Peter Fonda and Warren Oates are pursued across Texas by a satanist cult who they witness apparently murdering a woman in a sacrificial ritual in Race with the Devil. Following on from the 1974 hit Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, in which Fonda played a bumbling criminal being hunted by a relentless police force, this film was a mix of the popular car chase genre (Vanishing Point, Gone in 60 Seconds etc) and Hollywood’s interest in films of an occult nature that was burgeoning following the success of The Exorcist (1973). Fonda and Oates play friends who head off on a vacation in an RV with their wives, but when the group pull off the main road and find a remote spot to camp for the night they unwittingly do so near an occult shrine at which the aforementioned sacrifice happens.

When the group are spotted by the cult their RV is attacked by masked men before they manage to escape to a nearby town. The local sheriff calms the group down and drives the men out to the spot where they witnessed the ritual,  only to discover that the cult have removed (almost) all evidence of their deed. The group decide to carry on with their holiday but it soon becomes clear that the satanists aren’t about to give up their pursuit and that not everyone they meet along the way is who they appear to be. The film has the requisite tension to make it an enjoyable watch and features several well staged car chase scenes, with some very impressive stunt work. The film also features a classic freeze-frame shot at the end.

This US 30×40 boasts excellent explosive artwork and I’ve been frustrated in my attempts to identify the artist, but I suspect it could be the work of John Solie. The American artist usually signs his artwork and this poster features no such signature, but the artwork is certainly rendered in a similar style to his. I intend to contact the artist to see if this poster can be attributed to him. Unusually the artwork itself is actually copyrighted by the studio (see picture 17).

Featuring a cognitive illusion so overt it’s a wonder that the artist didn’t paint Roger Daltrey with one eye winking, this is the US 30×40 poster for the release of the late, great British director Ken Russell‘s resolutely bonkers biography of the Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt. The film is (very) loosely based on a biography written by one of Liszt’s mistresses and, rather than follow a traditional linear narrative, tells the story of his life through a series of increasingly bizarre sequences. It’s a typically flamboyant, vulgar and controversial effort from Russell, who manages to cram in adultery, violence, vampires, Nazis, a mechanical viking, a ten-foot phallus and Ringo Starr as The Pope. Lisztomania arguably shows the director at his most self-indulgent but it definitely has to be seen to be believed.

In a cinematic release situation not often repeated, Russell had also helmed Tommy, a film based on The Who’s 1969 rock-opera album of the same name, which also had Roger Daltrey as the lead and was released earlier in 1975. This explains the inclusion of the terribly clunky ‘it out-Tommys “Tommy”‘ in the top tagline – Tommy was released in March and Lisztomania in November.

The phallic imagery on this 30×40 poster directly references a hallucination sequence in the film in which Listz’s libido is stroked to such an extent that he grows a ten-foot long erection, which is then celebrated by a horde of lusty maidens before being directed to a nearby guillotine – talk about pleasure and pain! Despite extensive searches, I’ve been unable to identify the artist responsible so if you have any ideas please get in touch. I’m a big fan of the logo design too.

The taglines on this US 30×40 left cinema-goers in no doubt as to the kind of film they were in for with Hammer Films‘ 1972 horror Vampire Circus. Released at a time when the popularity of British gothic horror tales was on the wane, particularly when compared against the more explicit, contemporary horrors coming out of Hollywood (Rosemary’s Baby and later The Exorcist), the film nevertheless managed to stand out from a glut of other films produced by the studio around the same time. A decent script, typically excellent production design and a raft of quality British thespians all help to make Vampire Circus one of the more memorable films to be produced by the House of Horror before its first demise picked up pace a couple of years later

Set in a small village in the studio’s customary ‘mittel-Europe’ sometime in the 19th century, a lengthy pre-credits sequence shows a young girl being led into the castle of vampire Count Mitterhaus by Anna (Domini Blythe), the wife of local schoolmaster Albert Müller (Laurence Payne). Soon after the girl is murdered by the vampire, a group of villagers led by Müller storm the castle, stake the Count and burn the castle to the ground. Anna manages to drag the dying vampire to the crypt beneath the castle and before he perishes he curses the villagers and promises that their children will die to give him back his life. Fast-forward fifteen years, the village is beset by a plague and blockaded by the authorities with the miserable villagers fearing that this is the Count’s doing.

One day the eponymous travelling troupe arrives, having apparently snuck past the blockades, led by a mysterious gypsy woman (Adrienne Corri) and containing a ragtag bunch of performers, including a mischievous clown dwarf, a set of flying twins, an erotic tiger dancer (as depicted on this poster) and Emil, a shape-shifting artiste. At first the villagers are happy to be entertained by the circus as it gives them a reprieve from their misery, but it soon becomes clear that the gang have an ulterior motive for being there. Before long the Count’s dying promise is being kept by Emil, who it turns out is a ‘kinsman’ of Mitterhaus, and the leaders of the village must battle to try to stop the murder of their children and the resurrection of the cursed Count. It’s a well-paced film and certainly a stand-out feature in Hammer’s output of the early 1970s, only let down by some dodgy special effects, which can be explained by a curtailed production period and the dwindling budgets of the time.

