A great illustration on this Japanese B2 for Nausicaä, considered to be the first film from Studio Ghibli, the legendary animation studio founded by Hayao Miyazaki shortly after this film was released. Nausicaä was released in the US retitled as ‘Warriors of the Wind’ and was severely edited with many of the film’s themes and characters diluted.

Miyazaki has publicly stated how much he hates this version and the story goes that when Princess Mononoke was bought by Miramax Films for US distribution someone at Studio Ghibli sent a Katana sword with the simple message: ‘No cuts’. See the Wikipedia page for more details and a picture of the bizarre US poster.

This portrait of Princess Nausicaä with her fox-squirrel companion Teto was painted by Miyazaki himself and  it appears in a book of Nausicaa art titled The Nausicaa Watercolor Collection, which includes annotations by Miyazaki. In his annotation for the image, he attributes himself as the artist, while also complaining about her posture! “I know I’m the one who drew this, but I don’t really like this picture. The Nausicaa inside me would never pose like this.” Thanks to site reader Reynold for confirming this.

The poster is missing an Eirin mark, despite being the standard B2 size, and I suspect it may have been a commercial poster sold in cinemas at the time of the original release.

Nausicaä was the first Studio Ghibli back-catalogue title to be released on blu-ray in 2011.

Here’s the trailer for the film.

This is the UK quad for Roger Moore‘s sixth outing as the legendary spy, 1983’s Octopussy. Considered by many to be one of the weaker entries in the long-running series, the film nevertheless continued the more ‘realistic’ and down to earth approach that was taken for the previous entry, For Your Eyes Only (1981), following the over-the-top lunacy of Moonraker (1979). The story sees Bond sent to investigate the death of his fellow agent ‘009’ who perishes in front of the British embassy in East Berlin clutching a copy of a priceless Fabergé egg. When the trail leads to an auction house in London where the real egg is to be sold, Bond enters a bidding war with the mysterious Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), forcing him to spend several times its listing price.

After following Khan back to his palace in Rajasthan, India, the spy eventually ends up in the clutches of Khan’s bodyguard Gobinda (an imposing Kabir Bedi) and, after escaping, discovers that the prince is working with a power-hungry Soviet general named Orlov (Steven Berkoff) who plans to detonate a nuclear bomb in a US Air Force base in Germany in order to destabilise Europe and expand Soviet borders. Bond heads to a palace on an Indian lake on the trail of Octopussy (Maud Adams), the enigmatic leader of an all-female cult and head of a travelling circus troupe that Khan and Orlov plan to use to smuggle the weapon into the base. Bond must convince Octopussy that Khan is only using her for his nefarious plot and sets out to prevent the bomb from detonating before Europe is plunged into chaos.

This quad was jointly illustrated by both Renato Casaro, an Italian artist with a prolific output, and the American artist Dan Goozee who painted the central two figures for the US one sheet. They were reused here and then surrounded by the montage of action scenes painted by Casaro. On the Japanese B2, Casaro actually repainted the figures, which then sat alongside a slightly modified montage.

Renato Casaro began his career in 1953, aged 19, at the famous Studio Favalli in Rome, which was part of the legendary Cinecittà studios and handled film publicity for many Italian productions. Casaro soon decided to become a freelance artist and went on to design and paint posters for many of the biggest directors in the world. His skill at accurately portraying actors and his brilliant use of colour and composition saw him much in demand from studios and actors alike. His artwork has featured on many German posters as well as others from countries including Japan, UK, North America as well as in his native Italy.

Check out the incredible amount of work on his official website here, which also features a biography of the artist. The other posters I’ve collected by Casaro can be seen by clicking here.

This is the original UK quad for director Martin Scorsese’s superb Taxi Driver. The film follows De Niro’s Travis Bickle, an unstable Vietnam veteran who works as a taxi driver on the streets of New York City, and whose anger at the perceived corruption and sleaze around him takes him down a path of violence from which there may be no return. Cybill Shepherd plays Betsy, a worker for a presidential campaign with whom Bickle attempts to start a relationship, and a young Jodie Foster stars as a prostitute who he decides needs ‘saving’ from her predicament.

This poster features an image of Travis Bickle walking down a New York street and the same photograph features on several other Taxi Driver posters, including the Japanese B2, this ‘reviews’ style US one sheet and the Park Circus 2006 re-release quad for the film. There is also an international one sheet for the film that has the same blue colouring as this quad.

A highly detailed illustration graces this Japanese B2 for the release of Speedtrap, a little-seen automotive action flick that was made in the mould of the original Gone in 60 Seconds, which was released only a couple of years earlier – this poster even references the film (hence the ’60’ above the red title at the bottom). The story sees private eye Pete Novick, played by the respected character actor Joe Don Baker (best known for the original Walking Tall and several appearances in Brosnan-era Bond films), hired by an insurance company to track down the mysterious ‘Road Runner’ a master car thief responsible for the disappearance of hundreds of high-end automobiles.

After teaming up with an ex-girlfriend who also happens to be a police detective (Tyne Daly, who featured in The Enforcer), Novick sets his sights on the master criminal and goes all out to stop him striking again. Robert Loggia appears as a mafia boss who falls victim to the Road Runner when his drug-filled Rolls-Royce disappears.

