A detailed and colourful illustration on this poster for the Japanese release of Disney’s live-action oddity, The Black Hole. It’s a fairly uncommon size but one that suits the illustration perfectly. Make sure you click the detail thumbnails to see it in its full glory.

The film focuses on the crew of a ship (the USS Palomino) returning from a deep-space exploration mission that discovers a black hole with an apparently derelict ship drifting nearby. After docking with the ship (The long-lost USS Cygnus – as featured on this poster) the crew meets the commander Doctor Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) and his team of robots, but there is no sign of the human crew. The Palomino’s crew, including Dr Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins) and Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), must race against time to discover the mystery behind their disappearance and exactly what Dr Reinhardt’s intentions are.

Despite an extremely hokey script and some decidedly dodgy attempts to emulate the success of Star Wars, the film has several things that make it worth a watch, including some impressive special effects (certainly notable in 1979), well-realised space scenes, a great score by the late John Barry and an excellent robot design in the form of the sinister Maximilian.

Director Edgar Wright is a fan of the film and talks about it on Trailers From Hell – video here.

The other posters I’ve collected for the film can be seen here. Check out the excellent Japanese B1 and B2 posters.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

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)

The excellent illustration on this Japanese B2 poster is credited to the illustrator Sumio Tsunoda about whom I was able to discover next to nothing. A search revealed that this cyberpunk image can also be credited to him. If anyone knows any more details about the artist please get in touch or leave a comment.

This is the photo montage style Japanese poster for the second (and best, IMO) film in the original Star Wars trilogy. Noriyoshi Ohrai was responsible for the artwork on the superb alternative style Japanese poster.

This version prominently features Cloud City, an outpost and gas mining colony floating above the planet Bespin, and the place to which Han Solo and Princess Leia flee after the battle of Hoth. Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) is the administrator of the city and an old friend of Han Solo who, unbeknownst to the crew of the Millennium Falcon, has cut a deal with Darth Vader to allow the rebels to be captured in return for continued autonomy from the Empire.

Rather brilliantly the character line-up features a Tauntaun, the bipedal reptomammal used by the rebel alliance as patrol mounts on their native planet of Hoth. Also in the line-up is the bounty hunter Boba Fett, many fans’ favourite character in the entire Star Wars universe.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for John Carpenter’s excellent supernatural horror The Fog, the next cinema release following the directors’ 1978 horror masterpiece Halloween. The film is set in the fictional Californian fishing town of Antonio Bay which is about to celebrate its centennial. What the current residents don’t know is that the town holds a terrible secret; the six original founders deliberately wrecked the Elizabeth Dane, a ship containing a wealthy man named Blake and his five companions who were all suffering from leprosy and wanted to establish a colony nearby. After plundering the wreck and stealing the gold onboard, the conspirators went on to establish Antonio Bay and deliberately covered up their actions.

As the celebrations are being prepared, a mysterious fog bank rolls off the sea which enshrouds the town and surrounding area. Off the coast, a local trawler is also enveloped and the crew subjected to an attack by mysterious glowing-eyed apparitions. Around the same time a young hitchhiker named Elizabeth Solley (Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis) is picked up on the outskirts of the town by local resident Nick Castle (genre stalwart Tom Atkins). As the pair are driving through the fog into town Nick’s vehicle mysteriously cuts out and all the windows shatter without warning. Local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (played by gorgeous ‘scream queen’ Adrienne Barbeau), who broadcasts from a lighthouse on a cliff above the town, is handed a piece of driftwood with ‘Dane’ inscribed on it. She takes it back to her studio only for the wood to trigger a strange sequence of events that culminates with a mysterious voice intoning that ‘six must die’. Over the next few hours the town is subjected to a series of terrifying attacks as Blake and his crew return from their watery graves to claim six souls in revenge for their treatment at the hands of the town’s founders.

The lighthouse featured in the film is actually the Point Reyes lighthouse which is situated to the north of San Francisco in California. In 2010 I visited the lighthouse and it’s an incredibly spooky place, even in bright sunshine. There is a constantly sounding foghorn which is used to warn ships away from a series of underwater rocks just off the coast. I spotted a series of whales moving past the point whilst I was there too. It’s well worth the trip if you’re ever in that area of the world.

I also have the Japanese B1 poster that can be viewed here.