I’m unsure who is responsible for the artwork on this American poster, which depicts Emil in all his fang-baring glory, so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

This is the final poster for the German release of John Carpenter’s sci-fi classic Escape From New York, released as Die Klapper-Schlange (Rattlesnake). I’d have a hard time choosing my favourite of the three (fictional) characters Carpenter and Kurt Russell created together; R.J. MacReady (The Thing), Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China) and Snake Plissken (EFNY). The latter is the gruff former war hero and convicted bank robber who is sent onto the island of Manhattan of an alternative 1997, which has been sealed-off as a lawless prison, in search of the American President whose plane crashed there after a terrorist attack. He’s arguably the coolest of the three and is a character much imitated in other lesser films featuring a reluctant hero.

The artwork featured is unique to this poster and I’m unsure who is responsible for it, but I’m assuming it was painted by a German artist. If anyone has any clues please get in touch.

I also have the German teaser poster in the collection and that can be viewed here.

The rest of the John Carpenter posters I’ve collected can be seen by clicking here.

This is the US 30×40 poster for the release of Wattstax, the documentary dubbed ‘the African American Woodstock’ that was put together by Mel Stuart, a prolific director and producer who is perhaps best known for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). The concert was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots that had seen the worst social unrest in the city’s history. It was organised by Memphis’ Stax Records (hence the name) and featured performances from many of the top black artists of the time, including Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, The Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas and Kim Weston.

Mel Stuart was reportedly unhappy with the quality of a lot of the concert footage and decided to intersperse the music with interviews and stand-up footage of the likes of Richard Pryor, Ted Lange and other African American comedians and actors who spoke about their experience of being black in America at the time.

The concert ends with Isaac Hayes performing the hit music he recorded for the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft, the poster of which is clearly referenced with the title treatment on this one for Wattstax.

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

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

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

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

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

A creepy slice of horror from Tobe Hooper, the man responsible for the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre (as noted on this poster), The Funhouse features a menacing atmosphere helped by great production design, solid performances from a number of character actors and a genuinely ghoulish killer. The story sees a quartet of teenage friends; Amy (Elizabeth Berridge), her boyfriend Buzz (Cooper Huckabee), her best friend Liz (Largo Woodruff) and Liz’s boyfriend Richie (Miles Chapin), visit a traveling carnival where they smoke marijuana, sneak into an over-21 strip show and interact with the carnies who run the shows. Richie dares the group to spend the night in the The Funhouse, an indoor ride on rails (often called a ghost train in the UK), and the girls reluctantly agree to hide until the park clears of people.

After sneaking into the depths of the ride the group inadvertently witness the mute, mask-wearing ride operator murder Madame Zena (Sylvia Miles), the fortune teller who also moonlights as a prostitute. When the ride’s barker Conrad (Kevin Conway) discovers what has happened it is revealed that he is the father of the murderous ride operator, actually called Gunther, and when Conrad admonishes him he knocks the mask off revealing a hideous freak underneath. Conrad realises that the crime has been witnessed by the kids and he unleashes Gunther to track them down. The rest of the film sees the teenagers trying to outwit the murderous carnies and escape The Funhouse alive. The make-up for Gunther is incredibly effective and he surely ranks up their as one of the best horror movie bad guys.

This US one sheet features the jaw of Gunther and is supposed to be something of a parody of the classic one sheet for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (the bright red lips). I’m not certain whether it’s actually painted or is a photographic image, although there has definitely been some additional touch-up work if it’s the latter. If anyone knows for sure please get in touch.

After John Carpenter’s original horror classic Halloween made over $70 million at the global box-office on a budget of $325k – earnings equivalent to $250 million adjusted for ticket price inflation – it was only a matter of time before a sequel was put into production. Carpenter passed on the chance to direct Halloween II, but offered to both produce and write the screenplay (and apparently even direct a few scenes) and the film was put into production with a significantly increased budget of $2.5 million. A relatively unknown director called Rick Rosenthal was offered the job and filming got underway with a targeted release date of Halloween 1981.

This is one of those sequels that picks up immediately after the events at the end of the previous film and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is being loaded into an ambulance having survived the attack by Michael Myers who was shot by Dr Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) before escaping into the night. We follow Myers as he stalks the neighbourhood, murdering an unlucky teenager as he searches for the whereabouts of Laurie. Dr Loomis and the Haddonfield police desperately hunt the killer as the true extent of his actions in the previous film come to light. Meanwhile, Laurie arrives at the town’s hospital and soon falls into a catatonic state thanks to the shock of her ordeal. When Michael learns of her whereabouts after overhearing a news broadcast he heads towards the hospital and the carnage begins again.

Rosenthal is definitely no Carpenter but it’s still a strong horror film, which has several creepy moments despite upping the body count and leaning towards quick, gross-out murders rather than tense, drawn-out pursuit sequences. It’s interesting to see the aftermath of the events in the first film and the hospital makes for an excellent location for Myers to stalk his prey. At the time, the explosive ending seemed to draw a line under the story of Michael Myers and, infamously, Halloween III made no mention of him, but when that film was something of a box-office flop the producers of the next sequel brought the man in the mask back from the dead.

Before the Governator, before The Terminator and before Conan, Arnold Schwarzenegger was given his Hollywood break in 1970 with the release of Hercules in New York. The Austrian Oak was only 22 at the time the film was produced and apparently secured the part after his agent told the producers that the budding thespian had ‘stage’ experience, which was true in the sense that he’d spent a few years on stages at body building competitions, but was woefully unprepared for a full-length feature.

