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.

Writer/director and B-movie legend Larry Cohen is responsible for this 1982 horror film that harks back to the popular ‘giant beast’ monster movies of the 1950s. Commonly known as ‘Q: The Winged Serpent‘, or simply ‘Q’, the story is set in New York City and follows two police detectives (played by David Carradine and Richard Roundtree) investigating a series of brutal sacrificial slayings in which victims’ hearts and skins have been removed. They are also struggling to explain the mysterious deaths of people snatched from high up on rooftops by what is reported to be a flying lizard.

At the same time, a luckless hoodlum called Jimmy Quinn (played with gusto by Michael Moriarty) is on the run from murderous mobsters and discovers a giant egg hidden in the crown of the famous Chrysler Building, which apparently belongs to the deadly creature. It becomes apparent that the cult behind the sacrificial murders has managed to resurrect an Aztec god known as Quetzalcoatl, a flying lizard with huge talons and a taste for human flesh, and the detectives must battle to stop both the cult members and defeat the beast before New York City is lost.

This quad was designed and illustrated by the late, great British artist Tom Chantrell whose dynamic and colourful work featured on hundreds of posters over a forty year period. It features the Chrysler Building, a famous New York landmark that also appears on the international one sheet, painted by Bob Gleason. Note that the lady in peril is wearing quite a bit less on this quad than she is on the one sheet – Chantrell always had an eye for adding extra bits of titillation to his artwork.

Tom Chantrell sadly passed away in 2001 but last year his widow Shirley launched his official website, which showcases his work and features a great biography written by Sim Branaghan, author of the must-own book British Film Posters. Chantrell illustrated many classic poster designs, including several Hammer posters such as the brilliant quad for ‘One Million Years B.C.’, and he was also responsible for the iconic Star Wars quad, the artwork of which ended up being used around the globe.

I have a number of other designs by Chantrell on this site and you can read an exclusive interview with Shirley by clicking here.

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.

This is the poster for the Czech release of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 crime-drama/musical The Cotton Club. Legendary producer Robert Evans had originally planned to direct the film and the initial story and screenplay had been written by Mario ‘The Godfather’ Puzo, but Evans had a last-minute change of heart and asked Coppola to step in. Puzo’s script was apparently re-written by the author William Kennedy who ended up writing multiple drafts and ended up with a shared screenplay credit along with Coppola. Production was apparently beset with problems, including a spiralling budget that was provided by various parties including Las Vegas casino owners, an Arab arms dealer and a vaudeville performer. In typical fashion, Evans was determined to make the film as extravagant as possible and constructed ‘no expense spared’ sets, hiring some of the best technicians in the business at eye-watering figures.

Another likely reason that filming costs ballooned is the impressive ensemble cast that Evans and the studio were able to hire, which included the likes of Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins and Gregory Hines. Loosely based on the real club of the same name that was located in New York’s Harlem neighbourhood, the story follows the machinations of various characters involved with the club in the 1930s, including Gere’s musician Dixie Dwyer whose dealings with the mobster owner of the club Owney Madden (Hoskins) sees him advance his career as an actor whilst having an affair with the girlfriend of the local kingpin, Dutch Schultz (James Remar). The film also follows Sandman Williams (Hines) a local dancer who falls for the club’s star performer Lila Rose Dwyer (Lonette McKee). Nicolas Cage appears as Dixie’s violent, racist brother Vincent who joins Schultz’s gang.

The film features several musical sequences and is soundtracked by several of the most popular jazz tunes of the era. Sadly, Coppola and Evans clashed regularly during the production and at a certain point the director apparently barred the producer from visiting the set. The Cotton Club was declared a flop when it opened in fourth place at the box-office and would eventually go on to recoup less than half of its reported budget of just under $60 million. Despite tepid critical reception the film was nevertheless nominated for several awards (only winning for Best Costumes at the BAFTAs). The film has something of a cult following today, with many fans speaking highly of the film’s production values and well-staged musical numbers. Rumours of a director’s cut release were ignited last year when Coppola declared that a restoration was in the works, reinstating several musical sequences that were apparently cut for its initial release.

This Czech poster was designed by Jan Weber about whom I’ve been able to discover very little, other than that he was active from the 1970s to the 1990s and mainly specialised in posters for Hollywood films being released in Czechoslovakia. The site Terry Posters has a gallery of many of his posters.

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 full width of the poster. One such actor was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the star of several action flicks including 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.

The excellent artwork on this German A1 was painted by the celebrated Italian artist Renato Casaro who worked on a significant number of German posters during the 1980s and 1990s. In March 2014 I published a lengthy interview I carried out with Renato and that can be read by clicking here. The other posters I’ve collected by the artist can be seen by clicking here.

Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise is arguably one of cinema’s greatest cult oddities. Part musical, part horror and loosely based on Phantom of the Opera and the classic tale of Faust, the film has an electric atmosphere helped no end by the performance of the late William Finley as the unlucky music composer Winslow Leach who falls foul of the twisted producer Swan (Paul Williams, himself a noted musician and composer). A twisted satire of the state of the music business of the time, the film features a superb soundtrack written by Williams, which is a mix of surf pop, 70s glam rock and romantic ballads.

When Swan sees Winslow performing his music at a small concert he convinces the composer to sell his tunes to him to be used at the opening of his new club, The Paradise. Instead Swan has one of his henchmen steal the music, beat Winslow up and frame him for drug possession, sending the mild mannered musician to the brutal Sing Sing prison. Months later Winslow hears that one of Swan’s bands is to release a record based on his music and breaks out of the prison in a frenzied rage. After heading to Swan’s Death Records factory he tries to sabotage a record press but accidentally falls head-first into it, severely scarring his face and damaging his vocal chords. Escaping from the police, he makes his way to the Paradise where he dons a cape and a beaked mask and becomes the Phantom of The Paradise. Soon he discovers the secret behind Swan’s success and sets out to stop him at all costs.

The film was met with mixed critical reviews and was a worldwide box-office flop, with the only exceptions being in Japan and, bizarrely, Winnipeg in Canada where the film played at the same cinema for months. One of the key reasons for the film’s disastrous commercial performance was the way it had initially been marketed by studio Twentieth Century Fox who had created a campaign that emphasised the rock aspect of the film with the intention of drawing in teenage music fans. The plan backfired, however, when initial audiences realised how negative the portrayal of the music industry is in the film was and how it was effectively sending up the very thing they were fans of.

The brilliant fan site The Swan Archives, curated by Ari Kahan, features a thorough history of the promotion of the film and shows the initial two styles of poster, one of which was designed by Anthony Goldschmidt and illustrated by the late John Alvin and also featured on the album cover. As Kahan notes:

‘The involvement of A&M records (which issued the soundtrack, and which more or less owned the exclusive rights to Paul Williams’ life at the time) in the co-marketing campaign with 20th Century Fox meant that the film was initially pitched towards what A&M and Fox believed to be the teens-through-college “rock music demographic.” John Alvin’s beautiful painted graphics on the posters and soundtrack album emphasised guitars, keyboards, microphones, patch cords, and other musical ephemera, and a photorealistic depiction of songwriter/star Paul Williams, signalling the studio’s intention to rely heavily on Williams’ existing fame in its promotion of the film.’

The rest of the ill-conceived initial campaign is detailed on the Swan Archives page linked to above. After a disastrous few months at the box office, the film’s producer Ed Pressman convinced the studio to allow him to reposition the film with a revised marketing campaign. Kahan explains:

‘Pressman went into action by launching a second campaign, in mid-1975, which tagged the film as “The Most Highly Acclaimed Horror Phantasy of Our Time,” pushing the horror angle and perennial plot line, and downplaying the music. De Palma, Finley, and Graham were made extremely available to give interviews to Castle of Frankenstein, Monster World, and every other horror magazine that would make time for them’

As part of this second campaign Pressman commissioned noted comic book artist Richard Corben to illustrate a new poster image and fellow comic book artist Neal Adams provided an initial concept sketch from which Corben worked (according to Kahan, ‘Adams drew the sketch for free, to aid Pressman in pitching a never-realised Phantom of the Paradise companion comic book, which he hoped might result in some paying work’) . The new painting emphasised the horror aspect and the Phantom’s mangled face and completely downplayed Williams’ presence – you can just spot him at the bottom of the marquee (see the close-up image). The new campaign proved to be more successful but as Kahan notes:

‘The film gradually took on life, bringing in decent (though never great) box office and some positive reviews. As De Palma put it, “When we revised the campaign in the U.S and made it seem more like The Phantom of the Opera than a horror/rock film, we got an entirely different response.”‘

For more on the film’s promotional travails, I again urge you to check out the excellent Swan Archives site. Corben also painted the style B one sheet for the Heavy Metal film, the magazine of which he’d been involved with for several years.

This is the British quad for the original release of the third film in George A. Romero‘s ‘Dead’ series, Day of the Dead. In a similar situation to Dawn of the Dead (released 7 years earlier) this film had no returning characters from the previous entry due to rights issues, so it’s set in the same universe after the zombie outbreak but shares no continuity with the earlier films. Romero’s original vision for the ‘Day…’ was scaled back to due to budget constraints, but the director has since said he’s very happy with the final product. It’s a notably darker, bleaker effort than the fan favourite ‘Dawn’ but features a unique setting, memorable characters and some of the best special effects of the entire series, courtesy of the legendary Tom Savini.