Lurid, no-bullshit artwork by Japanese artist Seito for this 1975 schlockfest, The Giant Spider Invasion. From IMDb:

A black hole hits North Wisconsin and opens a door to other dimensions. Giant 15 meter spiders emerge from it, who have an appetite for human flesh! Dr. Jenny Langer and Dr. Vance from the NASA try to save the world.

As featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, the American TV series which lampoons bad movies, the film sounds absolutely legendary:

In a scene depicting the giant spiders attacking a little league baseball game, the spiders are obviously Volkswagen Beetles with puppet legs attached. Tread marks can be seen in several shots. 

Incredibly, the remains of these spider cars were recently found in the woods near where the scenes were shot.

“Pfantz’s steel framework was covered with black Fun Fur to make the spiders both hairy and scary. The mechanical nature of the beast required seven people to be stuffed within the cramped confines of the VW floorpan – a driver and six children to work the spider’s legs.”

Here’s the original trailer.

This is the Japanese B2 poster 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.

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.

The Outlaw Josey Wales is widely considered to be one of the best Westerns of all time, and certainly one of Clint Eastwood‘s finest efforts. Inspired by the 1972 novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales by Forrest Carter, the film was originally to be helmed by Philip Kaufman who had written the script and been through pre-production before being fired from the set a few days into filming, with Eastwood himself taking the director’s chair for the remainder of the production. Set towards the end of the American Civil War, Josey Wales (Eastwood) is a peaceful Missouri farmer who is driven to revenge after his family is brutally murdered by a sadistic Union officer and his farm razed to the ground.

Wales joins a group of pro-Confederate rebels to fight and when the war ends his group is ordered to surrender peacefully, which Wales refuses to be part of. Following the massacre of most of his group, Wales attacks and kills several men and the Union captain places a bounty on his head as he flees. On his journey, Wales reluctantly picks up a diverse bunch of companions, including two Native American Indians, and he tries his best to evade the union troops and bounty hunters on their trail and start a new life for himself. This was the first film that paired Sondra Locke with Eastwood and was the beginning of their romance that lasted for fourteen years.

This Japanese B2 is the ‘style A’ poster for the film’s release there and there are three B2s in total, including the style C, which uses the same artwork as the US one sheet. This artwork is an adapted version of the alternative artwork as seen on the US 40×60 and half-sheet posters. All original American posters were designed by Eastwood’s long-time film marketing collaborator, the great Bill Gold, and this painting was by an American artist call Roy Andersen. According to this biography Andersen passed away last year but throughout his career he was known for his work depicting Native Americans and Old West images, including cowboys and related scenes. Artnet has an extensive gallery of his works here.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of The Terminal Man, a 1972 sci-fi film from Mike Hodges, the director of Get Carter and Flash Gordon, and based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name. George Segal stars as a computer scientist who, after suffering a series of seizures and violent episodes, agrees to have a microcomputer inserted into his brain. Unfortunately the operation has some unwanted side effects and triggers his brain into craving more violent stimuli, sending him over the edge.

The film wasn’t particularly well received at the box office and was never given a UK cinema release. It was only released on DVD in 2009 as a part of the on demand Warner Archive program.

There’s a strange bit of trivia on the Wikipedia page for the film:  Terrence Malick, the director of Badlands, reportedly has written to Hodges expressing how much he loved watching The Terminal Man.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Who wouldn’t want to see a film featuring a buffalo the size of a small skyscraper?! An exciting illustration for this 1977 Bronson versus beast film, The White Buffalo, which teamed the star with director J. Lee Thompson, a frequent collaborator. The film is often described as a western version of Jaws and was one of a few ‘man versus beast’ tales filmed by legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis in the wake of Spielberg’s mega-hit (including the ’76 King Kong and Orca).

I’m not certain who the artist of this poster is but I have a feeling it may be the work of Seito, one of my favourite Japanese artists. If anyone knows for sure please get in touch. It has a few elements seen on the US one sheet by Boris Vallejo (which features an excellent tagline).

Check out the original trailer on YouTube.”…starring Charles Bronson as Wild Bill Hicock, a man who feared nothing except being afraid!’

A bit of trivia (courtesy of Wikipedia): White Buffalo are considered sacred signs by several Native American religions and have great spiritual significance for them. The animals are visited for prayers and other ceremonies. Apparently they’re so rare that they only occur in one in 10 million births.

