This British quad for Ken Russell (opens in a new tab)‘s 1986 horror film Gothic (opens in a new tab) features artwork by Paul Dufficey. From what I can gather the artist was a long-time collaborator with the late director and had worked on four of his previous films, including Tommy. It appears from his IMDb profile (opens in a new tab) that he worked as a production and set designer and for Gothic he created ‘portraits’, which presumably included the work on this posters.

Russell’s film was written by Stephen Volk (opens in a new tab) and is a fictionalised retelling of the visit by Percy Shelley (Julian Sands (opens in a new tab)) and his later wife Mary (Natasha Richardson (opens in a new tab) in her first film role) to the Swiss villa of Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne (opens in a new tab)). There they also meet Byron’s friend, the physician Dr. John Polidori (Timothy Spall (opens in a new tab)) One evening, whilst a storm rages outside, the group tell each other horror stories and reveal intimate secrets about themselves. This meeting was apparently the inspiration for Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein (opens in a new tab) and for Polidori to pen The Vampyre (opens in a new tab), both of which were groundbreaking novels in the horror genre.

The images on this poster are clearly inspired by classic gothic artwork, particularly the woman splayed across a bed. This references a painting called The Nightmare (opens in a new tab) by the Anglo-Swiss artist Henry Fuseli which was painted in 1781. It depicts a creepy imp sitting on top of a sleeping woman and this same imagery features in Gothic. The imp is played by Kiran Shah (opens in a new tab), a dwarf actor and stuntman who has featured in several blockbusters such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and was a stuntman on all three of the Hobbit films.

Apparently the film was not much of a success at the box office but was popular on home video. I’m certain it has something to do with the distributor using a creepy photo of Shah on top of a woman, which must have enticed a fair few punters to rent the film. I doubt it met the expectations of all out horror that the cover suggested for many though!