in Katowice in 1931 and graduated from the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts in 1952. He later became professor in the University of Fine Arts in Poznań from 1965 and Professor in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1994. The artist was one of the key figures in the influential Polish School of Posters a movement to push the level of quality of Polish posters forward which was active for over 30 years, starting in the 1950s. Świerzy won multiple awards during his career and had several exhibitions of his work held over the years. He sadly passed away in 2003.

Polishposter.com has several pages of his work and this biography on culture.pl goes into great detail about his life and work. Poster.com.pl has another gallery of his work.

A striking image by the British designer Paul Derrick features on this UK quad for the release of maverick director Werner Herzog‘s 1984 drama Where the Green Ants Dream. The film was the directorial follow up to what many consider to be Herzog’s masterpiece, Fitzcarraldo, and is set in the Australian outback. Co-written with the Australian screenwriter Bob Ellis, the film deals with the contentious issue of aboriginal land rights that has existed ever since the British established a settlement there in the 18th Century. A mix of facts and fiction, the film features a number of aboriginal activists who had been involved in a real-life court case

Bruce Spence, who is best known as the Gyro Captain from Mad Max 2, plays Lance Hackett, a geologist working for a mining company that is carrying out a series of tests on some land that they intend to mine for Uranium. The title refers to the insects that the aborigines believe to be sacred and they fear will be disturbed by the blasting and drilling. One of the tribal elders, as featured on this poster, explains that this disturbance could bring about the end of the world. Lance is instructed to spend time with the activists and try and work out a deal with them so that the mining company can carry on their testing. When that eventually fails, even after they are given a large army plane as part of an attempted deal, the case goes to the courts. 

Paul Derrick’s official website can be viewed here and, according to the short biography on the site, he has been working for many years on publishing and visual identity projects for a wide range of clients, including arts and educational organisations as well as government clients. He also says that he is ‘experienced in undertaking, and art directing, documentary photography to create visual narratives and storytelling.’ There are a few examples of posters he worked on and the British distribution company Artificial Eye is listed in the projects section.

A striking portrait by the artist Vincent Topazio features on this one sheet for the US release of Veronika Voss. The film was the penultimate one by the legendary German director, screenwriter, producer and actor Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It was released the year of his untimely death (he was only 37) and his final film as director, Querelle, was released posthumously the following year.

The film was an entry in what Fassbinder named the BRD Trilogy; three films all focusing on a single female character and set in West Germany following World War II. BRD is an acronym for Bundesrepublik Deutschland, which was the official name of the country during that period. The first of the trilogy, The Marriage of Maria Braun, was released in 1979 and then, rather confusingly, Fassbinder named Lola (1981) as the third film in the trilogy before Veronika Voss was released in 1982. The films have no narrative connection but have thematic consistencies, with all three focusing on a particular woman in a post-war BRD during the ‘economic miracle’. All three of the stories were originated by Fassbinder but the screenplays were written by frequent collaborator Peter Märthesheimer and his then partner Pea Fröhlich.

Veronika Voss is loosely based on the ill-fated life of actress Sybille Schmitz and the titular lead is played by Rosel Zech. Set in Munich in 1955, the film finds Voss struggling to reclaim former glories and unable to win the kinds of roles she played whilst working for the UFA production company during the war. One night she bumps into sports journalist Robert Krohn (Hilmar Thate) who isn’t aware of her past. The pair strike up a romance, despite Krohn being in a relationship with girlfriend Henriette (Cornelia Froboess). Soon he realises that Voss is addicted to opiates that are being administered by a mysterious neurologist called Dr. Marianne Katz (Annemarie Düringer) who Voss believes is caring for her. When Krohn begins to investigate he realises that Katz is actually bleeding Voss of her finances and is keeping her doped up and under control.

The art on this one sheet is by Vincent Topazio and, although it doesn’t feature his unique signature, he is credited for it on the vinyl release of the film’s soundtrack. Very little is known about the artist and there’s barely any information about him online. He looks to have worked on only a handful of film posters, most of which were for independent/arthouse features. Perhaps his most famous poster is the one he worked on for Paul Verhoeven’s The 4th Man.

Adrian Curry highlighted some of Topazio’s work for his Movie Poster of the Week column on Mubi.com. Other titles include the sequel Zulu Dawn and the 1985 American drama Smooth Talk. Curry notes that he believes Topazio was working from the mid-1970s into the 1980s and also created art for magazine editorials. Emovieposter.com has a number of his posters in their archive. If anyone has any more details about him please get in touch.

