Charles Bronson stars as Vince Majestyk in this story of a Vietnam veteran turned melon farmer in a remote Colorado farm, who winds up having to deal with the wrath of a mobster after refusing to get involved in a labour racket. Al Lettieri stars as Frank Renda, a notorious hit man who Majestyk meets whilst spending a short time in prison for assault. During a prison bus breakout instigated by Renda’s accomplices Majestyk takes control of the bus and plans to hand the mobster into the police in exchange for a reward. Before this can happen Renda’s girlfriend Wiley (Lee Purcell) rescues him and escapes the clutches of the law. A revenge plan is set in motion but the mobster soon comes to realise he underestimated the skills of the melon farmer.

The term ‘melon farmer’ was infamously appropriated by editors who were tasked with removing the word ‘mother fucker’ from films to be shown on TV. Director Alex Cox actually supervised the TV recut of his 1984 film Repo Man and this is where the phrase was first used (he actually mentions it during this interview). It has its own entry on the Urban Dictionary website too.

An minor bit of trivia is that this poster is actually hanging inside the trailer owned by Budd (Michael Madsen), a character in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, and is clearly visible during the scene where The Bride (Uma Thurman) attacks Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) – click here to see a clip (spoilers abound).

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Artwork by the great Drew Struzan on this US one sheet for French director Jean-Jacques Annaud‘s 1986 medieval whodunnit, starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater in one of his first major film roles. Based on the book by Italian novelist, semiotician, philosopher and critic Umberto Eco, the film focuses on the investigation of a series of mysterious deaths in an isolated abbey by the monk William of Baskerville (Connery) aided by his novice Adso of Melk (Slater). The pair must race against time to prevent falsely accused suspects, including Ron Perlman‘s demented hunchback Salvatore, being punished at the hands of the inquisitor Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham).

Struzan’s portrait of a balding Connery is absolutely spot on and easily on par with the one he did three years later for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. According to IMDb, the presence of the ugly characters in the film (and on the poster) is due to Annaud “casting the ugliest actors he could get because he wanted the characters to appear “real”, based on the men in the village where he lived. When he returned to his village, some of the men asked him if he really considered them to be as ugly as the actors, and he said, “Yes.”

Several other international posters for the film, including this German one, depict Connery looking extremely serious and glum.

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

The original trailer is on YouTube.