Buddy Cooper’s 1985 slasher was originally set to be released as Fall Break and, having been given a sensible title change at the last minute, needed a new theatrical poster. The tagline is one of the all time horror greats, even if the film itself isn’t counted as a classic. It’s popularity level isn’t helped by the fact that it has never been officially released on DVD in the US. There is a (pricey) uncut UK disc available but it strikes me as a title that Arrow Video might pick up for release sometime in the future.
I’m not sure if DiRusso, the artist responsible for the Fall Break poster, is also behind this one since there is no signature present. It certainly bears some stylistic similarities to the first poster but please get in touch if you know for sure.
There’s apparently another version of this poster with the blood removed from around the man’s face.
Check out the completely different pre-release poster. The original trailer can be viewed on YouTube.
An extremely low-fi poster for the UK release of the excellent 1985 horror comedy The Return of the Living Dead. The image is of Jerome ‘Daniels’ Coleman who plays the rather terrifying legless zombie who chomps on a paramedic before chasing Don Calfa. A clip of him in action is on YouTube.
Apparently Coleman was an amputee who could run on his stumps and was discovered by one of the film’s producers living on the streets of L.A. The effect is extremely effective, particularly when coupled with his blood-curdling screams. It’s one of the few truly creepy moments in the whole film, in my opinion.
The US one sheet is markedly different and can be seen here.
The original trailer is on YouTube.
The legendary Charles Bronson in full effect on this British quad for director Michael Winner’s final Death Wish film (Bronson would go on to star in two more). Today, the film has a cult following despite being critically panned upon release. Although it’s set in New York the majority of filming took place in London and the British actors later had their voice dubbed over by American airmen based in the UK.
The film features a lot of memorably over-the-top action – a prime example would be the ‘Giggler’ scene – and several spectacularly cheesy lines of dialogue; “It’s like killing roaches – you have to kill ’em all, otherwise what’s the use?”
The quad is an adaptation of the American one sheet featuring artwork by Stan Watts that can be seen here.
The original trailer is on YouTube.
In August 2011 I was lucky enough to visit the island of Cuba for a ten day trip which was a fantastic experience. It really does feel like a country stuck in a time warp, circa 1965, particularly once you leave the capital and head into the countryside. It’s a stunningly beautiful island with very hospitable people but the relative poverty of the country is clear to see. It’s often said that the government is likely to relax the current freeze on foreign (particularly Western) investment once ‘Comandante’ Fidel Castro passes away, although with his brother Raul currently in charge very little has changed. This article on the BBC gives you an insight into the current situation.
The Cuban people’s love for film and cinema-going is legendary and our guidebook claimed that at the end of the 1950s there were over 300 cinemas in the capital Havana alone. Today, these great old buildings continue to thrive and whilst there I witnessed the queues of people lining up to see the latest releases. I took this picture of the Yara cinema in the Vedado area of Havana before the evening crowds descended.
Whilst in Havana I visited a bookshop that was selling original Cuban propaganda posters printed in the 1950s and 60s by OSPAAAL. They also had a handful of screen-printed film posters, all of which were reprints of the original Cuban cinema posters or re-imagined designs by local artists. They are officially screen printed by the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Artes Industrias Cinematografia) in Havana.
This is a screen print of the original poster for the 1985 animated film Vampires in Havana, which was directed by Cuban Juan Padrón. The story follows Joseph Amadeus von Dracula, known as Pepito, a trumpet player living in 1930s Havana who spends his time plotting to overthrow the incumbent dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. He’s completely unaware that he’s actually a vampire and that his uncle, a descendant of the original Count Dracula, has been using him as a test subject a secret formula which allows vampires to move about freely in sunlight. After learning about the potion, two sets of Vampires, including a group of Chicago mobster bloodsuckers, chase after Pepito with plans to use it for their own selfish means, but all is not as it seems with the potion.
The artwork is by the late designer and children’s book illustrator Eduardo Munoz Bachs who was born in Span in 1937 and moved to Cuba with his parents in 1941. Despite having no formal training in graphic design he designed his first poster for the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematografica), which was founded after the Cuban revolution to produce and promote Cuban films. He went on to design over 2000 film posters and is considered one of the most important Cuban graphic designers ever to have worked. He sadly passed away in 2001.