Convoy was legendary American director Sam Peckinpah‘s penultimate film and his most commercially successful, despite it being critically mauled. It was made at the height of the craze for CB Radio/trucking films, which included the likes of Smokey and the Bandit and the TV series Movin’ On. The film’s title comes from the hit country and western novelty song of the same name by C.W. McCall and Chip Davis that was released in 1975. The song appears during the opening and intermittently during the film, with the latter version being reworked especially for the production.

It’s fair to say that the film is light on plot but Kris Kristofferson stars as long-distance trucker Martin ‘Rubber Duck’ Penwald who ends up leading the titular line of trucks across several states. Following an diner-based altercation with three police officers, including Duck’s long-term nemesis Sheriff “Dirty Lyle” Wallace (a great performance by Ernest Borgnine), a group of truckers head for the Arizona state line to escape prosecution. Lyle ups the stakes and pursues them into New Mexico whilst the convoy continues to grow. The authorities are determined to stop the truckers and Lyle uses the life of a fellow trucker to lure Duck into a trap from which it seems there’ll be no escape.

As had become standard for Peckinpah productions, the film finished over schedule and massively over budget, causing the director to be taken off post-production of the film. Studio staff worked with an editor to trim down a first cut that was over three hours long. It doesn’t particularly feel like a Peckinpah film (compared to the likes of The Wild Bunch, say) but there are certainly some well done scenes and the choices of location are excellent. Some of the editing choices aren’t great, however, with the slow-motion diner brawl being particularly excruciating to watch today. By this point in his career the director’s addiction to alcohol and drugs had become so profound that it would be another five years before he would work again.

This Japanese B2, one of two posters printed for the release in the country, features an image of the titular line of trucks, along with four head shots of what the distributors clearly decided were the key cast members.

Following only a year after the release of the original film, Friday the 13th Part 2 stuck very close to the formula that had made the first film such a surprising box office hit. The film’s original director and producer Sean S. Cunningham decided not to return for the sequel after disagreements with studio Paramount over the direction it should take. Despite the fact that the film’s original killer had been decapitated at the end, the studio wanted to continue the same storyline, whereas Cunningham and others (including make-up maestro Tom Savini) had wanted to make the series more of an anthology with different unique storylines for each instalment. 

Steve Miner, an associate-producer on the original, was tapped to direct the sequel (he would also helm part 3) and the story was set in the same area as the first film with the action taking place at another camp on Crystal Lake along from where the original set of murders happened. The producers realised they could use the character of Jason Voorhees, the supposedly drowned son of the original killer Pamela Voorhees, as the antagonist and it’s revealed that his body was never found.

As a new set of teenagers arrive at the summer camp ahead of the influx of kids, a killer stalks and murders them one by one, in much the same fashion as the original film. The film has a similar jump-scare ending to the first but it’s fudged slightly as it’s not clear whether it was another dream or not. The character of Jason was nevertheless established as the main bad guy and the series would continue successfully for the next 25-plus years. Part 2 was a victim of the original’s success in that the MPAA were a lot more strict in terms of the gore content this time around and several scenes were cut or truncated to appease the sensors.

This Japanese B2 is a lot more interesting than the US one sheet and I’m unsure who is responsible for the art of the axe. If anyone has any ideas please get in touch.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of the first of two sequels to the 1967 drama In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier as the eponymous police detective. The actor had made history in 1964 by becoming the first African American to win the Oscar for Best Actor (for Lilies of the Field), and 1967 saw him star in three hit films that all dealt with the issue of race and race relations. This included Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which tackled the controversial issue of interracial marriage that was still illegal in several states, and To Sir, with Love, a British drama that dealt with racial issues in an inner-city school. It was In the Heat… that was the biggest hit that year and the film would go on to win 5 Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Actor for Rod Steiger, who played alongside Poitier.

Three years later, the original film’s producer Walter Mirisch decided there was an opportunity to try and create a franchise around Virgil Tibbs. Without a source novel to base a screenplay on Mirsch hired to two successful screenwriters in Alan Trustman (Bullitt) and James R. Webb (the original 1962 Cape Fear), as well as the prolific director Gordon Douglas (Them!). They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (the capitalisation is intentional and part of the original title) was named after a famous line spoken by Poitier in the first film and saw the detective, now based in San Francisco, investigating the murder of a prostitute. The death has been pinned on Logan Sharpe (Martin Landau), a street preacher with whom we’re told Tibbs has a long-standing friendship. The film follows the detective as he attempts to prove Sharpe’s innocence whilst dealing with domestic family issues and ends on something of a down note, which I won’t spoil. 