The story follows a group of survivors who have holed-up in a military bunker in Florida and make regular trips around the area looking for survivors. Underground a small group of scientists and technical specialists, including Dr Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille) and Dr Logan (Richard Liberty), known as ‘Frankenstein’, are working to discover the cause of the outbreak and discover if anything can be done to make the zombies more docile. An uneasy truce is maintained by the scientists and other specialists like helicopter pilot John (Terry Alexander), with a group of soldiers ostensibly there to protect them and deliver them test subjects from a fenced off area of the base. The soldiers are led by the psychotic Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) who discovers that Dr Frankenstein has been secretly carrying out experiments using dead soldiers, including training a zombie known as Bub (Sherman Howard) to follow commands. At this point the truce is shattered and a series of events see the base overrun with the undead, forcing Sarah and the others to try to escape the carnage before its too late.

This image of a wall of zombie faces is (with thanks to a site reader) actually a photograph of the back wall of the film’s production makeup room. It features a close up of some of the 100+ zombie masks that were created for the film during a break in filming (when they were waiting to be applied to the extras playing the zombies). This explains why the faces are distorted and without eyes. The same imagery also featured on one of four Japanese B2s. The US one sheet is markedly different and an iconic horror film poster in its own right.  Note that the tagline references the alternate international title for Dawn of the Dead, ‘Zombies’.

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.

This is the original US one sheet for the release of The Man With the Golden Gun, the ninth James Bond film and the second to star Roger Moore as the legendary secret agent. It’s definitely one of the weaker films in the long-running series and certainly not Moore’s finest hour, but it has several elements that make it worth watching, including a host of interesting far-eastern locales, strong production design and a very memorable bad guy in the shape of Christopher Lee‘s Scaramanga. Guy Hamilton returned as director for the fourth and last time in the series and the script, written by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz, takes place amidst the climate of energy worries that followed the 1973 oil crisis. It also reflected the then craze for martial arts movies that followed the release of films like Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon with several kung-fu sequences and exotic locations.

The story starts as MI6 receive a golden bullet with 007 etched into it, leading them to believe that Bond’s life is at threat from the notorious international assassin Scaramanga so they decide to remove him from active duty. The agent was on the trail of a scientist who it is thought could help with the energy crisis and he is frustrated to have been stopped in his pursuit so he sets off to find Scaramanga without official approval. Bond follows a trail of assassinations which lead him from Macau to Bangkok and eventually to Scaramanga’s private island hideout where he discovers that the master assassin has an interest in solar power. Soon Bond is challenged to a duel to the death and he must use his wits to survive the traps set around Scaramanga’s hideout. Dwarf actor Hervé Villechaize has a memorable role as the assassin’s servant Nick Nack, and Clifton James returns as the (perhaps ill-advised) comic relief figure of Sheriff J.W. Pepper, as featured in Live and Let Die.

The artwork on this poster also features on the US one sheet and was painted by Robert McGinnis who is responsible for some of the best James Bond posters, including Thunderball, Live and Let Die and Diamonds are Forever as well as multiple other classic posters from the 60s, 70s and 80s. He was born in Cincinatti, Ohio in 1926 and was given an apprenticeship at Walt Disney studios before studying fine art at Ohio State University. After serving in the Merchant Marines during World War II, he started work in the advertising industry and later moved into painting book jackets for several notable authors, as well as editorial artwork for the likes of Good Housekeeping, TIME and The Saturday Evening Post. McGinnis’ first film poster was the now iconic one sheet for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, painted in 1962, and he went on to paint over 40 others during his career, including one for The Incredibles in 2004.

One interesting thing about this particular poster is that it missing the ‘East/West Hemi’ text that appears on most copies of this poster and on a few other Bond posters of the era, including the Live and Let Die one sheet that’s in the Film on Paper collection. This page on Learn About Movie Posters explains what the significance of that text is. An excerpt:

[Albert] Broccoli met with [Harry] Saltzman and tried to acquire the rights but Saltzman refused to sell. They instead decided to co-produce them. [….] After some success they decided to divide the production credits and entered into a contractual agreement for top billing and so was created the Hemi’s. [….] They divided the world into hemispheres. Harry took the East Hemisphere and Albert took the West Hemisphere. So Saltzman would get the European countries and Broccoli would get the Americas.

I’m not sure why it’s missing on this copy but I’ve heard of other examples like this turning up and I’m confident it’s an original. If anyone has any ideas please get in touch.