The exciting artwork is by Seito, one of my favourite Japanese artists, who was responsible for several fantastic illustrated posters during the 1970s and 1980s. Little is known about the man himself, even in his native country. Seito also worked on the original Japanese poster for the release of Gone in 60 Seconds, which I have in the collection and can be seen here.

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

A wild design on this one sheet for the 1981 horror featuring a trio of demonic kids. From IMDb:

In 1970, three children are born at the height of a total eclipse. Due to the sun and moon blocking Saturn, which controls emotions, they have become heartless killers ten years later, and are able to escape detection because of their youthful and innocent facades. A boy and his teenage sister become endangered when they stumble onto the bloody truth.

Director Ed Hunt would retire from filmmaking a few years after Bloody Birthday was released with a modest ten films to his name.

I also have the alternative style one sheet in the collection. You can watch the trailer on YouTube.

An entry into the Italian zombie horror genre, Burial Ground (AKA The Nights of Terror) is unquestionably in the shadow of Lucio Fulci’s superior Zombie Flesh Eaters, released only a year before in Italy. The film features several shameless cribs from Fulci’s film, including a scene where an actress is pulled slowly into a broken window, face first. The film features little in the way of a plot with the bare minimum in the way of exposition before the zombie carnage begins. It opens with the spectacularly bearded Professor Ayres unwittingly unleashing a horde of shuffling zombies whilst exploring a crypt in the cemetery behind his mansion. A group of his friends (some colleagues?) arrive shortly after, having been invited to view his discoveries, and there follows a rambling sequence of events in which the guests spout inane dialogue, potter around the mansion and get naked (only breasts, of course) before the first zombie shuffles into their view.

The zombie make-up and gore effects are, for the most part, absolutely atrocious with some of the zombies not even resembling humans in terms of facial features and others looking like some Italian bloke painted grey with a few bits of bacon stuck to his face. There are some undeniably creepy moments and the sets are well utilised but the film is nearly ruined by the appalling music, half of which sounds like it was taken directly from a 1950s ‘space sounds’ record, with bizarre bleeps, bloops and other sci-fi noises happening every time anything remotely exciting happens on screen. One of the most bizarre elements of the film was the decision to cast a 26-year-old dwarf named Peter Bark as Michael, the 11-year-old son of Evelyn (Mariangela Giordano) who has some sort of oedipal relationship with him, made even weirder by the actor’s real age and facial appearance. It has to go down as one of the strangest casting decisions ever made.

The artwork on this one sheet for the 1986 American release, five years after the original Italian debut, is by an American artist called C. Winston Taylor, about whom very little can be found online. The Lost Video Archive blog has a post on the artist that features images of some of his other posters and video covers. In the 1990s the artist was hired to paint the covers for a Quantum Leap comic book series and a gallery of those images can be viewed on this site, which also features three images of the artist himself. Comicbookdb.com features a small profile of Taylor with the following mini-biography:

C. Winston Taylor always knew from a young age that he would communicate through his drawings. Fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, where he earned two Bronze Stars, helped solidify this vision. After graduating with honors from the Art Center College of Design, in Los Angeles, he quickly became a well-respected illustrator. His work has received numerous awards and he served as the president of The Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles. 

The other posters I’ve collected with artwork by him can be seen by clicking here.

A joint collaboration between two British production companies, Palace Pictures and Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment, The Company of Wolves was helmed by the Irish director Neil Jordan and based on a short story by the late English author Angela Carter, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jordan. The film begins in the modern day with the  lead character Rosaleen (played by first-time actress Sarah Patterson) having moved with her parents to a large house in a forest. At night Rosaleen falls asleep and has a vivid dream in which she is a medieval peasant girl who lives with her grandma (played by Murder, She Wrote’s Angela Lansbury) in a woodland village. Sitting by the fire one evening her grandma begins to tell her a story and what follows is a series of surreal, fantasy tales, with multiple narratives and narrators, most of which feature wolves or werewolves, and all of which are ripe with hidden meanings and deeper significances (check out this page on IMDb to give you an idea).

Featuring elements of the classic Little Red Riding Hood fairytale (and indeed the film features a blood red shawl worn by a young girl) the film is a parable of the loss of innocence and the beginning of adolescence and sexual awakening – as the Grandma says at one point ‘Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle.’ Overcoming a slight budget The Company of Wolves has a dream-like, eerie atmosphere helped in no-small part by excellent production and costume design. There is also a werewolf transformation scene that challenges the famous one seen in American Werewolf in London. Palace Pictures would re-team several more times with Neil Jordan, including for Mona Lisa (1986) and Oscar-winning The Crying Game (1992)

This one sheet was printed for use in the UK alongside the quad, which is markedly different in its design and can be viewed here. The artwork was painted by the celebrated British artist George Underwood, who is perhaps best known for his work on album covers for the likes of David Bowie (Hunky Dory, Space Oddity and more), T.Rex and The Fixx. Born in Bromley, Kent in 1947, Underwood went on to study at the nearby Beckenham Art School and then afterwards at Ravensbourne College of Art. After a brief flirtation with the music industry (Bowie being a lifelong friend of his), he decided to concentrate on his design and illustration, beginning his career by working on LP covers and book covers.

Later on, Underwood would start work as a freelance illustrator, which is when he would have painted this poster for Palace Pictures. In the 1970s he began painting in oils, creating wonderful surrealist portraits and his official website features galleries of these and his other work, including album covers. I’m unsure whether he worked on any other film posters but I intend to contact the artist to find out.