The plot, if you can call it that, sees Schwarzenegger, credited as Arnold Strong ‘Mr Universe’, play the titular son of the Greek god Zeus who, bored with life on Mount Olympus (actually just a location in New York – you can hear traffic in the background during the scene) tells his father he wishes to leave. An angry Zeus throws a thunderbolt at Hercules who then falls into the ocean on earth and is picked up by a freighter heading for The Big Apple. After a series of awkward encounters with New Yorkers, Hercules is befriended by strange little character called Pretzie (hilariously overacted by Arnold Stang) who helps him to acclimatise to life in the city and then later gets him involved in professional wrestling. After witnessing Hercules’ antics, Zeus attempts to return his son Mount Olympus and when this fails he orders the angel Nemesis to consign him to the infernal regions ruled over by Pluto. Nemesis instead poisons Hercules to strip him of his divinity, and further complications involving gangsters and a strongman competition see Hercules put in mortal danger.

It’s a breathtakingly terrible film, with across the board woeful acting, super cheap production design and a hilariously poor script. The film was trashed by critics and sank at the box office, and it would be four years before Arnold surfaced again as an uncredited hoodlum in The Long Goodbye. Schwarzenegger’s Austrian accent, now infamous, was then seen as a liability and the first release of the film saw all of his lines dubbed by an American actor. Later releases of the film would reinstate Arnie’s real accent and the results are superb. Check out this ‘Top 10 dumb moments in Hercules in New York’ video for a taster and witness the scene where Arnie fights a bear in Central Park (you can see the bear costume splitting apart at the back).

This is the one sheet for the 1983 re-release of the film, which saw the ‘in New York’ part of the title dropped for some reason. That same year the Italian director Luigi Cozzi released a film also called Hercules with Lou Ferrigno taking the title role, which is almost as terrible but managed to spawn a sequel. I’m unsure who is responsible for the artwork so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

Artist Noriyoshi Ohrai provides another great illustration on this Japanese poster for the release of Godzilla vs Destroyah, which was the 22nd film in the series featuring the King of the Kaiju (giant monsters). The film was also the final release in the second generation of Godzilla films, which were part of the Heisei era of Japanese monster movies (daikaiju eiga). The eras are named after the Japanese emperor at the time, so the first generation of Godzilla films were part of the Shōwa era.

Prior to release the production company Toho announced that this film would see the death of this incarnation of the legendary kaiju in order to make way for an American version of Godzilla (a film that was eventually released in 1998 to critical derision). The film begins with Miki Saegusa (Megumi Odaka), the psychic who has has previously used her powers to communicate with Godzilla, discovering that his home on Birth Island has been completely destroyed by an unknown force. Sometime later Godzilla appears near Tokyo covered in glowing, red hot rashes and the Japan Self Defense Force instructs a scientist to investigate what’s causing his condition.

It is soon discovered that Godzilla’s heart, which is effectively a nuclear reactor, is going into meltdown and once it reaches 1200 degrees Celsius it will explode with the force of 1000 nuclear bombs. The JSDF launch the flying attack fortress Super X-III to try to keep control of the situation. Meanwhile, scientists have developed a new formula for the ‘Oxygen Destroyer’ weapon that was originally created by Dr. Serizawa back in 1954 (the original Godzilla film) but fears over its side effects are realised when a number of mutated creatures are found to have been infected by the formula and are growing at an alarming rate. Quickly they evolve into crab-like creatures that start attacking Japan and have several skirmishes with the JSDF who dub the eventual combined creature ‘Destroyah’. Godzilla Junior reappears, greatly resembling his father, and the stage is set for several showdowns between Destroyah and the two Godzillas whilst scientists race to try and prevent a meltdown disaster.

This film features several calls back to the original 1954 Godzilla, including a cameo by Momoko Kôchi who played Emiko Yamane in the original film. This bit of trivia on IMDb hints at an early planned version of the final Heisei era Godzilla film:

An original idea for this movie had Godzilla fighting the original 1954 Godzilla in ghost form. The project, “Godzilla VS Ghost Godzilla”, was scrapped because the producers thought Godzilla didn’t need to fight a clone version of himself for three movies in a row, following Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla(1993) and Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla (1994).

The artwork on the poster is by the late Noriyoshi Ohrai who was something of an enigma, even in his native Japan. Ohrai painted a poster for each of the Heisei era of Godzilla films, which were always accompanied by a photographic-style poster. He’s responsible for a number of Star Wars posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film and the brilliant design for The Empire Strikes Back.

The other Ohrai posters I’ve added to the site so far can be seen by clicking here.

It’s hard to believe that it’s celebrating its 20th anniversary this year but The Nightmare Before Christmas has lost none of its magic and is a film that I could happily re-watch year after year. The combination of Tim Burton‘s storytelling and character design, with Henry Selick‘s direction and Danny Elfman‘s brilliant songs (and voice) make for one of the best animated films ever made. The story has its origins from the time when Tim Burton was working at Disney as an animator and had just completed the short film Vincent in 1982. After writing a short poem with the same title, Burton played around the idea of adapting it as a television special and a book, but eventually Disney agreed to help him produce it as a short film. 