This one sheet was printed by Janus films for their 2011 re-release of Jean-Luc Godard‘s celebrated 1967 film Weekend (or Le Week End). One of the most anarchic and surreal films ever committed to celluloid, Weekend is a satire which takes aim at, amongst other things, the bourgeois status and money-obsessed French middle-class. The story, such as there is one, focuses on a self-obsessed couple played by Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne who have plotted to murder her parents and collect their inheritance. They set off from their home in the city and travel into the French countryside where they come across all manner of scenes, including fatal car crashes and a (justifiably famous) sequence of a traffic jam which the audience watches them traverse with horns blaring the entire time. Society appears to be crumbling around them as they make their way to the small village where her parents live. Eventually, things take a turn for the deadly when they end up in the clutches of a band of hippie, cannibalistic revolutionaries.

This one sheet was created by the Vancouver-based designer Steve Chow who is a regular collaborator with Janus and its sister company The Criterion Collection (the film was released on disc soon after its cinema outing in 2011). Chow has worked on hundreds of posters, magazines, advertising elements and covers for home video releases of various films. Check out his official website to see a gallery of his work and a short biography about his career so far.

In 2011, the Criterion website featured a short interview with Chow on the creation of this poster and I’ve copied the detail here (in case that page disappears one day):

What was your inspiration for the new poster for Weekend?
That particular image really only works with all the elements intact—cropping was not doing us any favors—so we figured, Why not use it whole? It’s just that in order to do that, we had to turn it sideways. It was a natural choice—and it seemed to fit the film’s unpredictable, violent, and humorous tenor. It’s like, “WTF just happened? Is that a plane? A body? How did that car end up like that?” It’s kind of like the visual punch line to a joke that starts with “two materialistic bourgeois jerks go on a road trip . . .”

Where does your interest in Godard films come from?
Godard’s influence is everywhere—in contemporary advertising, commercials, music videos. You could be watching something that is “Godard” and not even realize it. (Just the other night, I saw a new Mexican film that riffed on Anna Karina’s back-of-the-head introduction in Vivre sa vie.) His 1960s works, in particular, still resonate with so much life and excitement. So daring, and so very, very cool, even decades later.

Do you have a particular approach to designing for them?
With all of these Godard posters, I pretty much tried to just get out of the way and let the image speak for itself, and in the end, the most intuitive options were successful. With Pierrot le fou and Vivre sa vie, the resonance of those particular images is strong; title treatments that are too heavy or that get too much attention wouldn’t help tell their stories. Similarly, for Weekend, we’d have a hard time creating an image or a collage that captured the crazy, chaotic energy and direction of the film as well as the one we ended up using. So, with regards to these three posters, if I never hear “Wow, that’s a killer title treatment!” I’ll consider that a success.

Chow also designed the Janus re-release one sheets for Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou and Vivre Sa Vie and both can be seen in this Mubi.com ‘Movie Poster of the Week’ article.

Legendary German film maker Werner Herzog wrote and directed this brilliant, stylish homage to the 1922 Dracula adaptation, ‘Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens’. F. W. Murnau‘s seminal silent classic was actually filmed without permission from Bram Stoker‘s estate and had a number of minor details changed in attempt to avoid infringing copyright. Their attempts were unsuccessful and Stoker’s widow filed a lawsuit that resulted in the film being withdrawn and most of the prints being destroyed. Luckily, a handful survived and the film was able to be properly restored and saved from total loss.

Frequent Herzog collaborator (and occasional adversary) Klaus Kinski stars as Count Dracula (changed from the Count Orlok of Murnau’s verison), the undead vampire who travels to Germany from Transylvania. He intends to prey upon Lucy (Isabelle Adjani), the wife of Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) from whom the Count purchased real-estate deeds before locking him in his castle. Jonathan manages to escape and heads home in hot pursuit of the evil vampire to save Lucy from an undead fate. Herzog’s version is particularly notable for the way it portrays the classic Count as a weary, unloved character who is struggling with the idea of immortality and is disgusted with the predatory side of himself. This was in stark contrast to many of the Dracula adaptations that had been made since Murnau’s original.

Unusually, the studio (20th Century Fox) requested that Herzog film each scene with dialogue twice (in German and English, spoken by the same actors) so that two versions of the film could be constructed with the idea that the English one would appeal more to Western audiences. Today most fans prefer the German version as the actors are clearly more comfortable speaking in their native language and the acting is thus more natural.