The film was criticised for being a very routine police procedural and certainly had none of the cultural urgency that the first film was able to capitalise on. It was something of a damp squib both critically and at the box-office but that didn’t stop Mirisch producing another sequel called The Organization only a year later. Again that film failed to make an impact, even though it was able to capitalise on the then popular blaxploitation subgenre, but by then Poitier had started to field accusations of typecasting. Virgil Tibbs would thus hang up his badge for 17 years until the TV series In The Heat of the Night, based on the original film and novel and starring Howard E. Rollins Jr., which was aired between 1988 and 1992.

A nice photo montage on this poster for the Japanese release of Trick Baby, a 1972 crime caper, often placed in the blaxploitation genre, despite featuring a lot more in the way of plot and character development than many of the films under that banner.  Based on the novel of the same name by the infamous former pimp Iceberg Slim, the film follows two conmen, ‘White Folks’ (Kiel Martin)  and ‘Blue’ Howard (Mel Stewart), as they pull off the biggest score of their lives and inadvertently raise the ire of the local Mafia and a corrupt cop.

The former was given the odd moniker after he was born to mixed-race parents and can pass as a white man, which proves useful for the pair’s criminal antics. The title Trick Baby comes from the other nickname he is given because of his prostitute mother and ‘trick’ father.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Following the shocking death of British director Tony Scott in 2012 there was plenty of discussion amongst fans as to the film that defined his career, which included such films as the none-more-80s Top Gun and several excellent Denzel Washington-starring thrillers such as Crimson Tide. There was only one film that I reached for from my blu-ray collection when I wanted to pay tribute to Scott and that was True Romance, the 1993 crime thriller starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette and a whole host of acclaimed actors. Featuring a fantastic script by Quentin Tarantino, the film is arguably the apex of Tony Scott’s directing career and clearly benefits from his skill at injecting energy and verve into every scene. The film is also likely to be the defining role in the careers of both Slater and Arquette who were perfectly cast as Clarence and Alabama, the young lovers thrown together at the start of the film and who set off on a rollercoaster ride that leads them from Detroit to Los Angeles with murderous gangsters on their tail.

Clarence is a film-obsessed, lonely video store clerk who is at a cinema watching a triple-bill of Sonny Chiba films when he is approached by Alabama. The pair strike up a friendship and before the night is over are head over heels in love. The only issue is that Alabama is a hooker, hired by Clarence’s work colleagues as a birthday present, and her pimp Drexl (a memorable Gary Oldman) is a violent drug dealer who none too keen to let her leave his employ. After a violent confrontation which sees Drexl dead and Clarence escaping with a suitcase full of cocaine. The pair first head to see Clarence’s father (Dennis Hopper) and then travel across the country to Los Angeles to see Clarence’s friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport) who has a potential lead for selling the drugs. Hot on their heels are a bunch of mobsters, as well as a pair of police detectives.

This is one of two styles of Japanese B2 posters and I’ve called this one the shotgun scream style as it features Arquette clutching a shotgun in one of the more intense scenes of the film. The other style features photographs of the rest of the cast and can be seen here.

Following the shocking death of British director Tony Scott in 2012 there was plenty of discussion amongst fans as to the film that defined his career, which included such titles as the none-more-80s Top Gun and several excellent Denzel Washington-starring thrillers such as Crimson Tide. There was only one film that I reached for from my blu-ray collection when I wanted to pay tribute to Scott and that was True Romance, the 1993 crime thriller starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette and a whole host of acclaimed actors. Featuring a fantastic script by Quentin Tarantino, the film is arguably the apex of Tony Scott’s directing career and clearly benefits from his skill at injecting energy and verve into every scene. The film is also likely to be the defining role in the careers of both Slater and Arquette who were perfectly cast as Clarence and Alabama, the young lovers thrown together at the start of the film and who set off on a rollercoaster ride that leads them from Detroit to Los Angeles with murderous gangsters on their tail.