After meeting Selick, a fellow animator at the same studio, he came close to realising his original vision before development stalled, apparently after Disney felt the project was ‘too weird’. Several years passed which saw Burton strike box-office gold with Beetlejuice and Batman, before he discovered that Disney still owned the rights to the film. He and Selick committed to the idea of developing the project into a feature length animation and because of commitments to directing Batman Returns (1992) it was agreed that the latter would direct.

Utilising 20 sound stages and 120 animators, Selick set about bringing to life the story of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, and organiser of Halloweentown’s annual party. Fed up of the same routine year after year, Jack is walking in the forest and discovers a series of doors leading to other holiday-based worlds. Upon entering the Christmas door Jack is enchanted by everything he sees and vows to take on the role of Santa for the next Christmas day. Each member of Halloweentown is given a task to prepare for the big event, but their penchant for all things ghoulish isn’t compatible with the jollity of Christmas and Jack’s dream is in danger of unravelling completely.

The quality of the stop-motion animation and character design is first-rate and Elfman’s songs are unforgettably great. The Nightmare Before Christmas has a legion of fans and a 3D re-release occurred in 2006 which further increased its popularity, and a seemingly endless stream of merchandise has been released over the past two decades.

This is the illustration style British quad that was printed for the original release of the film and there is also another quad which I’ve dubbed the photo style (photo in the sense that it’s a posed still from the film) and that can be seen here. I’m unsure who’s responsible for this artwork so please get in touch if you have an idea.

A man versus giant killer fish film that was released two years after the original summer blockbuster Jaws, Orca was always going to be compared to Spielberg’s classic even if its lead actor, the late Richard Harris, was apparently angered by the links; ‘I get really offended when people make the comparison’, he is quoted as saying at the time of release. The late Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis was determined to one-up the spectacle of Jaws and tasked the screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni to “find a fish tougher and more terrible than the great white”, which led them to the killer whale and production on ‘Orca’ began.

Harris plays Nolan, the Irish captain of a fishing boat operating in the waters off the coast of northern Canada who hears of a lucrative contract being offered for the live capture of a killer whale and hopes the bounty will pay off the mortgage on his boat. After Nolan and his crew accidentally spear a pregnant female killer whale they drag it onto the ship where it miscarries, and almost dies, before the male (Orca) attacks the ship, killing one of the crew before the female is cut loose and falls into the water. The next morning the body of the female whale washes up on shore and before long it becomes clear that Orca is out for revenge, as he attacks the fishing village and destroys vital fuel lines. The villagers insist Nolan is responsible and task him with killing Orca so he sets off with the remainder of his crew, plus marine biologist Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling) and a native American killer whale expert (Will Sampson). The whale leads the boat away from the village into frozen, iceberg covered waters and the stage is set for a final confrontation.

Unfortunately for De Laurentiis and all involved the film was critically derided and sank quickly at the box office, particularly since the juggernaut that was Star Wars was already smashing box office records around the world. The idea of a vengeful fish obviously didn’t go down too well with audiences, although the people behind 1987’s awful Jaws: The Revenge must have forgotten this by the time it was decided to make a third Jaws sequel. The practice of hunting and capturing killer whales to feed the demand from aquariums in the 1960s and 70s was sadly all too prevalent, as documented in the recent heartbreaking documentary Blackfish, which also points out that there are no documented cases of humans being killed by the whales in the wild.

The artwork on the American one sheet was painted by John Berkey who also worked on the poster for the De Laurentiis produced remake of King Kong a year earlier, and the Orca art was also used for the British quad. The Japanese marketing campaign, however, featured at least three B2-sized posters, including this one, that featured artwork apparently unique to the posters and only the B1 format used the Berkey painting. I’ve called this B2 the ‘style A (black surround)’ and I also have the other two styles which will be added to the site eventually. I’ve been unable to find out who is responsible for this artwork so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

Check out the bonkers original trailer on YouTube.

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.

Gremlins, director Joe Dante‘s classic horror comedy, was one of the biggest box-office hits of the 1980s and this tale of small, malevolent creatures attacking the residents of a small town spawned countless imitations, including Critters, Ghoulies and Troll, none of which were able to match the quality of the film they were attempting to emulate. The film was produced by Steven Spielberg through his Amblin Entertainment company and it definitely features some unmistakable Spielbergian qualities.

Thanks to several violent scenes, the film is credited, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, for the introduction of the PG-13 rating in America, which was intended to be applied to films that fell into the gap between the PG (Parental Guidance, but safe for children) and R-rated (intended for over 17-year olds). The equivalent in the UK is the 12A rating, which was introduced in 2002 and replaced the 12 rating that had been instigated at the end of the 1980s (for Tim Burtons’s Batman).

This is an unusual Japanese B2 featuring an illustration of Mogwai that was printed by a company called Sun-star. I picked it up whilst on a trip to Japan in 2012 and my best guess is that it was a poster created to be commercially sold at the time of release (or soon after). According to the English language version of the Sun-star website, they are a company whose products are ‘Stationery for office home use, Stationery featuring Disney characters’, and it’s entirely likely that they had a licensing tie-in with Warner Bros to print posters like this, perhaps to be sold at screenings of the film. If I find out any more information I’ll update this page.