This Japanese poster features elements of the fantastic American one sheet, which was painted by David Palladini, and is one of the best posters of the 1970s, in my opinion. In the place of the illustration of Count Dracula is a striking image of the gorgeous Adjani and two smaller photos featuring the Harkers and Dracula.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

A rarely seen teaser one sheet for the theatrical release of the pilot of the original Battlestar Galactica TV series. Created by legendary producer Glen A. Larson, who would later go on to work on the likes of The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider, the decision was made by Universal Studios to cut the pilot down from its three hour running time and release it in cinemas to try and recoup some of the high production costs. It was first released in Canada, Australia and several European countries in 1978 and this poster dates from the domestic release in 1979. Universal would later repeat this idea with the Buck Rogers movie, also produced by Larson, in the same year.

Originally named Saga of a Star World, the pilot sets up the backstory of the 1,000 year war between a colony of humans living in a distant cosmos and the robotic race known as Cylons, who wish to wipe out the entire human race. The humans are betrayed by a traitor known as Baltar (John Colicos) who helps the Cylons launch a surprise attack during a supposed armistice between the two sides. The assault almost wipes out all 12 of the human colonies, with only the Galactaca surviving along with a bunch of smaller civilian ships. The fleet sets off on a journey across the galaxy in search of their long-lost sister civilisation, our planet Earth, with the Cylons in hot pursuit.

The original artwork was done by the late, legendary artist Ralph McQuarrie who was responsible for creating concept designs for the TV series. The site Sci-fi-o-Rama has an article that features several of his illustrations, including the image on this poster. It appears to have been redrawn (check the explosions, for example), but I’m going to give the artist credit to McQuarrie.

One of Roger Moore’s better outings as 007, For Your Eyes Only was intended to bring James Bond back down to earth with a more realistic and less sensational storyline following the lunacy of Moonraker. It marked the first time John Glen would helm a Bond film, having worked as an editor and second-unit director on three of the previous outings, and he would go on to direct the next four films in the series. The story sees the spy being sent to try and recover an ‘ATAC’ device capable of controlling the British Polaris submarine fleet, which is lost after a spy ship disguised as a trawler is sunk in neutral waters.

It becomes clear that the Soviets are also keen to get their hands on the device and Bond must discover who is aiding them, with suspicion falling on both Milos Columbo (Topol) and Aris Kristatos (Julian Glover). Bond also finds an ally in the form of Melina Havelock (the gorgeous Carole Bouquet) who is out for revenge after her parents are murdered by the same forces who retrieve the ATAC device. The film features several memorable chases and action sequences, including a climactic assault on a fortress on top of a sheer cliff. It also includes the infamous character of Bibi Dahl (Lynn-Holly Johnson) a gorgeous young ice-skating protégée who becomes infatuated with Bond, and in turn became the object of countless teenage boys’ fantasies, including yours truly.

This British quad features the ‘legs’ concept that was created by the American designer Bill Gold and was subsequently used for the film’s marketing campaign across the globe, including the US one sheet. Owing to the landscape format of the quad poster it was decided that a montage of scenes from the film should be added either side of the legs. The montage was designed by Eddie Paul at the British film marketing agency FEREF and the painting job was given to the talented illustrator Brian Bysouth, whose skill at accurately depicting vehicles, characters and dynamic action scenes was the perfect compliment for the design. The montage was also adapted (and somewhat crammed) onto an international one sheet used to market the film in countries such as Australia.

In 2012 I met and interviewed Brian Bysouth and this poster was discussed during our meeting:

One Bond poster you worked on is the quad for For Your Eyes Only. It had the Bill Gold designed element of the long legs, but you modified the montage when doing the finished illustration?
Eric Pulford created the U.K. poster design that was approved. The inclusion of the very iconic Bill Gold legs concept was a must in any design that was submitted, so I suppose the scope for fresh designs was limited. In my opinion Eric’s original montage was not his best work and, although I tried to re-arrange some of the elements, the reference material supplied was not very exciting and I think the surrounding montage looks rather ordinary.

A similar difficulty arose with the design Eric had done for The Bounty (1984). His atmospheric colour rough was exciting, but when I began to sketch out the finished painting I realised the perspective of the ship was flawed. Eric’s exciting random montage of characters had initially disguised the shortcoming. I spent a day redrawing the ship and rigging to ensure it was reasonably correct, and then moved the characters to try to improve the composition. I was pleased with the final painting but was never happy with the montage, which I really thought needed recomposing. I didn’t think a confrontation with Eric was in my best interest.

