Permission To Kill / 30×40 / USA

26.01.12

PosterPosterPosterPosterPoster
Title
Permission To Kill
AKA
The Executioner (alt. title)
Year of Film
1975
Director
Cyril Frankel
Starring
Dirk Bogarde, Ava Gardner, Bekim Fehmiu, Timothy Dalton, Nicole Calfan, Frederic Forrest, Klaus Wildbolz, Anthony Dutton, Peggy Sinclair, Dennis Blanch, John Levene
Origin of Film
UK | Austria | USA
Genre(s) of Film
Drama | Thriller
Type of Poster
30x40
Style of Poster
--
Origin of Poster
USA
Year of Poster
1975
Designer
Unknown
Artist
Robert Tanenbaum
Size (inches)
30 2/16" x 40"
SS or DS
SS
NSS #
75/273
Tagline
This is Mr. Curtis. He has permission to bloody you, compromise you, blackmail you and if all else fails...

I’ll admit to not having seen this 1975 political spy thriller starring Dirk Bogarde, Ava Gardner and a pre-Bond Timothy Dalton, but going by the lack of information, reviews and discussion of the film on IMDb, I am not alone. It doesn’t appear to have been released on DVD and I could only find evidence of a UK VHS release (on Amazon).

One of the only reviews I could find has this to say:

Permission to kill has got to be one of the WORST films ever made, The directing from Frankel is appaling, The story is needlessly complicated and confusing, and the actors (especially Bogarde) look like they’d rather be somewhere else, but above all absolutely NOTHING happens.

Even if the film is not one to seek out, this poster, with artwork by American artist Robert Tanenbaum, is definitely an interesting one. I really like the composition and use of masking within the shadow of the mysterious ‘Mr Curtis’. Tanenbaum clearly has a thing for horizontal ladies, as evidenced here and on his poster for A Boy and His Dog. The colours work well against the grey background and the title logo is also fairly unusual for the time period (being hand drawn and brightly coloured).

To see other posters I’ve collected by Robert Tanenbaum click here.

The original trailer (with Danish subs) can be found on YouTube.

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