I’m unsure who the artist responsible is so please get in touch if you have an idea.

Director John Carpenter followed his debut sci-fi film Dark Star (1974) with the action thriller Assault on Precinct 13. Carpenter had originally hoped to create a Howard Hawks style western, but when the $100k budget organised by his producer friends Joseph Kaufman and J. Stein Kaplan prohibited the kinds of sets and production design needed, he retooled the script to work in a modern day setting. With strong echoes of Hawks’ Rio Bravo, Carpenter completed his script in just eight days and peppered it with multiple references to classic westerns.

Taking place over the course of one Saturday (a number of time and location cards are displayed throughout) the story is set in a crime-infested Los Angeles ghetto and begins at 3.00am as six members of a gang called Street Thunder are ambushed and killed by the LAPD. Soon afterwards the warlords of the gang swear a blood oath of revenge against the whole city. Later that day, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) arrives at the local Anderson police precinct in order to help the remaining skeleton staff, including Captain Chaney (Henry Brandon) and two secretaries, close the building for good.

A bus carrying three convicts, including Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston), makes an unscheduled stop at the precinct seeking medical help for one of the men. At the same time across town, a gang of the warlords shoot and kill a young girl and an ice cream seller (a shocking sequence that Carpenter almost had to remove at the request of the MPAA) and the girl’s father, Lawson (Martin West) immediately retaliates and kills one of the warlords. The rest of the gang chases Lawson through the streets and into the Anderson police precinct. Before they know it, the inhabitants of the station are under assault from the gang and must fight for their very survival.

The film failed to make much impact in terms of box office takings or critical reception on its original American release in 1976, but when the film was shown at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival it received very favourable reviews from several critics, particularly those from Britain. After being invited to show the film at the 1977 London Film Festival, Carpenter was delighted by the positive critical and audience reaction. Derek Malcolm, the then film critic of the Guardian newspaper (whose quote graces this poster), reported that the film’s screening was greeted with deafening applause. On the back of the strong reception, Michael Myers (a Carpenter coincidence!), the head of Miracle Films, purchased the British distribution rights. This quad was printed for the film’s UK release and features a stylised title laid over the top of an image from the scene in which one of the convicts attempts to escape through the sewers. The ‘award-winning’ line refers to the fact that Carpenter won the 1978 annual British Film Institute award for the “originality and achievement of his first two films”, Dark Star and Assault, at the 1977 London Film Festival.

If ever there was a case where the poster is the most interesting thing about the movie, this one sheet for the brief cinema release of ROTOR (or R.O.T.O.R.) is the perfect example. Although I’ve never had the (mis)fortune of seeing the film, the reviews on IMDb speak for themselves and the following synopsis gives you an idea of the kind of experience you’re in for:

Robotic Officer Tactical Operations Research. ROTOR is a robotic cop manufactured from a rare metal – an alloy that’s not only responsible for the unit’s movements, but for it’s intelligence as well. ROTOR has been programmed to combat crime and corruption – to judge and to execute – to be the ultimate law enforcer. But something goes horribly wrong. The robot’s framework mutates into humanoid form and escapes from the research unit. Then when a speeding driver is killed for his minor traffic offence. It’s clear that ROTOR has been programmed too well. Now no one is safe – ROTOR is out on the streets, out of control and out to kill.

Currently hovering near the bottom of IMDb rankings (on a meagre 2.2 rating), reviewer ‘gridoon’ has this to say about the film:

‘There are bad movies that are funny. Bad movies that are boring. Bad movies that are offensive. And then there are bad movies that are just plain incompetent. You can’t get angry at these movies, because it’s obvious they were made by people who simply didn’t have the talent or the budget to make something even halfway decent. “R.O.T.O.R” is one such movie.’

Fellow reviewer ‘martin_dc’ sums the film up thusly:

‘Guaranteed laughter the first 15 minutes. After this the brain tends to numb completely and you watch the rest out of inertia or masochism, so in an unintentional way the movie actually works. Highlights include the R.O.T.O.R. creator giving coffee to his horse and inexplicably trying to blow up a tree.’

One reviewer simply lists 10 things they’d rather do than sit through ROTOR again, which includes ‘Get smashed on the back of the head with a folding chair’ and ‘Belly flop off a 10-meter tower into an empty swimming pool.’

I’ve been unable to determine who painted this artwork, but it appeared on this cinema-release one sheet as well as the video release poster and VHS covers. Whoever did do it was clearly influenced by the US one sheet for Mad Max (painted by Bill Garland), right down to the pose that ROTOR is in. I can only imagine how many people were suckered into picking this VHS off the shelves of their local video rental shop based on the cover alone.

Check out the mesmerising trailer here.

An excellent portrait of action legend Charles Bronson features on this 30×40 poster for the 1984 thriller The Evil That Men Do. One of several collaborations between the star and director J. Lee Thompson, the film sees Bronson star as a retired hitman known as Holland who is living a relaxed life on a West Indies Island when he is approached by former associates who persuade him to take on one last job. The target is the sadistic torturer, Dr. Clement Molloch, a Welshman who is often hired by political regimes to help them keep dissidents in check and has consequently left a trail of enemies in his wake.