Some weeks later I asked for the return of my painting only to be told, ‘it could not be found’.  Obviously, a light-fingered person took a fancy to it. Much of my work has been lost to me in that way, including my teaser art for A View to a Kill. Presently I am engaged in monitoring Film Memorabilia auction sales in order to reclaim art being offered for sale that legally belongs to me. I am glad to have been successful in recovering quite a number of paintings.  One case involving poster art I did for 20th. Century Fox is still ongoing as I speak.
Note that the article also features an image of the original artwork that has differences in the layout and details in comparison to this final quad.

You have to love that tagline! From Indonesia comes this brazen rip-off homage to James Cameron’s original sci-fi classic, which not only rehashes most of the original’s premise but actually lifts entire shot sequences and even lines of dialogue, including the famous ‘come with me if you want to live’. Lady Terminator was apparently the product of a period of boom in the Indonesian economy that lasted from the early 1970s up until the 1990s and had a knock on effect the country’s cultural output, including the fledgling film industry. Eager directors filmed a number of low-budget exploitation features, often with western distribution in mind, and the results are a mish-mash of Hollywood tropes and Indonesian culture.

Arguably the most well-known of these films is this 1989 action/horror that features an admirably ludicrous plot blending the history of the legendary Indonesian spirit The Queen of the Southern Sea with a series of loosely connected action scenes featuring a possessed anthropology student on a murderous rampage. This page on Rotten Tomatoes does a better job at summarising the plot than I ever could:

In 1889, the vicious “Queen of the South Sea” collects men that she murders during sex, thanks to a magical eel that lives inside of her vagina and bites the penises off of those who can’t satisfy her lust. Finally, one man pleasures her long enough to reach inside and pull out the creature, which instantly turns into a dagger. Furious, the Queen vows that she’ll take her revenge on the man’s great-granddaughter, and goes into the sea to wait for one hundred years.

A century passes, and Tania, a plucky anthropologist, finds an ancient book on the legend of the Queen and decides to investigate. She charters a boat to take her to the area where the Queen is believed to have disappeared, but while skindiving, a tidal wave destroys the vessel and Tania suddenly finds herself tied to a bed in a mysterious room. When a mystical eel enters her, she is possessed by the spirit of the bloodthirsty Queen. After killing a pair of drunken punks in a lascivious manner, she sees the image of Erika, a pop singer, on television and recognizes her as the descendant of the man the Queen vowed revenge on a century before.

Just…wow! Check out the trailer to get a glimpse at this insanity. Lady Terminator was played by the London-born model Barbara Anne Constable who grew up in Australia and landed the role in Lady Terminator whilst visiting Hong Kong. It ended up being her only film role and there’s a great interview with her on this website.

Polish director Andrzej Zulawski‘s Possession is a definite marmite film; you’ll either love it or totally detest it. I’m firmly in the former camp but it’s not hard to see why it might rankle with certain viewers. A multinational production, the film was shot in West Berlin (whilst The Wall was still standing), financed largely by French money and stars Kiwi actor Sam Neill alongside the stunning French actress Isabelle Adjani. Possession begins as what seems like a straightforward relationship drama, depicting the breakdown of the marriage between husband and wife Mark (Neill) and Anna (Adjani) as it gets increasingly fraught. The audience witnesses several scenes of extreme shrieking, hysteria and mental breakdown from both parties as Mark comes to terms with his wife’s infidelity.

It’s when Mark decides to investigate who his wife has been seeing that the film takes a turn for the surreal and horrific. At first he discovers that she had been having an affair with a new-age sleaze-ball called Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) but after confronting him at his house they both realise that Anna has also been meeting a mysterious third party. Mark then hires a private detective to try and discover where his wife disappears to when she’s not at their apartment. As alluded to with this poster’s tagline, the audience soon discovers that what Anna is tending to in a dingy apartment in the Turkish district of Berlin is not altogether human. When the detective (and later his lover) go missing, both Heinrich and Mark uncover the horrifying truth. I won’t spoil the reveal except to say that Italian special effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi (of ‘Close Encounters…’ and ‘E.T.’ fame) was involved in the creation of several versions of a slimy, tentacled creature.