A minor sci-fi classic, The Last Starfighter is one of those perennial favourites that seemed to be on TV every month and, along with films like Flight of the Navigator and The Goonies, became a cult favourite for children of the 1980s. The film’s plot is fairly straightforward; Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) is a frustrated teenager who dreams of leaving his small American town to study at university, despite the protestations of his girlfriend Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart). One day he beats the high score of an arcade game called Starfighter that is secretly a recruiting tool for the Star League, a team of space pilots who are battling against an overwhelming force threatening the entire galaxy. When an alien recruiter arrives and takes Alex to the headquarters of the defence force, the teenager is at first reluctant to join the war, but when a surprise attack from the enemy force destroys most of the command centre and the other starfighters, Alex decides to step up to the challenge.

Ably directed by Nick Castle, a friend and former classmate (at USC) of John Carpenter – Nick actually played the part of Michael Myers in Halloween – the film has a sweet story filled with memorable characters, such as the late, great character actor Robert Preston as the alien benefactor who recruits Alex and Dan O’Herlihy as Grig, his alien co-pilot (as seen to the right of Alex on this poster). The film is perhaps most notable for being a milestone of technical achievement for its pioneering use of CGI to depict most of the scenes involving space battles, or ‘digital scene simulation’ as it’s (unusually) credited as on the bottom of this poster.

A company called Digital Productions was hired to work on these sequences and, as detailed in the excellent making-of documentary found on the blu-ray of the film, the artists and technicians were pushing the boundaries of what was possible with the available hardware – a giant supercomputer called Cray – on a daily basis. It was the first time that CGI was used to depict scenes in a film that weren’t explicitly part of a computer simulation (like Tron, for example) and the team had to battle against time and a plentiful supply of naysayers who were trying to push Castle and the producers to use the more traditional model work seen in other films of the period. The director stood his ground and the results speak for themselves. Viewed now it’s clear how far the technology has come, but audiences must have been thrilled back in 1984 and some of the sequences still look pretty decent even today.

This Japanese poster features a montage of images from the film, including some of Alex’s fellow starfighters, although fans of the film will notice that the designer of the poster has taken some liberties by placing a starfighter helmet on the head of one of the main bad guys (the brown-faced alien with the eye glass). I’m assuming it had something to do with making the design more symmetrical, unless there’s a deleted scene that I’m unaware of!

Although considered by most Bond fans to be one of the weakest of the series, I know I’m not the only one to have a soft spot for Moonraker, Roger Moore‘s fifth outing as James Bond. Thanks to endless TV showings during the 1980s and early 1990s I’ve probably seen this more than any other in the series and, like Live and Let Die, it had a huge impression on my young mind.

Looking at it through the cynical fog of adulthood it’s easy to sneer at the camp script, supremely daft action sequences (motorised Gondola anyone?) and painfully obvious attempt to cash in on the success of Star Wars (a very common theme amongst films released in its wake). The film is probably the quintessential outing for Moore as Bond and only he could have pulled it off as well as he did, particularly when it comes to the hokey script and madcap action.

The film features several memorable sequences, including a stunning cable car fight over Rio de Janeiro, and a decent bad guy in Richard Kiel‘s inimitable ‘Jaws’ who used to scare me senseless as a kid. Also notable is John Barry‘s soundtrack, which marked a departure from his previous Bond work by mainly using strings instead of the typical brass. The film also features one of the most (literally) eyebrow-raising character names in the form of Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) and one of the best/worst sign-offs of the entire series:

Sir Frederick Gray, Minister of Defence:  My God, what’s Bond doing?
Q: I think he’s attempting re-entry, sir.

This is the British quad featuring artwork by the American artist Dan Goozee that was also used on the final Moonraker US one sheet and on the film’s posters in several other countries. Because the original artwork was copied to create this quad before computer technology meant easy recycling of images, the artwork is slightly ‘softer’ than on the one sheet, with some parts of the image not as sharp as they could be. This is the case on every copy of the poster I’ve ever handled. Dan Goozee also worked on several other James Bond posters including the international advance one sheet for Moonraker, the artwork for Octopussy and two one sheets for A View to a Kill.

Other posters I’ve collected by Goozee can be seen here.

An iconic piece of horror artwork adorns this UK quad for the release of the American horror film Dead and Buried. As the poster’s top tagline highlights, the film was written by Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon, the two screenwriters responsible for the 1979 sci-fi masterpiece Alien and it was directed by Gary Sherman whose previous film had been the creepy ‘cannibals on the London Underground’ horror Raw Meat (AKA Deathline) almost a decade earlier. The story is set in the seemingly normal New England seaside town of Potter’s Bluff and sees the local Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) investigating a series of mysterious disappearances of strangers visiting the area. The baffling thing for the sheriff is that the strangers are then reappearing some days later now seemingly a member of the community.

The viewer bears witness to a series of gruesome murders beginning with that of a photographer (Christopher Allport) who is seduced on the town beach before being attacked by several people from the town who beat him and burn him alive whilst taking photographs. It soon becomes clear that Potters Bluff’s eccentric mortician William G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson AKA Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) has been practicing some fairly unorthodox patient handling in his morgue and the sheriff sets out to put a stop to his plans.