Holland discovers that Molloch has killed his old friend Jorge Hidalgo at the behest of the Surinamese regime and he agrees to set off to Guatemala, the last known location of his target, with Hidalgo’s wife and daughter agreeing to pose as his family to protect his cover. Holland uses his old skills to take out various criminal associates as he works his way up the chain to exact revenge against Molloch. The film was released to weak reviews and it’s definitely not Bronson’s finest hour, or the best collaboration with J Lee Thompson.

Frustratingly I’ve been unable to find out who was responsible for the artwork on this poster so if you have any ideas please get in touch. The same art also featured on the Japanese B2 poster which can be seen here.

The film’s trailer can be viewed here.

This is the UK quad for the release of arguably the most famous Australian film ever released, Crocodile Dundee. The film took its inspiration from the real life exploits of an Australian hunter called Rodney Ansell who was stranded for 56 days in the remote outback with limited supplies and managed to survive and stay alive by living off the land. The film’s story sees Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski), a New York reporter, travel to Australia to try and meet Mick Dundee (a memorable turn by Paul Hogan) a legendary bushman who is reported to have lost his leg in a battle with a crocodile. What she finds is an uncouth, less than legendary figure who makes several clumsy advances towards her. She starts to warm to him as they travel into the wilderness and she witnesses first hand his survival skills, ability to interact with dangerous creatures and his ease with the native aborigines.

When Mick teases her that she’d be unable to survive on her own she sets off to prove him wrong, but is soon almost killed by a crocodile before Mick intervenes. Eventually Sue invites the bushman back to New York under the pretext of continuing the story and comedy ensues as Mick has to adjust to life in one of the busiest cities on earth. The film was made on a relatively low budget, specifically tailored for American audiences and was a runaway success at the box office and ended up as a worldwide phenomenon as the second-highest grossing film of 1986. It spawned another sequel soon afterwards and a third (forgettable) entry in 2001.

The artwork, which also featured on posters around the world, including the US one sheet, is by American poster artist Dan Goozee. An unknown UK artist is likely to have painted the extra windows on the right side to adapt the artwork to a landscape format. Goozee is perhaps best known for his work on several Bond posters, including Moonraker and Octopussy, as well as several other classic posters from the 1980s. The other designs I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

This is the scarce Japanese B1 for the release of the 1988 fantasy comedy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which was co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam. Based on the tall tales that the real-life 18th century German Baron Münchhausen allegedly told about his wartime dealings with the Ottoman Empire, the film is a riotous exploration of the power of storytelling and imagination. Gilliam plucked the veteran actor John Neville, in his early sixties at the time, from near obscurity to play the titular Baron who teams up with a young girl and a whole host of bizarre characters to save an unnamed European city from defeat by a besieging Turkish army. 

Actress (and recently director) Sarah Polley appears in her first screen role as Sally Salt, a member of a theatre troupe that has been touring the country showing farcical reconstructions of Munchausen’s supposed adventures. At one show the real Baron arrives into the theatre just as a Turkish army appears outside the city walls and begins to attack. What follows is a madcap mix of improbable, recollected tales and daring adventures as the Baron takes Sally on a journey to gather together his old gang of associates, including the fastest runner in the world (Eric Idle), a giant strongman and a dwarf able to expel powerful gusts of wind that can knock tens of people over. Their journey takes them to the moon where they encounter the eccentric King of the Moon (a memorable cameo from Robin Williams), into the crater of an active volcano where they meet the Roman God Vulcan (Oliver Reed) and his wife Venus (one of Uma Thurman‘s earliest film roles) and inside the belly of a giant sea monster, before they head back to the besieged city to rescue it from certain defeat.

Featuring a number of notable actors, often in dual roles that reflect the film’s clever play on the idea of fantasy and reality, the story is never anything less than entertaining and the action on screen completely belies the ridiculous behind the scenes travails that Gilliam went through to bring his vision to life. The film suffered a number of setbacks during its production, including a budget that more than doubled and a change of management at the studio that almost saw the film cancelled entirely (production was shut down for several weeks). The film was eventually practically dumped into cinemas in the States with a limited release that saw a corresponding lack of box office takings, and this was despite strong critical reception. It faired better in Europe but was unable to recoup its reported budget of over $45 million.

This psychedelic design is unique to this Japanese B1 and is markedly different to the equally trippy B2 poster.

Released by the infamous American production and distribution company Troma, The Toxic Avenger was something of a box-office failure on its first release, but subsequent long-running shows on the midnight movie circuit at the Bleecker Street Cinemas in New York City helped to cement its current reputation as a cult classic. The film would go on to become Troma Studios’ most successful film, spawning numerous sequels, spinoffs and even a stage musical. The Toxic Avenger himself even features as their official mascot and this original entry is seen as the film that ‘built the house of Troma’.

Melvin Junko (Mark Torgl) is a social misfit working at the Tromaville Health Club as a down-trodden mop boy who is often at the receiving end of the cruel pranks of a pair of bullies called Bozo (Gary Schneider) and Slug (Robert Prichard) and their girlfriends. One day whilst being chased through the club Melvin jumps out of a second story window and lands in a vat of toxic waste, which burns his skin and completely disfigures him. After running home and jumping in a bath to try and wash the waste off he finds himself mutating into a creature of superhuman strength. The rest of the film sees Melvin fighting crime in Tromaville as the Toxic Avenger, menacing the corrupt mayor Peter Belgoody (Pat Ryan).