To see the other posters I’ve collected that were painted by McGinnis click here and to see the other James Bond posters in the Film on Paper collection click here.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the memorable mix of live-action and animation, is a true 80s classic and a milestone film in several ways. Although not the first time that the two mediums had been mixed, no film had attempted it on this scale before and it was the first time that iconic Warner Bros and Disney characters (Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse etc) had featured in the same film together. Based on Gary K. Wolf‘s 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, the rights were bought by the then president of the Walt Disney Company but it would be almost 7 years before filming began, during which time the project went through several creative teams. Eventually Amblin Entertainment were approached to be involved and this meant the project had the creative clout of Steven Spielberg behind it, and his presence was instrumental in getting several studios to agree to have their characters appear.

The story is set in a version of 1940s Hollywood in which human and cartoon actors exist together in the same reality, with the ‘toons’ mostly living in a section known as Toontown. The late Bob Hoskins appears as the washed-up private detective Eddie Valiant who has worked in Hollywood for years and, for reasons revealed during the film, has a loathing for toons. One day he is approached by the chaotic, slapstick-loving Roger Rabbit (voiced by Charles Fleischer) and asked to help prove his innocence after Marvin Acme, the owner of Acme Corporation and Toontown, is murdered and all fingers point to Roger. Rumours that Roger’s wife, the voluptuous Jessica Rabbit (an uncredited performance from Kathleen Turner), had been playing ‘pattycake’ with Acme don’t help and Eddie sets out to prove Roger’s innocence before the psychotic Judge Doom (a memorable performance from Christopher Lloyd) catches him and executes him via deadly ‘dip’.

This one sheet was created by a company called Kilian (owned by Jeff Kilian) and printed around the time of the film’s release for sale to collectors and fans of the film. The company was mostly active during the 1980s and early 90s and worked with film studios and production companies to produce officially licensed alternative posters and limited-edition prints (LAMP features more information about them). They produced several for Roger Rabbit, including two printed on gold mylar (glossy plastic), of which this is the style D version. The other styles can be seen in emovieposter.com’s auction history.

Emovieposter also note that this particular print of style D was actually done in error and there are two versions of it out there:

Also note that this is the ultra-rare “red dress” variant of the Style D poster! These posters were sent as a sample to Disney (who insisted that the dress be changed to pink) and less than 100 were printed!

This is Thai poster for the release of the third film in George A. Romero‘s ‘Dead’ series, Day of the Dead. In a similar situation to Dawn of the Dead (released 7 years earlier) this film had no returning characters from the previous entry due to rights issues, so it’s set in the same universe after the zombie outbreak but shares no continuity with the earlier films. Romero’s original vision for the ‘Day…’ was scaled back to due to budget constraints, but the director has since said he’s very happy with the final product. It’s a notably darker, bleaker effort than the fan favourite ‘Dawn’ but features a unique setting, memorable characters and some of the best special effects of the entire series, courtesy of the legendary Tom Savini.

The story follows a group of survivors who have holed-up in a military bunker in Florida and make regular trips around the area looking for survivors. Underground a small group of scientists and technical specialists, including Dr Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille) and Dr Logan (Richard Liberty), known as ‘Frankenstein’, are working to discover the cause of the outbreak and discover if anything can be done to make the zombies more docile. An uneasy truce is maintained by the scientists and other specialists like helicopter pilot John (Terry Alexander), with a group of soldiers ostensibly there to protect them and deliver them test subjects from a fenced off area of the base. The soldiers are led by the psychotic Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) who discovers that Dr Frankenstein has been secretly carrying out experiments using dead soldiers, including training a zombie known as Bub (Sherman Howard) to follow commands. At this point the truce is shattered and a series of events see the base overrun with the undead, forcing Sarah and the others to try to escape the carnage before its too late.

This Thai poster features a montage of images from the film, including the infamous dream sequence where zombie hands burst through the wall trying to grab Dr Bowman. The artist responsible is known as Jinda and, other than some other Thai film posters he’s painted, I could find little information about him. If anyone knows more biographical details about Jinda, please get in touch.

This is the UK quad for the release of Diva, which was the first full-length feature from Jean-Jacques Beineix, the French director whose most internationally famous film is Betty Blue (1986). Beineix is seen as the originator of the French film movement that became known as ‘cinéma du look‘, which was described as prioritising style over substance and spectacle over narrative. Luc Besson (Subway, Nikita) and Leos Carax (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf) were the other key directors and their films often featured doomed love affairs, scenes in the Paris Metro and plenty of contemporary pop-culture references.

Based on the novel of the same by Swiss author Daniel Odier the film is set in Paris and tells the story of a young mild-mannered postman called Jules (Frédéric Andréi) who has an obsession with a celebrated opera singer called Cynthia Hawkins. The singer has never had one of her performances officially recorded, believing that music like hers should only exist in the moment for the audience watching. Jules attends a performance and illicitly makes a perfect recording before meeting her backstage and stealing the dress she performed in. A few days later Jules inadvertently gets drawn into a criminal conspiracy after a desperate woman on the run from hitmen, including Dominique Pinon‘s Le curé (as seen on this poster), drops a cassette into his postbag. The tape implicates the local police chief in an international smuggling ring and soon Jules has not only the hitmen after him but also a shady pair of Taiwanese men who want the recording of the opera singer. Luckily, Jules has help in the form of a mysterious bohemian called Gorodish (Richard Bohringer) and his Vietnamese-French muse Alba (Thuy An Luu).