Apparently, the film went through a number of edits at the request of one of the financiers and was moulded into more of a dark horror film than Gary Sherman had originally intended, with two additional killings inserted and filmed without the assistance of effects maestro Stan Winston (these are noticeably different in tone and quality of execution than the rest of the film). Despite this, Dead and Buried is a solid horror film with a creepy atmosphere, excellent production design and some memorable turns, particularly from Albertson and Melody Anderson as Dan Gillis’ wife who harbours a dark secret.

The artwork was painted by the Italian artist Dario Campanile who was born in Rome in 1948 and nurtured a talent for painting still life that would see him exhibiting and selling his artwork by the time he was 18. After spending time in London to learn English whilst also selling his art at a pop-up stall in Hyde Park and later in Kings Road galleries, Dario returned to Rome where he further evolved his style with the aid of a French art consultant. His next move took him to California where he would receive a break when the owner of a Beverly Hills gallery liked his portfolio so much he was offered a one-man show, and this in turn led to him meeting a number of high-profile collectors, several from the music and film industries. Before long he was taking commissions for album and book covers and this poster is clearly the result of one of those meetings.

His official website features galleries of his work as well as an extensive biography that details his life up to now, including the fact that he painted the 75th anniversary logo for Paramount. The artist currently resides in Maui, Hawaii and continues to paint to this day.

This artwork was used on this UK quad as well as the American one sheet. I’ve been unable to discover any other films that Campanile painted a poster for so please get in touch if you are aware of any others.

This is the scarce UK one sheet for the release of the little-seen 1981 thriller Nighthawks, which stars Sylvester Stallone as a New York City detective who, along with partner Billy Dee Williams, is assigned to a team charged with apprehending an international terrorist played by Rutger Hauer. This is arguably Stallone’s last starring role where he was playing a ‘normal’ man, rather than the invincible tough guys he would later be most associated with – First Blood (Rambo) would be released a year after this film. Nighthawks also marked the first Hollywood role for Hauer following a run of Paul Verhoeven directed features in his native Holland – only a year later he would be starring in arguably his most iconic role as the replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner.

Nighthawks starts with a bang as Hauer’s international terrorist Wulfgar Reinhardt blows up a department store in London (a scene actually filmed on location in Clapham, I believe) in what is implied to be a job for the IRA. When the bomb causes more carnage than his employers desired – several children are killed – Wulfgar decides to travel to New York City where he plans to carry out a series of attacks to advertise his skills to potential future benefactors. Stallone’s brilliantly named detective Deke DeSilva and his partner Matthew Fox (Dee Williams) are taken off their usual street work and given to the task force charged with hunting down and ‘terminating’ Wulfgar.

What follows is a very solid thriller featuring several well-staged chases and a tense showdown centred around a cable car. The film makes excellent use of real locations and features some great stunt work, particularly from Stallone who apparently did all of his own without the use of a double. It’s certainly an impressive debut feature from director Bruce Malmuth and Hauer, Stallone and Billy Dee Williams give very solid performances that make up for some weaknesses in the supporting cast.

This one sheet features UK-exclusive artwork that was also used on the quad. I’m not 100% certain but I believe it to be the work of an artist called Ron Fenton who also worked on the one sheet for The Long Good Friday that was printed only a year before. Check out the pictures on this page to see the similarities. The only thing is that Nighthawks is missing the signature that Fenton scrawled on the LGF one sheet. If anyone knows for sure that Fenton can be credited with the poster please get in touch.

In the mid 1980s there were few actors who could get away with having their head dominate a film poster, and fewer still who could couple that with their surname in giant letters spread across the entirety of a 40″ wide poster, but then there was Arnold Schwarzenegger and this British quad for the 1987 film The Running Man. Set in the dystopian future of 2017 where the world’s economy is in ruins and America is a totalitarian police state, the populace is pacified by the broadcasting of a series of gameshows that see convicted prisoners fighting for their lives across various kinds of formats. The most popular of these shows is the titular Running Man in which the unwilling participants must try to survive in a closed-off area against an onslaught of vicious killers with catchy names and different methods of dispatching their prey.

Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) is a former police helicopter pilot who was wrongly convicted of massacring a crowd of people and sent to prison. After escaping several months later with a pair of fellow convicts, Richards is preparing to flee the country but is turned into the authorities by Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso), a composer for the network that he finds living in his brother’s apartment. He is taken to the Running Man studio where he meets the ruthless show host Damon Killian (a memorable turn by the late Richard Dawson) who informs him that unless he takes part in the show his two friends will be sent in his place. After agreeing to get dropped into the play zone, Richards finds that Killian has tricked him and has also sent his pals into the arena. The trio must face-off against the killers whilst trying to work out how to escape the arena and put an end to the show once and for all. When Amber looks a little too closely at the reasons for Ben Richards’ incarceration, she too is captured and dropped into the Running Man arena (she’s pictured next to Arnie on this quad).

Ably directed by Paul Michael Glaser, best known for his acting career – he was Starsky in the classic 1970s cop show Starsky and Hutch – the film is well paced and features several memorable scenes, whilst not holding back on the the violence and gore. The bad guy killers, including Sub Zero, Fireball and Captain Freedom and particularly memorable. It’s definitely a highlight of the Austrian Oak’s filmography, although it was released the same year as the incredible Predator, which is unquestionably the better film. Note that the tagline on this British quad fudges the date that the film is set – 2019 instead of the correct 2017.