Isabelle Adjani won the best actress prize at Cannes for her dual performance as the hysterical, unhinged Anna and the ‘is she real-or-not?’ Helen, a kind and gentle teacher who works at the school where the couple’s son Bob is a pupil. As Anna, the actress turns everything up to 11 and at times the shrieking is almost unbearable. In perhaps the most infamous sequence in the film, the so-called ‘miscarriage’ scene, she has a full-on orgiastic meltdown in a dingy German subway that culminates with her oozing blood and a white liquid from her face and neck. Neill also gives an over-the-top performance throughout and it’s the level of hysteria that likely sees many viewers heading for the remote (or cinema exit if they were in attendance back in 1981).

For reasons which aren’t really clear, the film was embroiled in the Video Nasties debacle here in the UK and was banned outright in 1983, but not before having it’s cinema debut thanks to New Realm distributors two years earlier. It’s inclusion on the DPPs list is a complete mystery as it’s nowhere near as gruesome or brutal as some of the other titles on there and is unquestionably one of the best titles to fall foul of the whole thing.

This very scarce original UK quad was created by the brilliant British designer and artist Tom Chantrell whose dynamic and colourful designs 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. The artwork is unquestionably based on the French poster artwork that was painted by the Polish artist Barbara Baranowska (AKA ‘Basha’). I’ve been unable to discover much about the artist, other than a short biography on the Horse Hospital website. It seems that her work for Possession is the poster for which she is most well-known.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s dystopian science-fiction epic World on a Wire (Welt am Dracht) was one of 40 films that he directed during his prolific career before his untimely death at the age of 37 (in 1982). Considered a pioneer of the New German Cinema movement, Fassbinder originally prepared World on a Wire, his only sci-fi story, for German television as a two-part miniseries. Based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by the American author Daniel F. Galouye, the film is set in an alternative-reality 1970s in which a supercomputer built by the cybernetics & future science institute (IKZ), and known as the Simulacron, is hosting an advanced simulation program of an artificial world. 9000 so-called ‘identity units’ are living as human beings who are totally unaware that their world is entirely artificial with their every move tracked and followed by the computer in order to help (it is implied) large multinational companies with an advanced form of marketing research.

When the technical director of the program dies in a mysterious incident, his replacement Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) must unravel the mystery of his demise whilst also investigating the sudden disappearance of the institute’s security adviser, Günther Lause. When Stiller’s colleagues claim to have no recollection of Lause and one of the simulated humans commits suicide, he descends into a twisting conspiracy that leads him to question his very existence. To say the film’s themes were prescient would be an understatement, with most web users readily submitting themselves to online tracking cookies (a form of market research) by the likes of Google, and its influence of films like 1999s The Matrix and even James Cameron’s Avatar cannot be denied.

After airing on German television World on a Wire practically disappeared from reach, with bootleg VHS copies of the original broadcasts being the only way fans could watch it. In 2010 the American distributor Janus Films aided in a digital restoration and  US cinema release of the film, with an eventual 2011 blu-ray release on their Criterion label. The Nashville-based designer and artist Sam Smith (AKA Sam’s Myth) was asked to put together a poster for the cinema release, which would also end up being used for the blu-ray cover. In June 2013 I interviewed Sam and the resultant article can be read here. We discussed the World on a Wire poster and this is the excerpt from the interview:

The World on a Wire cover, which was printed as a poster too, is a fantastic design that had the film’s titles as it’s starting point. The final poster came about thanks to the client suggesting a simple iconic image would be better suited for the film. Can you talk about that project and what it meant to you?
Janus entrusted me with this poster design after we did House and Kuroneko together. I remember being very concerned with topping my previous work and trying to come up with my best poster yet. I was also pursuing a very misguided impulse to try to create something visually complex that could compete with what Mondo artists like Tyler Stout and Ken Taylor were doing. I built some comps around this idea, using my translated and modified version of Fassbinder’s original title treatment as a framing device.

Ultimately Janus suggested that it would be great to see me try something simple and iconic, and they referred to two designs I did for Before Sunrise and Before Sunset where a more minimal arrangement of shape and color suggested something deeply about the film and its themes. This is kind of feedback designers dream about at night! I threw two overlapping circles down and studied them as symbol of the multiple worlds/realities in the film. From there, this poster came together quite quickly too.

————

Sam’s blog features an excellent ‘process’ post on the making of the poster that I strongly urge you to check out.