Clarence is a film-obsessed, lonely video store clerk who is at a cinema watching a triple-bill of Sonny Chiba films when he is approached by Alabama. The pair strike up a friendship and before the night is over are head over heels in love. The only issue is that Alabama is a hooker, hired by Clarence’s work colleagues as a birthday present, and her pimp Drexl (a memorable Gary Oldman) is a violent drug dealer who none too keen to let her leave his employ. After a violent confrontation which sees Drexl dead and Clarence escaping with a suitcase full of cocaine. The pair first head to see Clarence’s father (Dennis Hopper) and then travel across the country to Los Angeles to see Clarence’s friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport) who has a potential lead for selling the drugs. Hot on their heels are a bunch of mobsters, as well as a pair of police detectives.

This is one of two styles of Japanese B2 posters and I’ve called this one the cast style. The other features a photo of Arquette clutching a shotgun in one of the more intense scenes of the film. Note that one of the cast members shown at the top of the poster is not actually seen in the film and if you’ve watched it you’ll know which one!

This is the style B Japanese B2 poster for the release of the 1979 musical oddity Roller Boogie, with a unique, and rather wild, montage that was designed by Kazuo Yuasa. One of those films that’s something of a time capsule, the film was put into production by Irwin Yablans the independent producer who had struck gold a year earlier with John Carpenter’s Halloween. Yablans is credited with the film’s story and the intention was to capitalise on the then craze for rollerskating that was sweeping the States.

 Mark L. Lester (known for Commando and Class of 1984) was hired to direct and Linda Blair (The Exorcist) was given the starring role opposite an award-winning amateur skating champion called Jim Bray who was originally attached as a stuntman but was later given acting lessons when the production struggled to find a leading actor.

Blair plays Terry Barkley a Beverly Hills rich girl who is largely ignored by her parents who are determined to see her attend a prestigious school in New York and carry on as a flautist. One day whilst visiting Venice Beach she meets a hotshot skater named Bobby James (Bray) who dreams of making it to the Olympics. The pair strike up a friendship and eventually Terry asks Bobby if she can teach him how to skate and create a routine for them both so they can compete in a Roller Boogie contest at a skating rink called Jammer’s. Unfortunately a nefarious property developer plans to buy Jammer’s and raze it to the ground, so the pair team up with other skaters to put a stop to the plans whilst practicing their routines ready for the big night.

The film was largely panned on its release but found success with teen audiences and has since gone on to have something of a cult following. Plans for a mooted sequel were scrapped when disco music and roller skating lost their popularity.

I’ve struggled to find out anything about Kazuo Yuasa and this is the only other Japanese poster that I can find credited to him. If anyone has any more information about him please get in touch.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of Two Minute Warning, a 1976 thriller set during an American Football championship match in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Featuring an all-star cast, the film sees a psychotic sniper take position inside the stadium with plans to take random shots into the crowd as part of a diversionary tactic for a gang of thieves at a nearby museum. Charlton Heston plays a police sergeant who must work with a SWAT captain played by John Cassavetes to find and apprehend the sniper. The story also focuses on people in the crowd, which includes an argumentative couple played by David Janssen and Gena Rowlands and an elderly pickpocket played by Walter Pidgeon. After several failed attempts to capture the sniper, all hell breaks loose in the stadium and disaster beckons unless he can be stopped.

This Japanese poster features a montage of images from the film above an illustration of the stadium and a stylised film title inside it. I’m unsure who’s responsible for the artwork so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

A truly international production, Red Sun was filmed in Spain by the British director Terence Young and starring American action legend Charles Bronson,the Japanese actor Toshirô Mifune (best known for Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai), French superstar Alain Delon and the gorgeous Swiss actress Ursula Andress. Terence Young had previously achieved great commercial success directing Sean Connery in three of his outings as James Bond. Bronson had previously starred in The Magnificent Seven, an American remake of Seven Samurai.

The film sees two ruthless robbers, Link (Bronson) and Gauche (Delon) attack a train bound for Washington carrying the Japanese ambassador. During the raid Gauche steals a very valuable sword and then betrays Link, trying to kill him before escaping with the loot. Link must team up with the only surviving Samurai escort of the ambassador (Mifune) and track down Gauche before it’s too late.

This Japanese B2 features photographic portraits of the main actors and is markedly different to the US poster.