This is the Japanese poster for the release of the little-seen 1976 mondo documentary about sharks that was filmed by the Italian director Bruno Vailati (who’s probably best known for the 1961 version of The Thief of Baghdad) and released in a handful of countries that included France (I don’t believe it reached the UK). There are no prizes for guessing which Hollywood blockbuster, released only a year earlier, was the reason this documentary was put together. The IMDb page for the film is bare and features not a single review of the film. I had to dig around a bit before I found out any details of what the documentary features via this review of the VHS release on Amazon.com:

“This is the English language version of the 1976 Italian documentary “Uomini e squali” (‘Sharks and Men’), from director Bruno Vailati, narrated by Joseph Campanella, with a score by Daniele Patucchi (“Death Played the Flute”, “Frankenstein 80”) and featuring an on-screen appearance by Ray Cannon, author of “The Sea of Cortez.” Traveling all over the world (the Red Sea, the Yucatan, Tahiti and Australia), we’re treated to footage of all different species of sharks (bull, hammerhead, Great White), as well as other forms of sea life, like elephant seals, tuna and killer whales.

For those sensitive to such issues, there is a fair amount of casual cruelty in this film, including an “improvised Caesarean” of a pregnant shark (though, mercifully, her brood is cut loose and then freed to the sea) and gruesome shots of sharks being butchered. Still, an informative if somewhat outdated documentary with lots of great underwater photography (even if a few of the shots have been tampered with in post-production, e.g. net lines matted in during the opening tuna-fishing segment).”

This French trailer for the film (it was released in France as ‘Les Dents de la Mort’, or The Teeth of Death) features a section at the end where a diver is bitten in the leg by a Great White in what is clearly a mondo-style faked sequence. This was obviously used by the artist of this poster as the basis for this image of an unlucky diver with a missing leg (there’s nothing like a bit of oversell!). A friend of the site identified the artist as Susumu Masukawa about whom I’ve been unable to discover many details. If anyone has any more information about the artist please get in touch.

A striking design on this poster for the US release of Brian De Palma’s The Fury, the movie that followed his horror classic Carrie (1976). The director continued the theme of telekinesis that he’d started with Sissy Spacek’s teenager pushed over the edge, and in this picture there are two young telekinetics who start the picture unsure why they’ve been granted this strange power and who are unable to control it. The film opens with Kirk Douglas‘ Peter Sandza, an agent for an ‘organisation you didn’t even know exists’, and his son Robin relaxing on a beach in the Middle East with Sandza’s colleague Ben Childress (played by John Cassavetes). Suddenly the peace is shattered with an attack by terrorists who rush the crowded beach and attempt to shoot Peter who manages to fight several of them off before being seemingly killed in an explosion. The audience soon discover that Childress has double-crossed his friend in order to kidnap Robin and investigate his apparent telekinesis for shadowy means. Peter survives the explosion and realises what his friend has done, almost killing him with gunfire, but Childress escapes with Robin.

Fast forward a few years and we learn that Peter has been obsessively searching for his son whilst being pursued by the shadowy agency intent on killing him. At the same time, teenager Gillian Bellaver (Amy Irving, a Carrie alumni) is struggling to understand the powers she’s been gifted with and, after a few incidents involving other pupils at her school, her mother decides to put her into a special institution that has been set up to deal with those with psychic potential. The viewer discovers that the place is actually funded by Childress and his nefarious organisation but, unbeknownst to them, Peter has a mole inside the school and is hoping that Gillian will be able to help find the whereabouts of his son. After Gillian makes a connection with Robin, Peter and his compatriot stage a breakout and set off to try and rescue Robin, but it may already be too late…

The Fury is definitely one of De Palma’s better efforts, even if it’s not up there with Carrie. It features several exciting sequences, including the initial faked terrorist attack, and at least one trademark bravura slow-motion sequence that’s impeccably executed. Both Douglas and Cassavetes are excellent and Amy Irving also puts in a decent performance. The special effects mostly stand-up and it’s a thrill to see the full power of telekinesis being unleashed after having it teased at several points in Carrie (we see what happens if the power is directed at a single human body, pre-Scanners). I’m unsure who’s responsible for this poster so please get in touch if you have any ideas.

This is the B1 advance poster for the Japanese release of The Empire Strikes Back, which by 1980 was one of the most anticipated sequels in the history of cinema following the continuing international success of George Lucas’ original Star Wars (1977). This image of bad guy Darth Vader’s helmet was also used for the North American advance one sheet and is a photograph of a prop helmet created to be worn by Dave Prowse in the original trilogy. The photo shoot for this poster was apparently done by the respected poster designer and artist Bob Peak, who was responsible for many classic 70s and 80s posters, including Apocalypse Now, The Spy Who Loved Me and Superman.

This image was only used for the B1 size Japanese poster, with a photographic montage being used for the standard B2 whilst Noriyoshi Ohrai was responsible for the artwork on the superb alternative style B2, which was also printed as a B1 size poster.

To see more posters by Bob Peak in the Film on Paper collection click here.