As progenitor of the ‘cinéma du look‘ movement the film is visually stunning throughout and features excellent use of several Paris locations, including a memorable chase sequence on the Metro and a great scene inside a giant abandoned factory. The story may come second to the visuals but it’s still an excellent watch and rightfully garnered plenty of critical plaudits on its release in France and then later in the US and the UK.

This UK quad was printed for the legendary British distribution (and later production) company Palace Pictures and, like their quad for Evil Dead, features a flash indicating that the film was available on video. I believe the first time this film was released in the UK was in 1982 and it’s likely that Palace gave the film a limited cinema release as well as making it available on VHS. Friend of the site John Costello confirmed that the film received a release on VHS on September 25th 1982.

The design and illustration of the poster, which is actually of a shot in the film where Jules’ bike helmet is seen on a mannequin, is credited on the poster to ‘Pens’, about whom I’ve been unable to find any details. If anyone knows more about the designer I’d appreciate the info.

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 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 poster printed for the release of the film in Thailand, with a painting by the artist known as Kwow that was clearly based on two of American artist Dan Goozee’s paintings for the film. The main figures and some of the background is a repaint of the art on the the final Moonraker US one sheet with some of the elements from the international style B one sheet. I’ve been unable to find out anything about Kwow beyond other posters he worked on so if anyone has any more details please get in touch.

The other Moonraker posters I’ve collected can be seen here.

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 C and there’s also the style A and style B. There’s a signature that looks like ‘Dino’ at the bottom of the art (see picture 5) but if anyone knows which artist this belongs to please get in touch.

Check out the bonkers original trailer on YouTube.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A striking design features on this German poster for the 1975 re-release of one of the greatest war films ever released, 1963’s The Great Escape. Director John Sturges (Magnificent Seven) helmed the film and it’s based on the 1950 non-fiction book of the same name, written by Paul Brickhill, which tells the story of a mass escape by allied prisoners from the high-security Stalag Luft III prison in Nazi Germany. Although partly fictionalised, many of the events depicted in the film did occur and the filmmakers only changed certain events and characters to add to the film’s commercial appeal.

An absolutely star-studded affair, the film features many of the finest male actors of the day, including Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough and Donald Pleasence. American actor Charles Bronson also appears as one of the prisoners and his popularity in Europe at the time of this 1975 re-release explains why he’s given equal billing on the poster alongside McQueen. Despite the roster of big names it will undoubtedly always be known as McQueen’s film since his turn as Virgil ‘The Cooler King’ Hilts, the cocky, determined Air Force captain, is really the centre of the film. It was McQueen’s image that was used to promote the film on various posters around the world. 

I’m unsure why the film was re-released in the then West Germany in 1975 and am also unsure who was responsible for the design and art on this A1 poster. If anyone has any ideas please get in touch.

Anyone who’s seen Steven Spielberg‘s 1977 sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind will know just how erroneous this painting by the Polish artist and designer Andrzej Pagowski is in representing the aliens seen in the film, but to me that’s part of its charm. It certainly wasn’t the first time that a Polish poster artist chose to reinterpret a creature from a film they were tasked with creating advertising material for, although Pagowski seems particularly fond of doing so as can be seen with his poster for Ridley Scott’s Alien, amongst others.

Spielberg had been developing Close Encounters for several years, with the origins stretching back to his youth and an early fascination with sci-fi and UFOs, but when Jaws became a critical and box-office behemoth in 1975, he was given creative carte blanche by the studio Columbia with whom he had negotiated a deal to develop a sci-fi film. The film’s Wikipedia page details the multiple iterations the screenplay went through, including a draft by Paul (Taxi Driver) Schrader, but the final script was written by Spielberg (with uncredited help from Jerry Belson). The director later revealed that he had been warned off making a film on the subject by both the US government as well as NASA, with the latter reportedly writing him a 20 page letter advising against it. This only served to fuel Spielberg’s passion for the project.

The film begins in the Sonoran desert with French scientist Claude Lacombe (legendary French director François Truffaut) and a group of US government scientists rushing to the site where a group of World War II-era planes that went missing mid-flight 30 years earlier appear overnight without explanation. They later find a ship that went missing in 1925 in the Gobi desert whilst an American air traffic control team overhears two airline pilots discussing a near-miss with an unidentified flying object, but decline to officially report it.