This is the B2 poster for the Japanese release of Godzilla vs. Megaguirus which was the 24th film in the long-running franchise featuring the King of the Kaiju (giant monsters). The film was also the second release in the third generation of Godzilla films (known as the Millennium Series), which are all standalone (with the exception of Godzilla: Tokyo SOS) and were mooted as ‘alternative universe’ stories. It ended up as the least financially successful film in the Millennium series, with the special effects director Kenji Suzuki apparently taking the blame. Referencing the first film, the story sets up a universe in Godzilla attacks the first Japanese nuclear power plant in 1966 which led to the formation of a section of the Japanese Self Defence Force called G-Graspers, dedicated to fighting Godzilla.

After nuclear energy is replaced by ‘plasma energy’ in 1996 it is hoped that the kaiju will no longer attack Japanese cities in search of nuclear energy, but the plan fails and plasma energy is also eventually outlawed. Later in 2001 an experimental satellite weapon called the Dimension Tide is fired and opens up a wormhole through which a prehistoric dragonfly appears, lays an egg and disappears back through the wormhole. A young boy discovers the egg and takes it with him when he moves to Tokyo, but when the egg starts oozing a strange liquid the boy throws it into the sewers. The egg is actually hundreds of smaller eggs which start to grow on contact with water and evolve into large dragonfly larvae which soon hatch and become adult Meganulon.

When Godzilla attacks Tokyo once more, the dragonflies are attracted to his energy and engage him in battle, but they are no match for the kaiju’s power and are almost all obliterated. Those that survive return to the sewers and, with an amount of energy taken from Godzilla, they inject a large cocoon that hatches as Megaguirus, queen of the Meganulon, and she immediately heads towards Godzilla, ready for an epic showdown.

The artwork on this poster is by Noriyoshi Ohrai, my favourite Japanese artist and certainly in my top five greatest film poster illustrators of all time. He’s responsible for a number of other posters in the Godzilla franchise, some of which can be seen here. He also worked on a number of Star Wars related posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film. In March 2014 a retrospective exhibition was held in Japan of Ohrai’s work and I made the trip over to Miyazaki to see the exhibition. I’m very glad I did as it featured most of his original artwork and a whole array of posters and book covers. A full report will follow soon.

The posters I’ve managed to collect by Noriyoshi Ohrai can be seen by clicking here.

This is the B1 poster for the Japanese release of Godzilla vs. Megaguirus which was the 24th film in the long-running franchise featuring the King of the Kaiju (giant monsters). The film was also the second release in the third generation of Godzilla films (known as the Millennium Series), which are all standalone (with the exception of Godzilla: Tokyo SOS) and were mooted as ‘alternative universe’ stories. It ended up as the least financially successful film in the Millennium series, with the special effects director Kenji Suzuki apparently taking the blame. Referencing the first film, the story sets up a universe in Godzilla attacks the first Japanese nuclear power plant in 1966 which led to the formation of a section of the Japanese Self Defence Force called G-Graspers, dedicated to fighting Godzilla.

After nuclear energy is replaced by ‘plasma energy’ in 1996 it is hoped that the kaiju will no longer attack Japanese cities in search of nuclear energy, but the plan fails and plasma energy is also eventually outlawed. Later in 2001 an experimental satellite weapon called the Dimension Tide is fired and opens up a wormhole through which a prehistoric dragonfly appears, lays an egg and disappears back through the wormhole. A young boy discovers the egg and takes it with him when he moves to Tokyo, but when the egg starts oozing a strange liquid the boy throws it into the sewers. The egg is actually hundreds of smaller eggs which start to grow on contact with water and evolve into large dragonfly larvae which soon hatch and become adult Meganulon.

When Godzilla attacks Tokyo once more, the dragonflies are attracted to his energy and engage him in battle, but they are no match for the kaiju’s power and are almost all obliterated. Those that survive return to the sewers and, with an amount of energy taken from Godzilla, they inject a large cocoon that hatches as Megaguirus, queen of the Meganulon, and she immediately heads towards Godzilla, ready for an epic showdown.

The artwork on this poster is by Noriyoshi Ohrai, my favourite Japanese artist and certainly in my top five greatest film poster illustrators of all time. He’s responsible for a number of other posters in the Godzilla franchise, some of which can be seen here. He also worked on a number of Star Wars related posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film. In March 2014 a retrospective exhibition was held in Japan of Ohrai’s work and I made the trip over to Miyazaki to see the exhibition. I’m very glad I did as it featured most of his original artwork and a whole array of posters and book covers. A full report will follow soon.