This is the British quad for the release of John Carpenter’s 1987 horror Prince of Darkness. As well as being in the director’s chair, Carpenter wrote the soundtrack and also the screenplay under the pseudonym Martin Quatermass, which is a direct homage to Bernard Quatermass, the lead character in Hammer’s film and TV series that started with The Quatermass Experiment and that features several elements in common with Carpenter’s story. The film is the second in what the director calls his ‘Apocalypse Trilogy’ that started with The Thing (1982) and ended with In the Mouth of Madness (1994) and is the result of Carpenter’s interest in theoretical physics and atomic theory as well as the idea of an ultimate evil or ‘anti-god’ combined with the physics-based concept of matter and anti-matter.

The plot sees Los Angeles priest Father Loomis (Donald Pleasence, his character name directly referencing Halloween) invite Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong, returning from Big Trouble in Little China) and a group of his students from a local university to help him investigate a mysterious, liquid-filled canister in the basement of an abandoned church that was being guarded by an elderly priest who passed away leaving a diary and a key to the basement. Amongst the group  is Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker) a theoretical physics student and a sceptical science student called Walter (Dennis Dun, also from Big Trouble in Little China), plus several other scientist types – one of the film’s weak spots is that it fails to give any explanation or back story to characters we’re supposed to care about/have some interest in.

Something in the canister is stirring and is causing strange events such as insects swarming the church and the local homeless population, which includes rocker Alice Cooper as ‘street schizo’, behaving as a zombie-like group. One of the students, Susan (Anne Marie Howard) is possessed by a burst of liquid from the canister and begins to kill and spread the possession to other members of the group, which has clear echoes of the way The Thing moves through the Antarctic camp. Meanwhile, the rest of the group have been experiencing the same ‘tachyon transmission’ purportedly from the future and warning them of the danger they face. They soon come to realise that the container actually holds the son of an even greater evil and one that is determined to escape from the realm of anti-matter and into our world. Brian and the handful of non-possessed team members must battle to stop the anti-god from fulfilling its plans before it is too late.

The film features a creepy atmosphere helped no-end by Carpenter’s superb score – one of his very best in my opinion. Despite the aforementioned underdeveloped characters there are still several decent performances, including that of the ever-reliable Pleasence and Lisa Blount, one of the students who is instrumental in stopping the anti-god at the end of the film. The make-up and special effects still stand up well and the set and production design are also worth a mention. It might not be up there with Halloween or The Thing, but it’s still one of Carpenter’s better films and one that definitely deserves its cult reputation.

This image of the screaming, disfigured face with the bug in its mouth, as well as the church and the oozing green liquid was used around the world, including the US one sheet and (partially) on the Japanese B2.

This is the scarce international one sheet for the release of Quentin Tarantino’s half of the ill-fated Grindhouse project, Death Proof. featuring Kurt Russell as the sadistic Stuntman Mike, a former Hollywood stuntman who has rigged his 1970s muscle car with a special cage that protects him in the event of a crash making it ‘death proof’. We see what happens when Mike invites Pam (Rose McGowan), a drunken reveller for a ride and kills her with his reckless driving before smashing into a car full of her friends who he’d met earlier that evening killing them all instantly, whilst he survives with only a few minor injuries. Mike evades prosecution because all the witnesses are dead and the girls were intoxicated. Fourteen months later he tries the same trick with another bunch of girls, but he doesn’t reckon on them having a stuntwoman (Zoe Bell) in their midst and before long the tables have turned.

The project was conceived by Tarantino and fellow director (and frequent collaborator) Robert Rodriguez as a homage to the 1970s grindhouse cinemas that would show horror, sci-fi and cult b-movies, often in double or even triple bills. Grindhouse features Death Proof paired with Rodriguez’s zombie action feature Planet Terror whilst a series of fake trailers were filmed and shown before each feature began. The trailers were created especially for Grindhouse by directors including Rob Zombie, Eli Roth and Edgar Wright. One of the trailers for a film called Machete starring Danny Trejo was directed by Rodriguez and was later made into a full length feature, the sequel to which is just about to be released into cinemas in the UK.

The Grindhouse project was shepherded by Tarantino’s regular producing partner Harvey Weinstein and when the film had a near disastrous North American box-office debut, despite positive reviews, the decision was then made to split the two films apart and release them separately in cinemas in the rest of the world. Blame was placed both on the overall length of Grindhouse (three hours plus) and reports that many cinema-goers were confused by the structure and left during the credits of Planet Terror. Both films had multiple minutes added back to their length in order to justify the ticket price of a standalone feature. Two films meant that many more posters were created to market the films and there were two one sheets that were printed in the USA for use internationally – typically that means in English-speaking territories outside of North America like Singapore and Hong Kong. These are pretty scarce posters and I’ll be posting the Planet Terror version in the coming weeks.

Another of Disney’s forays into live-action filmmaking (this was actually the studio’s second PG-rated film after 1979’s The Black Hole), The Watcher in the Woods is an eerie mystery thriller that absolutely terrified me when I first watched it as a child in the 1980s. An Anglo-American co-production, the film was helmed by John Hough and English director who had proved his horror chops with the adults-only The Legend of Hell House (1973) and was chosen by the American producer Ron Miller to work on this film. Legendary Hollywood actress Bette Davis was lined up to star and the year of production coincided with her 50th in the business.