This is the photo style Japanese B2 for the release of The Spy Who Loved Me, which was the tenth James Bond adventure and the third to star Sir Roger Moore as the legendary spy. Felt by many to be the best Moore era film, it shares only the title with Ian Fleming’s original novel (at the author’s request) and the screenplay was written by Christopher Wood and Bond regular Richard Maibaum. When Russian and British submarines mysteriously disappear whilst on patrol, each country sends their top spies to discover who is responsible. The trail leads Bond to Egypt where he discovers that the plans for a submarine tracking device are on sale to the highest bidder.

Whilst in Egypt, Bond encounters his Russian rival, the KGB Agent Triple X (!) Major Anya Amasova (played by the beautiful Barbara Bach) and after a few initial hostile encounters the pair agree to team up to track down the plans and deal with the mute but deadly assassin Jaws (the late Richard Kiel‘s first appearance as the fan-favourite baddy). The pair identify shipping tycoon and scientist Karl Stromberg (Curd Jürgens) as the man behind the device and travel to Sardinia on his trail. There they visit Stromberg’s underwater base, Atlantis, posing as husband and wife scientists but their cover is soon blown and Bond’s infamous Lotus Esprit-cum-submarine makes an appearance. Eventually Bond and Anya are onboard a submarine captured by Stromberg’s submarine-swallowing supertanker and a final showdown takes place.

The Spy Who Loved Me opens with arguably the best pre-credits sequence of any Bond film that apparently even had Prince Charles on his feet applauding at the Royal Premiere back in 1977. The locations, sets and special effects work (particularly the models) are all first rate and you really feel that the budget was well spent. The ridiculous camp humour of later Moore outings is thankfully restrained too. The film was very well received by both critics and audiences and raked in healthy worldwide box-office takings.

As well as this photo montage poster there was also a B2 that featured Bob Peak’s great artwork for the film, as seen on the US one sheet and UK quad.

King Kong Lives is the critically-mauled and commercially disastrous sequel to the ill-advised 1976 remake of the classic big ape monster movie, which was shepherded into life by the legendary Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis. I’m not entirely sure why a decade passed before this sequel was put into production, but both De Laurentiis (or at least his company DEG) and director John Guillermin returned and definitely shouldn’t have bothered. The gap is explained in the film by having Kong in a 10 year coma following his fall from the World Trade Center at the end of the previous film.

Linda Hamilton (who should have known better) stars as Dr. Amy Franklin who is attempting to perform a heart transplant with an electronic replacement but Kong has lost too much blood for the operation to proceed. Luckily the adventurer Hank Mitchell (Brian Kerwin) finds and captures another giant ape in the jungles of Borneo and brings it to the US so that the operation can go ahead. It turns out that the new ape is a female and once Kong’s heart is replaced it’s not long before he escapes with ‘Lady Kong’ and chaos ensues. Unfortunately, despite the premise, the entire cast looks as if they’d rather be somewhere else and the shoddy effects can’t paper over the cracks.

This artwork is exclusive to the style A Japanese poster but has some elements that are similar to the American one sheet. I’ve struggled to find out who the artist is for this poster so please get in touch if you have an idea. There is also a style B Japanese poster that was illustrated by the great Noriyoshi Ohrai that I also have in the collection and can be viewed here.

Legendary director David Lynch‘s surreal nightmare Eraserhead celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2012 and its fair to say cinema has seen nothing else quite like it in the years since it was released. Lynch’s first full-length feature was five years in the making and was begun whilst he worked at the American Film Institute school in Los Angeles. The initial grant of $10,000 given to the director quickly ran out and he was forced to spend the following years using money from odd jobs, as well as donations from friends and family to continue work on it.

Ben Barenholtz, the owner of Libra films saw the completed film at the Filmex Festival and, after declaring it was a ‘film of the future’, decided to help Lynch get the film into cinemas. The first screening took place at midnight on the 29th of September, 1977 and, like Jodorowsky’s El Topo before it, Eraserhead became a staple of Midnight Movie shows in Los Angeles, New York and London.

This Japanese poster is from the first release of the film, which took place in 1981, and features an image of the ‘baby’ with its head wrapped in bandages. This particular copy of the poster isn’t in the best of condition, as should be obvious from the pictures, but I think it quite suits the nature of the film.