In Indiana, electrical technician Roy Neary (a memorable performance by Richard Dreyfuss) has a close encounter with a UFO whilst responding to a state-wide power outage. He soon becomes obsessed with an image he keeps seeing in his head and his erratic behaviour soon alienates his wife and kids. Neary and a group of others who have come into contact with the unidentified visitors, including single-mum Jillian (Melinda Dillon) whose young son was abducted one night, converge on Devils Tower in Wyoming. There the government have set up a site in preparation for the anticipated arrival of the alien’s mothership and no one is prepared for what happens next.

The film was another critical and commercial success for Spielberg, earning almost $340 million on a $18 million production budget. It would go on to win multiple awards and quickly entered the cultural zeitgeist, sparking the imagination of millions around the world who agreed it’s unlikely that we’re alone in the universe.

Andrzej Pagowski is a prolific film poster artist who was born in Warsaw in 1953 and studied at the celebrated University of Fine Arts in Poznań, graduating in 1978 under the tutorship of the noted artist Waldemar Świerzy. In 1990 he started his own graphic design studio called Studio P, which he developed into an advertising agency by 1993. According to the biography on his official site, Pagowski has illustrated over 1000 posters during his career and has also done work for books, magazines and music covers. In addition, he is also a TV and theatre stage designer and a screenwriter. Undoubtedly a man of many talents!

Pagowski’s official site features an extensive gallery of his work, including several of the posters. Polishposter.com also features multiple pages worth of his movie posters and this culture.pl article is well worth a read too.

Artwork by the great Drew Struzan features on this one sheet for the release of the 1982 crime drama I, the Jury. Based on a novel of the same name by the late American author Mickey Spillane the story was previously brought to the screen in 1953 (and in 3D to boot). This version features several story elements that aren’t in the original novel.

The screenplay was written by B-movie legend Larry Cohen who was original set to direct but left the production after one week of filming when it became clear that the budget was already out of control. Cohen is the writer and director of films like Q: The Winged Serpent and The Stuff but has concentrated on screenwriting during the 1980s and 2000s. Cohen was replaced by Richard T. Heffron, perhaps best known for helming Futureworld, the sequel to Westworld.

Armand Assante plays detective Mike Hammer who discovers an old detective buddy of his, Jack Williams, has been shot and killed and he sets out to catch who was responsible. The trail leads him to a secretive sex therapy clinic that’s headed up by Dr Bennett (Barbara Carrera). Hammer discovers that Jack was on an undercover mission in the clinic and that’s what cost him his life. Before long the detective realises that he’s uncovered a conspiracy involving a rogue element of the CIA and the New York mafia who will both stop at nothing to keep their secret under wraps. 

Drew Struzan is an artist who barely needs an introduction given that he painted many of the most iconic film posters of all time, including several for Star Wars, Indiana Jones and a slew of other beloved classics like The Thing and The Goonies. The artist’s own site features 4 pages of his work for films and Drew also worked in other areas, including product marketing, book and magazine covers, editorial and multiple paintings as a fine artist. Drew declared that he’d retired in 2008 but has worked on a handful of special paintings since then, including one to announce the most recent Star Wars film in 2015.

To see a gallery of the other posters by Drew that I’ve collected click here.

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

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

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

An action-packed and colourful montage by the artist Tongdee features on this Thai poster for the release of the 1991 sci-fi thriller Timebomb. Produced by Raffaella De Laurentiis, the daughter of the legendary Italian producer Dino, the film was helmed by Avi Nesher, an Israeli producer, screenwriter and director. American actor Michael Biehn was chosen for the lead role after the director saw his performance in James Cameron’s The Abyss (1989) and British actress Patsy Kensit (who’s now mostly retired from acting) also appears. The plot is described thusly on Wikipedia:

Mild-mannered watchmaker Eddy Kay (Biehn) runs into a burning building to save a trapped woman and is featured in the news as a result. Watching the news, Colonel Taylor (Richard Jordan) is shocked to see Eddy, whom he had assumed to be dead. A game of cat and mouse begins as Eddy, with the help of psychiatrist Dr. Anna Nolmar (Patsy Kensit), tries to discover his past and why they want him dead.Eddy and Dr. Nolmar discover that he was part of a secret government program to create assassins. Using various sensory deprivation and brainwashing techniques, the assassins could be sent to infiltrate other organisations and facilities undetected and carry out programmed missions. Eddy manages to capture and interrogate one of the female assassins (Tracy Scoggins), finding out the Colonel’s current assassination plan. He then plots to confront Colonel Taylor and put an end to the assassination program once and for all.