The story sees an Anglo-American family move to a manor house surrounded by thick woodland that is owned by Mrs. Aylwood (Davis). One of the daughters, Jan (played by Lynn-Holly Johnson, the real-life figure-skater who would appear in For Your Eyes Only soon after), is told she bears a striking resemblance to Mrs Aylwood’s daughter Karen who went missing 30 years earlier. Jan begins to see strange apparitions in the forest and suffers a series of unexplainable phenomena. After discovering an abandoned church in the middle of the woods, Jan finds that there’s more to Karen’s disappearance than she’s been told and it’s not long before the secret behind the ‘Watcher’ is revealed.

This American one sheet bears the signature of an artist called David J. Negrón whose official website is here and describes him as an American impressionist. Negrón was born in Texas in 1935 and later graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, which allowed him to get a job at Twentieth Century Fox as a storyboard artist and production illustrator. He went on to work on films such as Hello Dolly, Raider’s Of The Lost Ark, Dog Day Afternoon, Back to The Future III, Jurassic Park and others. His website features a gallery of examples of his movie work and includes a great image of King Kong painted for Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 version.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Diamonds are Forever is the seventh film in the long-running James Bond franchise and was the last official (EON productions) film to star arguably the greatest actor who played the spy, Sean Connery. After appearing in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service actor George Lazenby decided to leave the franchise, apparently on the advice of his agent, and the producers considered a few other actors before the then head of United Artists (David Picker) declared that he wanted Connery back and money was no object. The Scottish actor, who had previously declared he would never return to the role, demanded an unprecedented fee of £1.25m (equivalent to £23 million in 2013) and was also granted backing to produce two other films of his choice. After both sides agreed to the deal the casting was announced and Connery then donated his fee to set up the Scottish International Education Trust, which allowed artists from the country to apply for funding without having to leave Scotland.

The story starts out with Bond apparently killing his arch-enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld in revenge for the death of his new bride at the end of the previous film. The spy is then sent to investigate the mysterious murders of diamond smugglers and the theft of thousands of the precious stones. After following the trail from Amsterdam to Las Vegas, picking up a partner in smuggler Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) along the way, Bond discovers that two quirky assassins called Mr Wint and Mr Kidd (played memorably by Bruce Glover and Putter Smith) have been killing other smugglers across the world and are stockpiling diamonds for a mysterious benefactor. When Bond tracks the diamonds to their destination in a remote desert facility, he discovers that his arch enemy Blofeld is still alive and is using the diamonds to create a space laser capable of destroying targets on earth. The super spy sets out to stop the maniac’s plans and prevent him from holding the world to ransom with his new weapon.

This Japanese B2 features a montage that is unique to the poster and it includes images of Tiffany Case (on the left) and Trina Parks as the inept assassin Thumper (partnered in the film with ‘Bambi’) who is notable as being the first African-American actress to appear in a Bond film. There is also a small part of the artwork from the American one sheet that was painted by Robert McGinnis.

Shaft in Africa is the final entry in the trilogy of films featuring Blaxploitation hero Shaft (Richard Roundtree). This time the eponymous detective is kidnapped from his New York apartment and coerced into assuming the identity of a native-speaking itinerant worker. His ’employer’ wants Shaft to smash a human trafficking ring, run by the dastardly Amafi (Frank Finlay), that’s bringing African workers into Europe to exploit them. Much more of an adventure film than the previous two entries, which were pretty much entirely set in urban areas, this film was actually shot on location in Ethiopia and has less of a blaxploitation feel and more of a James Bond-style action style. Gordon Parks, the director of the previous entries, was replaced by the British director John Guillermin who would helm the box-office smash The Towering Inferno the following year.

The all-action artwork on this 30×40 poster is by the American artist John Solie who has been working as an illustrator for over 40 years. Film posters are just one aspect of his output, which also includes book and magazine covers, sculptures, portraits and work for NASA. He continues to paint today in Tucson, Arizona. Another gallery of his work can be viewed on Wrong Side of the Art. Solie also painted the art for the US poster for Shaft’s Big Score.

Here are the posters by John Solie I have collected to date.

You can view the trailer on YouTube.

An excellent portrait of Charles Bronson by the great Drew Struzan features on this poster for Borderline (1980), a film that, quite frankly, probably didn’t deserve it. This was one of a number of films that were released in the early 1980s dealing with the issue of illegal immigrants on the USA/Mexico border, including the Jack Nicholson starring The Border (1982), and it was filmed in and around actual border crossing locations. Bronson appears as patrolman Jeb Maynard whose colleague, veteran senior agent Scooter (Wilford Brimley), is brutally murdered along with a Mexican boy by Hotchkiss, an American people smuggler played by Ed Harris in his first notable film role. The FBI are brought into help with the investigation and their assertion is that drug smugglers were responsible, but Jeb and the boy’s mother believe differently so he sets out to discover the truth and bring Hotchkiss to justice.

These two reviews on IMDb appear to sum up most views on the film:

‘I love Charles Bronson, and I really wanted to love Borderline, but it’s about as exciting as a trip to the grocery store.’

‘This was the third turkey in a row for Charles Bronson, after “The White Buffalo” and “Love and Bullets”. It’s so utterly, extraordinarily dull that you may not quite make to the end. There is little plot, no action, no emotion, no humour and generally nothing to engage your interest in any way; even the supporting characters are colourless.’