Having just watched the recent UK blu-ray release of the film, which was apparently supervised by Lynch, I can highly recommend picking up a copy of it as the film has never looked or, perhaps more importantly, sounded as good.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Unique artwork on this poster for the Japanese release of the much-loved Coen Brothers classic, The Big Lebowski. To say the film has become something of a cultural phenomenon since its release 13 years ago would be an understatement. There’s the annual Lebowski-Fest, which started in 2002 in Louisville, Kentucky and has since been held in several other cities. Jeff Bridges iconic ‘The Dude’ character is even the focus behind a form of religion called Dudeism.

I have a hard time choosing between this and Fargo as my favourite Coen Brothers film, although Raising Arizona and Barton Fink are also strong contenders.

The image on this poster is a shot from the brilliant dream sequence, after The Dude has his drink spiked by Jackie Treehorn. It’s clear that the designer was experimenting with 3D text effects in Photoshop (v4.0, as it would have been at the time).

I recently spotted this rather excellent GIF.

One of my top three Coen brothers films (along with ‘Fargo’ and ‘The Big Lebowski’) and probably my favourite ever Nic Cage performance, the other contender being ‘Wild at Heart’. Raising Arizona is a brilliant comedy caper featuring some of the Coen’s most memorable characters, including Holly Hunter‘s Ed, the exasperated police officer bride of Cage’s bumbling criminal H.I. McDunnough.

After the pair fail to conceive naturally they make the fateful decision to steal Nathan Jr., one of the quintuplets born to wealthy store owner Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) and his wife. The pair must then contend with a series of increasingly frantic encounters after Arizona Sr. enlists the help of the enigmatic bounty hunter Leonard Smalls (memorably played by Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb).  John Goodman and William Forsythe are superb as a pair of prison escapees whose friendship with H.I. leads to their involvement in the shenanigans.

This Japanese poster features the illustration of Nathan Jr. as seen on the UK quad (with some adjustments) and the illustration of Ed and H.I. is from the American one sheet.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

A unique design on this Japanese B2 for the 1969 take on the true story of the infamous Wild West outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, here played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in arguably their greatest screen roles. George Roy Hill would later go on to direct the pair again in the equally brilliant con men caper The Sting (1973).

The film follows the pair as they rob from money trains with varying success (a botched effort can be seen on the poster) and are forced to flee America after a posse of bounty hunters are unleashed to track them down. Arriving in Bolivia with the Sundance Kid’s lover, Etta Place (played by the gorgeous Katharine Ross), the duo try to make an honest living working as security guards. It’s not long before a violent incident sends them back to their old ways and on a collision course with destiny. The film features arguably the most famous freeze-frame ending in cinematic history.

A number of excellent posters for the film can be viewed here. The original trailer is on YouTube.

The car’s the star on this Japanese poster for the classic 1971 road movie, Vanishing Point, starring the then unknown actor Barry Newman as the legendary delivery driver Kowalski. Tasked with driving a 1970 Dodge Challenger (R/T 440 Magnum) from Colorado to San Francisco, Kowalski accepts a bet that he can’t get the car to its destination in less than 15 hours.

After a run in with two motorcycle cops a pursuit commences and the driver does his best to stay on target and evade arrest, helped along the way by an enigmatic DJ named Super Soul (Cleavon Little). During the pursuit Kowalski meets an array of characters, including a snake-catching prospector (Dean Jagger), gun-toting gay hitchhikers and a hippie biker with a girlfriend who rides stark-naked (as featured on this poster).

There are actually two versions of the film and the one that was shown in the cinema in the UK is actually longer than the US cut, featuring an extra scene of a drug-taking hitchhiker played by British actor Charlotte Rampling. Both versions are available on the recently released blu-ray.

The film has had an undeniable cultural impact, influencing multiple other films and even musicians, with Brit group Primal Scream naming their 1997 album after the film and lead singer  Bobby Gillespie saying that, “The music in the film is hippy music, so we thought, ‘Why not record some music that really reflects the mood of the film?’ It’s always been a favourite of the band, we love the air of paranoia and speed-freak righteousness … It’s a pure underground film, rammed with claustrophobia”

Quentin Tarantino‘s half of Grindhouse, Death Proof, continually references the film and features an almost identical Dodge Charger in one of its key car chases. I hadn’t realised but there was actually a TV remake of the film made in 1997 and starring Viggo Mortensen as Kowalski.

The original trailer is on YouTube.