The posters I’ve managed to collect by Noriyoshi Ohrai can be seen by clicking here.

A rare mix of photography and artwork features on this Japanese B2 for the release of (what would later be re-titled) The Streetfighter’s Last Revenge. The final entry in a trilogy of films starring legendary Japanese martial artist Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba, the film followed the original The Streetfighter and Return of the Street Fighter which were all produced in one year (1974). The original film was Chiba’s breakout international hit and was released in the USA and elsewhere in 1974, but this sequel would have to wait 5 years before it was given a cinema release in the States. When it did finally arrive it was significantly altered and had large amounts of violence removed.

The reason for the delayed release is likely to do with the drop in quality over the first two entries as this review (and several others) on IMDb testifies:

‘If you love THE STREET FIGHTER (and you probably do if you looked up this entry) don’t even bother with this final entry in the series. This one sucks out loud, and has only one decent fight scene which lasts for about a minute. Our hero now has taken on a more “MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE”-type persona since he now is a master of disguise (???). Skip this.’

This film and the others in the trilogy are now in the public domain (so can be streamed from multiple sources online). Director Quentin Tarantino is a big Chiba fan and these are the films that the character of Clarence (Christian Slater) is watching in a cinema triple-bill when he first meets Alabama (Patricia Arquette) in Tony Scott’s True Romance (Tarantino wrote the script).

I’ve struggled to find out who is responsible for the artwork on this poster so if anyone has an idea please get in touch. The US poster uses the same art and photograph, which was almost never the case, but I suspect that the distributor (New Line) was trying to save money by reusing as much as possible.

This is an incredibly scarce B0 poster that was printed to promote the 2004 DVD release of Katsuhiro Otomo‘s 2004 anime, Steamboy. It features two illustrations of the main character James Ray Steam by the director himself. The film was Otomo’s first full-length anime to be released since the landmark Akira in 1988. Otomo had been busy in the intervening years, writing and illustrating several manga and contributing to other films, including the 1995 anthology Memories as well as the screenplay for the 2001 anime Metropolis. Steamboy was over 10 years in preparation and was apparently one the most expensive anime movies made at that point. The film has a steampunk theme and is set in an alternate 19th Century Britain.

The poster was designed by Toshiaki Uesugi, a graphic designer and musician who has regularly collaborated with Otomo, and who is also known as Mach55Go! for his musical work. Uesugi’s official site is here and is significantly out of date, but this page features a list of his work, which includes other Otomo collaborations as well as his work on anime like Cowboy Bebop and Macross.

During a 2014 trip to Japan I was lucky enough to be able to visit an exhibition that was dedicated to Otomo’s poster design and I first saw this poster there along with the ultra scarce Akira B0 DVD release poster that can be seen on Film on Paper here. I assumed I would never get the chance to add the Akira B0 to my collection but almost a year later the poster appeared on Yahoo auctions Japan and I was lucky to win the auction with the help of a Japanese friend. This Steamboy poster came from the same seller. The white sticker on the bottom right corner was placed there in 2004 by the company that controls advertising on the Tokyo Metro and details when it should be taken down from display. Take a look at the last picture which displays some hand-stamped marks found on the back side of the poster.

During a 2012 visit to Tokyo I went to a retrospective exhibition of Otomo’s work called Genga (A Japanese animation term for keyframes, literally ‘original pictures’), which featured hundreds of pieces of his artwork and the original hand-drawn pages for the Akira manga. I was also able to wear Kaneda’s jacket and sit on the legendary red bike!

This is the original Thai poster for the release of the fourth entry in the ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ franchise (subtitled The Dream Master). The film marked a big break for Finnish director Renny Harlin who admitted to heavily petitioning the film’s producer, and founder of New Line Cinema, Robert (Bob) Shaye for the job. Harlin had previously helmed a couple of low-budget flicks (Born American and Prison) but the box-office success of this film led to him being given the job of directing the Die Hard sequel in 1990. Sadly, his career stalled towards the end of that decade following a series of box-office bombs that included Cliffhanger and Cutthroat Island.

The fourth film followed on from one of the best entries in the franchise, 1987’s Dream Warriors, which was a marked improvement over the first sequel. This was thanks in part to the involvement of the first film’s Wes Craven, who had been absent from Part 2.