Drew Struzan is an artist that needs no introduction since he worked on many of the most iconic film posters over the past 35 years. This one sheet for Borderline was one of his earlier efforts and it appeared before classic pieces like The Thing and Back to the Future. The other posters I’ve collected by Drew can be seen 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 photo style (photo in the sense that it’s a posed still from the film) British quad that was printed for the original release of the film and there is also another quad which features an illustration and that can be seen here. This design is effectively the landscape format version of the US one sheet.

A true cult horror classic, Re-Animator was based on H. P. Lovecraft‘s 1922 short story ‘Herbert West–Reanimator‘ and was director Stuart Gordon‘s first feature film. Originally planned to be a TV series set around the beginning of the 20th century, a pilot and a number of episodes were scripted by Dennis Paoli and William Norris. Eventually the trio decided to update the story to present day Chicago since the period setting was increasing production costs, and were then persuaded to make it as a feature film after Gordon was introduced to producer Brian Yuzna. The infamous horror director/producer Charles Band‘s Empire Pictures agreed to help with post-production in return for distribution rights (note the logo on this poster).

One of the reasons for the films cult success was the hiring of Jeffrey Combs to play the lead role of scientist Herbert West, which led to one of horror’s all-time great performances. Coombs’  portrayal of West is pitch-perfect, blackly comic and the film is unquestionably elevated by his presence. At the beginning of the film West’s medical student is dismissed from a Swiss University after a failed experiment to bring his dead professor back to life using a concoction he has been developing for several months.Some time later, West arrives at a New England university and immediately carries on his experiments, enlisting the help of his room mate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott). When Dan’s girlfriend Megan grows suspicious of their activity, a series of events see the body count rising and West is able to test his new serum and ‘defeat death’.

The film has brilliant, gore-heavy special effects that stand up well nearly thirty years on and it’s a perfectly paced horror that was, unusually for the time, lauded by most critics. It went on to spawn sequels and launched Gordon’s career as a horror director of note.

This is the photo style one sheet and features one of the all-time great horror tag-lines. There is also an illustration style one sheet that can be seen here.

Yes, this is the film where Vincent Gallo drives a motorbike around looking glum, crying occasionally and meeting random women before receiving an un-simulated blowjob from Chloë Sevigny. Gallo plays racer Bud Clay who is on a cross country trip to a track in California and is trying to repress memories of his one true love, Daisy (Sevigny), by meeting different women along the way. The actor was also the film’s director, screenwriter, editor and took care of almost all of the other technical details.

The film’s first cut was roughly 25 minutes longer than the one that was eventually released worldwide. Its re-editing was as a result of the savaging it received at the Cannes Film Festival. Legendary critic Roger Ebert declared the film to be the worst in the history of the festival, which saw him and Gallo enter into a war of words, with the director calling Ebert a ‘fat pig with the physique of a slave trader.’ The critic responded by paraphrasing a statement attributed to Winston Churchill, saying that ‘one day I will be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.’ When the new cut was released in the US Ebert surprised many by giving it his signature thumbs up.

For a cool $1,000,000 you can actually purchase the main man’s little swimmers, should you want to birth the next generation Gallo, whilst $50,000 will net you a night with him (ladies only).

This is the American one sheet for the original 2004 release of the film into a limited number of smaller cinemas. There’s also a one sheet that features a similar image but is mostly white (no yellow) and is often referred to as the teaser.

It’s hard to believe but Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece Pulp Fiction celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and it’s easy to forget just what an impact it has had on cinema since its release. Whilst certainly not the first film to use a nonlinear, fractured narrative, Pulp Fiction arguably introduced the idea to a wide audience and did it with incredible bravado. Few films (pre-Reservoir Dogs) had characters speaking in such rapid-fire, pop culture-aware dialogue as Tarantino’s creations and few had mixed humour and violence as casually (and cleverly) as this. Blessed with deft editing and a killer soundtrack, all the ingredients combined together to make for a worldwide critical and commercial success, and cemented Tarantino’s reputation as an auteur filmmaker.

The film marked a watershed moment for independent cinema, particularly in the way it was financed and distributed. After Tarantino and screenwriting partner Roger Avary agreed a deal with Jersey Films (the production company part-owned by Danny DeVito) which was beneficial for all parties, the team initially attempted to produce the film with Columbia Tristar. After the script was eventually rejected by them for a litany of reasons, Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax, newly acquired by Disney, stepped in and agreed to finance it. Tarantino’s producing partner Lawrence Bender had the canny idea of paying each of the main actors the same amount per week, no matter their status. Part of the film’s success was in its superb casting of familiar faces playing against type, including Bruce Willis as an amoral boxer, John Travolta as an ageing hitman (Travolta’s career saw a huge boost on the back of this film) and Uma Thurman as a drug-taking wife of a mob boss.

It was an image of a sultry, raven-haired Uma Thurman that was used in (virtually) every market around the world and made for one of the most iconic one sheets of the 1990s (in both teaser and final style formats). For its hugely successful release in the UK, Miramax decided to use the same image of Thurman but adapted it to the landscape format, created a unique title design and also incorporated the dictionary definitions of Pulp and Fiction seen at the start of the film. Note that the packet of Lucky Strikes which had caused the teaser one sheet to be infamously withdrawn (after the cigarette manufacturer complained about its inclusion) has been digitally manipulated to obscure the logo as it was on the final one sheet.