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

This is the poster for the German release of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 crime-drama/musical The Cotton Club. Legendary producer Robert Evans had originally planned to direct the film and the initial story and screenplay had been written by Mario ‘The Godfather’ Puzo, but Evans had a last-minute change of heart and asked Coppola to step in. Puzo’s script was apparently re-written by the author William Kennedy who ended up writing multiple drafts and ended up with a shared screenplay credit along with Coppola. Production was apparently beset with problems, including a spiralling budget that was provided by various parties including Las Vegas casino owners, an Arab arms dealer and a vaudeville performer. In typical fashion, Evans was determined to make the film as extravagant as possible and constructed ‘no expense spared’ sets, hiring some of the best technicians in the business at eye-watering figures.

Another likely reason that filming costs ballooned is the impressive ensemble cast that Evans and the studio were able to hire, which included the likes of Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins and Gregory Hines. Loosely based on the real club of the same name that was located in New York’s Harlem neighbourhood, the story follows the machinations of various characters involved with the club in the 1930s, including Gere’s musician Dixie Dwyer whose dealings with the mobster owner of the club Owney Madden (Hoskins) sees him advance his career as an actor whilst having an affair with the girlfriend of the local kingpin, Dutch Schultz (James Remar). The film also follows Sandman Williams (Hines) a local dancer who falls for the club’s star performer Lila Rose Dwyer (Lonette McKee). Nicolas Cage appears as Dixie’s violent, racist brother Vincent who joins Schultz’s gang.

The film features several musical sequences and is soundtracked by several of the most popular jazz tunes of the era. Sadly, Coppola and Evans clashed regularly during the production and at a certain point the director apparently barred the producer from visiting the set. The Cotton Club was declared a flop when it opened in fourth place at the box-office and would eventually go on to recoup less than half of its reported budget of just under $60 million. Despite tepid critical reception the film was nevertheless nominated for several awards (only winning for Best Costumes at the BAFTAs). The film has something of a cult following today, with many fans speaking highly of the film’s production values and well-staged musical numbers. Rumours of a director’s cut release were ignited last year when Coppola declared that a restoration was in the works, reinstating several musical sequences that were apparently cut for its initial release.

This German poster was illustrated by Renato Casaro, an Italian with a prolific movie poster output that lasted over 35 years. He began his career in 1953, aged 19, at the famous Studio Favalli in Rome and would go 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 posters used in multiple countries, including Japan, Germany, USA 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. In March 2014 I published an exclusive interview with Renato and it can be read by clicking here. The other posters I’ve collected by Renato Casaro are here.

Striking artwork by the British artist Vic Fair on this quad poster for the release of the 1975 film Inserts. The film was the debut film of writer/director John Byrum, an American who appears to have spent quite a lot of time writing, producing and directing TV shows, although his last credit was for Duets (2000). The film is set in Hollywood in the 1930s and deals with actors and directors who were struggling to make the transition from silent films into ‘talkies’ so instead turned to making pornography for a living. Rather unusually the film was shot in the style of a stage play, on one set and in real time, with only five actors in total. The cast is rather impressive and features Richard Dreyfuss (the same year that Jaws was released), Jessica Harper (Suspiria) and the late Bob Hoskins in one of his first major film roles. The plot is described thusly on IMDb:

A once-great silent film director, unable to make the transition to the new talkies, lives as a near-hermit in his Hollywood home, making cheap, silent sex films, and suffering in the knowledge of his sexual impotence, and apathetic about the plans to demolish his home to make way for a motorway. His producer and his producer’s girlfriend come by to see how he is doing (and to supply heroin to the actress as her payment). The girlfriend stays to watch them filming, and is deeply impressed by his methods. When the actress goes to the bathroom, and dies there of an overdose, the girlfriend takes her place in the film. Then the producer returns…

Sadly the film was a critical and commercial failure on its release, not helped by the fact that it was given a very prohibitive X certificate in the US, which was later downgraded to NC-17 after a battle with the sensors that Dreyfuss himself was involved in. The user reviews on IMDb are a little less damning than the professional critics were at the time of its cinema release.

This quad poster was both designed and painted by Vic Fair who is one the most important characters ever to work in British film marketing. He is responsible for several iconic posters, including The Man Who Fell To Earth, posters for Hammer horrors like Vampire Circus, and the withdrawn advance one sheet for A View to a Kill. I interviewed Vic for this site and that article can be viewed by clicking here.

Note that there are also at least two other styles of British quads for the release of Inserts, including this style B one (image taken from Moviepostermem.com) which was based on Vic’s design but was painted by the celebrated Italian artist Arnaldo Putzu.

Unique artwork by the Thai artist Tongdee Panumas features on this Thai poster for the release of Superman in 1978 (although the release date in Thailand was likely later). Whilst there had been several other superhero films released over the preceding decades, including three Superman ones, this is often considered to presage the hugely popular franchises of today, including Marvel’s Cinematic Universe and DC’s new crop of films. The Superman character had been invented in 1933 by two high school students, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who would go on to sell their creation to the original incarnation of DC Comics (then called Action Comics) in 1938.