The artwork on this British quad is, as far as I’m aware, unique to the poster. I’ve been unable to discover who the artist responsible is so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

The superb original trailer can be viewed on YouTube.

A man versus giant killer fish film that was released two years after the original summer blockbuster Jaws, Orca was always going to be compared to Spielberg’s classic even if its lead actor, the late Richard Harris, was apparently angered by the links; ‘I get really offended when people make the comparison’, he is quoted as saying at the time of release. The late Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis was determined to one-up the spectacle of Jaws and tasked the screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni to “find a fish tougher and more terrible than the great white”, which led them to the killer whale and production on ‘Orca’ began.

Harris plays Nolan, the Irish captain of a fishing boat operating in the waters off the coast of northern Canada who hears of a lucrative contract being offered for the live capture of a killer whale and hopes the bounty will pay off the mortgage on his boat. After Nolan and his crew accidentally spear a pregnant female killer whale they drag it onto the ship where it miscarries, and almost dies, before the male (Orca) attacks the ship, killing one of the crew before the female is cut loose and falls into the water. The next morning the body of the female whale washes up on shore and before long it becomes clear that Orca is out for revenge, as he attacks the fishing village and destroys vital fuel lines. The villagers insist Nolan is responsible and task him with killing Orca so he sets off with the remainder of his crew, plus marine biologist Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling) and a native American killer whale expert (Will Sampson). The whale leads the boat away from the village into frozen, iceberg covered waters and the stage is set for a final confrontation.

Unfortunately for De Laurentiis and all involved the film was critically derided and sank quickly at the box office, particularly since the juggernaut that was Star Wars was already smashing box office records around the world. The idea of a vengeful fish obviously didn’t go down too well with audiences, although the people behind 1987’s awful Jaws: The Revenge must have forgotten this by the time it was decided to make a third Jaws sequel. The practice of hunting and capturing killer whales to feed the demand from aquariums in the 1960s and 70s was sadly all too prevalent, as documented in the recent heartbreaking documentary Blackfish, which also points out that there are no documented cases of humans being killed by the whales in the wild.

The artwork on the American one sheet was painted by John Berkey who also worked on the poster for the De Laurentiis produced remake of King Kong a year earlier, and the Orca art was also used for the British quad. The Japanese marketing campaign, however, featured at least three B2-sized posters, including this one, that featured artwork apparently unique to the posters and only the B1 format used the Berkey painting. I’ve called this B2 style B and there’s also the style A. I’ve been unable to find out who is responsible for this artwork so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

Check out the bonkers original trailer on YouTube.

A suitably outlandish design on this Japanese B2 (style B) for the release of Tobe Hooper’s sci-fi curio Lifeforce. Based on the 1976 novel The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson, the film’s screenplay was written by Dan O’Bannon (Alien, Total Recall) and Don Jakoby and was the first in a three film deal that Hooper had agreed with notorious production and distribution company Cannon Films (the others were Invaders from Mars and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2). The film begins as the joint US-UK space shuttle Churchill heads towards Halley’s Comet on a research mission. After discovering a large dormant alien ship in the comet’s tail, a small team sets out to investigate and discovers a trio of naked humanoids in transparent stasis pods surrounded by the dried husks of hundreds of bat-like creatures.

The pods, which contain two males and a female (the stunning Mathilda May) are brought onboard the spaceship. Several weeks later, after losing contact with Churchill’s crew, a rescue team is sent out and finds the shuttle drifting in space having been crippled by a catastrophic fire with all crew presumed dead. The pods are discovered in the hold completely untouched and are returned to earth to the European Space Research Centre in London where Dr. Leonard Bukovsky (the late Michael Gothard) and Dr. Hans Fallada (Frank Finlay) oversee a planned autopsy on the humanoid figures. The female awakens during the procedure and attacks one of the doctors, draining the ‘lifeforce’ from him, leaving just a desiccated husk. She then escapes from the facility and sets in motion a chain of events that eventually sees the city of London besieged by hundreds of newly created space vampires.

The film gets increasingly bonkers as it continues and the acting from Steve Railsback (shuttle captain Carlsen) is absolutely bizarre, ranging from barely audible mumbles to wild-eyed shouting. Frank Finlay is also good value and appears to think he’s starring in a 1960s Hammer horror film. The special effects are notably good and were headed up by award-winning artist John Dykstra. The alien ship scenes are very well done, as are several of the scenes where lifeforce is extracted from victims.

The film rattles from one scene to another and barely manages to stay comprehensible, despite being undeniably enjoyable. Apparently budgetary issues meant several scenes were never shot and production had to be shut down at one point after financing had dried up. All of this clearly had an impact on the final cut and things were made worse for the US release when distributor Tristar decided to trim 12 minutes from the film. Lifeforce was a box-office failure and was unable to recoup its original bloated budget. The UK and other countries at least received the full uncut version and it’s now available for all on blu-ray.

This is the original UK quad for the release of House of Whipcord from the British director, producer and writer Pete Walker, who specialised in exploitation pictures during the 1960s and 1970s. Walker started out making shoestring budget sexploitation pictures, including School for Sex that were often relative hits in the UK, which worked out well for him since his films were almost always self-financed and thus most of the profits were his to keep and plough into the next feature. In the early 1970s, Walker grew tired of feeding the ‘dirty mack brigade’ and turned his hand to horror.