The Dream Master picks up a few months after the events of the third film and features characters that had last been seen in a mental hospital, but are now living at home and seemingly back to normal. Kirsten, previously played by Patricia Arquette and here by Tuesday Knight, has the ability to bring others into her dreams. When she senses Freddy is trying to return after being banished to hell at the end of Part 3, she contacts Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey (Rodney Eastman) to warn them not to dream about Freddy in case it causes his return.

Unfortunately, Kincaid fails to heed Kirsten’s warning and he falls asleep, dreaming of the car junkyard where Freddy’s bones were previously consecrated with holy water. His dog urinates on Freddy’s bones and this, for some bizarre reason, causes his resurrection whereupon he swiftly kills Kincaid. Freddy begins to terrorize Kirsten and her group of school friends and she realises she needs to pass on her powers to Alice before she too is killed. Freddy’s plan was to use Kirsten to move onto a new set of kids after he’s killed the original group (all children of the parents who murdered him before the events of the first film) and together this new gang must try to put an end to his nefarious plans once and for all.

This Thai poster was painted by Tongdee Panumas (he signs his posters with just his first name) who was an incredibly prolific film poster artist during the 70s, 80s and 90s. I’ve been unable to find out much about him, other than that he was born in 1947, so if anyone has any more details please get in touch.

Note that it’s based on the artwork from the US one sheet that was painted by Matthew Peak (son of Bob), which can be seen here. Tongdee repainted the entire thing and added several new figures to create more of a montage.

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

This is the scarce, large-size poster for the Thai release of the first film in what would become known as the Rambo series, First Blood. Helmed by the Canadian director Ted Kotcheff, the film was co-written by the film’s star Sylvester Stallone. Stallone would eventually become best known for two series that between them saw 11 films released over a 40 year period; the Rocky boxing saga and Rambo. The first Rocky film had been met with critical and commercial success when it was released in 1976. A sequel followed three years later and Stallone had Rocky III in cinemas at the same time as First Blood (1982). The latter cemented the actor as a box-office behemoth and he became one of the 1980’s action megastars, alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis.

First Blood started life as a 1972 novel by author David Morrell which had its rights optioned by Columbia Pictures almost immediately. The project then spent the next decade bouncing between studios, producers and directors. Eventually Stallone was offered the lead role and Ted Kotcheff agreed to direct for the legendary producers Mario Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna of Carolco Pictures.

John J. Rambo (Stallone) is a former US Special Forces soldier who has returned from Vietnam still haunted and disoriented by his experiences there. He decides to pay a visit to an ex-forces friend by hitchhiking across the country. When he arrives he discovers that his pal died soon after returning from the war due to exposure to Agent Orange. Rambo continues his journey on foot and eventually arrives in the small town of Hope, Washington. There he is confronted and abused by the local sheriff known as Teasle (Brian Dennehy) who drives Rambo out of town and tells him not to return.

Deciding to defy the orders, Rambo is soon arrested by Teasle for a series of bogus charges. Whilst in detention and being sadistically attacked by the other corrupt sheriffs, Rambo has flashbacks to being a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. Fearing for his life, he fights his way out of the jail. There then follows a cat and mouse chase as he flees into the nearby forest, pursued by Teasle and a gang of his men. He manages to evade and outwit the sheriffs and eventually his former commanding officer Trautman (an excellent Richard Crenna) arrives in Hope to help with the situation. Trautman warns the lawmen that Rambo will not come quietly and urges them not to corner him. When they fail to heed his warning, a series of violent encounters ends with Rambo pitched against Teasle in a night-time confrontation.

The film was a huge box-office success on its release, although film critics were less than impressed at the time. It would later be given a critical reappraisal and quickly gained cult status once it was released on home video. Two sequels were released in the 1980s but these were much more gung-ho and violent than the original. It’s often forgotten how relatively tame the first Rambo film is compared to the three sequels, particularly the later revival film, Rambo (2008).

This is one of three Thai posters that exist for First Blood. At least one of them is for a later re-release but I believe this poster, which is the size of a US one-sheet, was printed for the original cinema release in Thailand. The main figure of Rambo with the giant machine gun is based on the artwork by Drew Struzan that was used on the American one sheet and British quad. It has been repainted by Tongdee and the rest of the poster is of the artist’s own creation.

Tongdee Panumas was an incredibly prolific film poster artist during the 70s, 80s and 90s. I’ve been unable to find out much about him, other than that he was born in 1947, so if anyone has any more details please get in touch.