The first Superman film appeared exactly 30 years before this one and was actually a 15 chapter serial that dealt with the character’s origin story, from his birth on the dying planet of Krypton to his eventual assumption of the guise of mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent in the city of Metropolis. The 1978 film tackled the same origin story and was in development for around four years after Alexander and Ilya Salkind, a father and son producing team, negotiated the rights from DC in 1974. The Godfather scribe Mario Puzo was hired to write the script and the hunt for a suitable director took almost three years before Richard Donner was eventually selected. The producers decided to film Superman and its sequel back-to-back, but tensions during the production saw the latter’s production put on hold to focus on the first film. Puzo’s script was apparently completely retooled by Donner and an uncredited Tom Mankiewicz.

The casting of Superman was as protracted as the hunt for a director and several A-list actors were offered the part before the production team decided to instead go with the relatively unknown Christopher Reeve. The choice would be richly rewarded, both in financial terms but also in the amounts of critical praise Reeve would garner over the months following the films release. Any doubts about the film being a schlocky retread of previous superhero films were put to bed by the casting of the likes of Marlon Brando (taking a then record salary with profits percentage totalling $19m) as Superman’s father Jor-El, Gene Hackman as the villainous Lex Luthor and Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. 

The film begins with the destruction of Krypton and Kal-El’s (Superman) parents sending their infant son off into space to land on Earth in the fictional town of Smallville in Kansas. The boy is found and raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent as their own son (whom they name Clark) and the couple vow to keep his burgeoning powers a secret. When he reaches 18, following the death of Jonathan, Clark hears a psychic call and travels to the Arctic with a crystal he finds in the craft that took him to earth. There the crystal builds the Fortress of Solitude where a hologram of Jor-El teaches his son about his origins and the extent of his powers. After 12 years of training Clark heads to Metropolis and takes a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet newspaper where he meets Lois Lane, a fellow reporter. Soon after he begins using his powers in public for the first time with heroic rescues and acts of crime prevention proving to Metropolis that there is a superhero in their midst.

The nefarious plans of Lex Luthor threaten the lives of everyone on the West Coast of America and Superman must act to stop him, however the master criminal learns of Superman’s weakness when it comes to the radioactive element Kryptonite which, as the name suggests, comes from his home planet. At the time the film was the most expensive made, with a budget of $55 million, but it ended up as a huge box-office success and earned over $300m during its cinema run. The then groundbreaking special effects were particularly praised and the film was able to capitalise on cinema audiences’ appetite for science-fiction and fantasy following the release of films such as Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind a year earlier. Critics lavished the film with praise and the sequel was quickly put into turnaround by the producers, although things didn’t exactly work out smoothly for most involved.

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

Note that the scenes from the film depicted towards the bottom of the poster also appear in much more detail on a series of Thai lobby posters that I plan to add to the site in the near future. Elements of this poster are of course based on the classic US poster by Bob Peak that features the Superman logo against blue sky and clouds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A striking design features on this Japanese B2 for the release of the 1978 psychological horror, Magic. The film’s screenplay was written by the celebrated novelist, playwright and screenwriter William Goldman. It’s based on the novel of the same name that Goldman had written and released two years earlier, and the producer Joseph E. Levine paid $1m for the rights. Levine hired Richard Attenborough to direct, with whom he’d just completed the war epic A Bridge Too Far. Then the actor Anthony Hopkins, a collaborator of both producer and director (including their last film), was brought onboard to play the lead character.

Hopkins plays Charles “Corky” Withers, a man determined to make a career out of being stage magician. We first see him flop with an act that involves card tricks performed in front of a disinterested audience. The film then jumps a year and Corky has found great success by involving a ventriloquist dummy into his act. A powerful agent called Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) plans to make an even bigger success of Corky’s act by getting him a slot on prime time TV. However, no one realises that Corky is mentally unstable and his dummy, named Fats, is gaining control over his master.

When it’s suggested that he undergo a medical check to prepare for the TV show, Corky escapes the city and heads to the Catskills mountains where he grew up. There he rekindles a friendship he had with a high school crush called Peggy (Ann-Margret) who is trapped in a loveless marriage with Corky’s old friend Duke (Ed Lauter). Corky begins to relax and is relieved to be away from the pressure of his act, but when Greene appears to convince him to get help to treat his condition, things go awry and Fats acts to protect ‘himself’ with fatal consequences.

The film was a critical success and Hopkins received award nominations for his performance, whilst Goldman won an award for his screenplay in 1979.

The design on this poster is unique to the Japanese market and the B1 version of the poster is nearly identical. The close-up of Fats the dummy at the bottom of the poster was the main image used in the US and UK to promote the film.