Whipcord is certainly one of the directors most memorable films and had a plot that was all but guaranteed to rile certain sections of the British press at the time of release. The film begins in London and focuses on young French model Ann-Marie Di Verney (Penny Irving) who has moved to the capital and has started to pose in nude photoshoots. One evening she is seduced by a mysterious character named, rather ominously Mark E. Desade (played by Robert Tayman) and a relationship develops between the pair. Sometime later Mark invites Ann-Marie to ‘visit his parents’ who live out in the country and only when she arrives does she realise that it was all a ruse to get Ann-Marie into a secret illegal prison which is being ruled over by his unhinged mother Mrs Wakehurst (Barbara Markham) and three ‘guards’, including the sadistic Walker (a memorable performance from regular collaborator Sheila Keith – note the character name!)

Mrs Wakehurst is a former school mistress whose corrupt regime led one of her charges to commit suicide but, believing she did nothing wrong and that lax morals led to the corruption in the school, she seduced the judge who was trying her, Justice Bailey (Patrick Barr), and managed to escape sentence. She then persuaded him to set up what he believed would be a private correctional institute in which ‘girls with loose morals’ would be ‘reeducated’ properly and then let back into the world. As Ann Marie and other inmates discover, the truth is far more horrifying.

The film was critically mauled over here but did solid business in cinemas and was later released in US cinemas through AIP. I’m unsure who is responsible for the design and artwork on this poster so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

The original trailer can be viewed here.

A little-seen horror from 1973, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf was the last film that director Nathan H. Juran (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) worked on and it paired him for the final time with leading actor Kerwin Mathews who was a regular collaborator (he played Sinbad, for example). The plot sees Mathews play Robert, a divorced father who takes his estranged son Richie (Scott Sealey) to the family’s holiday mountain cabin for a short break. Whilst walking in the woods at night the pair are attacked by a werewolf and during the struggle Rob is bitten before the beast falls down a ravine and is impaled on a fence.

When they discover the body it has changed back to a man whom the local police don’t recognise. Richie’s insistence that it was a werewolf is laughed off by his father and the police and later his mother speaks to a psychologist who suggests the boy is struggling to accept that he witnessed his father killing someone and is making up a fantastic story to cope with the situation. The psychologist then recommends Robert and Richie return to the cabin to help with the healing process, but they happen to visit during the next full-moon cycle and that bite comes back to haunt Robert and Richie. Will anyone believe the boy before it’s too late?

It seems like the film was given a limited release and this is the 30×40 poster which will have been used for the film’s showing in venues like drive-ins and larger cinemas. It was also given a UK release as a double-bill with the creature feature ‘Sssss‘, that was out the same year. The film has never been officially released on DVD and is hard to track down, should you wish to watch it.

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

This is the international one sheet for the release of David Lynch‘s mystery thriller Lost Highway. Co-written with American author Barry Gifford, whose novel Lynch adapted for his 1990 film Wild at Heart, the film is a classic Lynchian mind-bender that resolutely defies explanation. The story begins with Bill Pullman as Fred Madison, a Jazz saxophonist who is living with his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) in Los Angeles. One day the intercom to his flat buzzes and when he answers it an unknown man says “Dick Laurent is dead.” The man is nowhere to be seen when Fred looks out of his window, but a few days later a mysterious tape appears on the Madison’s doorstep. The video features shaky footage outside their flat and over the next few days more tapes appear that eventually move inside and show the pair sleeping, much to their horror.

At a party Fred meets a mysterious man (played by Robert Blake in his final film role) who, in a memorably creepy sequence, tells Fred that he’s at his flat at that moment and proves it by getting him to call his home phone, which the stranger then answers. The next morning another tape appears and Fred is horrified to see it’s footage of him covered in blood with a dismembered Renee next to him. He is arrested, charged with murder and sentenced to death. Whilst on death row Fred sees strange visions and starts to suffer from painful headaches before he inexplicably morphs into another person, a car mechanic called Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) much to the confusion of the prison staff. Because Pete has committed no crime, he is released into the care of his parents and, after a period of adjustment, he gets back to his job. The rest of the film sees Pete dealing with the menacing gangster Mr Eddy (a memorable performance by Robert Loggia) and a mysterious blonde called Alice Wakefield (Arquette) who takes him down a dark path which has the mystery man waiting at the end of it.

Lynch and Gifford have always refused to fully explain the story but that hasn’t stopped fans of the film from trying to decode its many mysteries. Check out this IMDb page for some of the theories but the film definitely encourages you to draw your own conclusions after the credits roll. Lost Highway features a number of notable performances, particularly from Pullman and Arquette, as well as multiple cameos from the likes of Richard Pryor, Jack Nance and Marilyn Manson. Filled with memorable Lynchian imagery, including one of the most shocking accidental deaths in cinema history (Michael Massee‘s head meets glass table), it also has a brilliant soundtrack complemented by some of Lynch’s very best sound design.

This poster is very similar to the red style US one sheet but has the yellow blocky type that can be seen on the UK quad. I’m not sure who is responsible for the design of this one sheet or the quad so please get in touch if you have any ideas.