This Pinterest gallery features many of his posters. Whilst I was at the shop I also picked up a poster for A Clockwork Orange and one for The Godfather.
Sir Roger Moore‘s last outing as James Bond was definitely not his finest hour, although it is memorable for a few reasons, including Christopher Walken‘s turn as the psychotic bad guy (Max Zorin), Duran Duran’s great title theme and the appearance of the incomparable Grace Jones as Mayday, Zorin’s accomplice. She may not be the greatest actress but she’s never anything less than a striking presence and is definitely not a lady to mess with, as British chat show presenter Russell Harty infamously found out.
This US one sheet features imagery from the climactic fight atop the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which sees Bond and Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) face off against Zorin and his henchmen in the Zorin Industries airship. Special effects supervisor John Richardson filmed a series of sequences featuring stunt performers on top of the actual bridge that were later matched up against green-screen shots of the actors. This was the first Bond film to have its premiere held outside the UK; it opened on the 22nd of May, 1985 at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.
The artwork is by American poster artist Dan Goozee who was also responsible for a few Bond posters, including Moonraker and Octopussy, as well as several other classic posters from the 1980s. The other designs I’ve collected by him can be seen here.
One of my favourite British posters of all time, this is the supposedly withdrawn quad for Terry Gilliam‘s 1985 masterpiece Brazil. A film that is near impossible to categorise, the story is a heady mix of dystopian sci-fi, surreal dark fantasy and anarchic satirical comedy set in an alternative universe in which an overbearing government has practically strangled society with its mixture of paranoia, crippling bureaucracy and unreliable technology. That one of the film’s working titles was ‘1984 and 1/2’ gives you some idea of the Orwellian overtones that Gilliam and his fellow screenwriters Tom Stoppard and Charles McKeown intended to evoke.
Jonathan Pryce stars as Sam Lowry, a low-level employee at the ‘Ministry of Information’ who is seemingly content with his role as a cog in the giant machine, but at night he escapes in dreams where he is a knight is shining armour with giant wings strapped to his back, often rescuing the same damsel in distress from malicious forces. When a clerical error caused by a dead beetle falling into a printer causes the wrong man to be rounded up, tortured and killed by government forces (“we didn’t know he had a weak heart!”), Sam is given the task of correcting the error. Whilst visiting the wife of the deceased man, Sam meets Jill Layton (Kim Greist) a neighbour who bears a striking resemblance to the girl in his dreams.
Naturally he is instantly smitten and sets in motion a series of events that ends up with Sam and Jill pitched against his employer and on the run. The film features several memorable appearances from the likes of Ian Holm as Sam’s bumbling, inefficient boss, Michael Palin as an ambitious and ultimately ruthless friend within the Ministry, and Robert De Niro in a cameo role as Harry Tuttle, a rogue heating engineer who was meant to be the original target for the government round-up.
The film is visually stunning with some of the most incredible production design ever committed to celluloid. Gilliam and his skilled crew of technicians stretched every penny of the modest budget and created countless memorable sets, brilliantly realised props and entirely believable environmental details that all add up to something unforgettable. The special effects are also top notch, with the dream sequences deserving special mention, particularly Sam’s battle with a giant Samurai warrior and the literal flights of fantasy in his winged suit.
Infamously, Gilliam would end up in a bitter wrangle with the American distributors Universal after they decided his final cut was overlong, confusing and the ending was too depressing. The then Universal president Sid Sheinberg ordered a small team of editors to cut the film down from its original length of 2 hours and 20 minutes to just over 90 minutes for a version unofficially dubbed ‘The Love Conquers All’ cut. Most of the dream sequences were excised, the opening scenes completely chopped around and many scenes were horribly truncated. Worst of all, the original darker ending was replaced with a bizarre ‘happy’ denouement that completely ruined the tone of Gilliam’s film.
Understandably furious, the director refused to have anything to do with the new cut and actually began a campaign to get his original version seen by as many American film fans and critics as possible, much to the chagrin of Universal’s management. Eventually this culminated in the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarding the original cut their prize for Best Film and this led to Universal relenting and agreeing to release a near complete version to cinemas (minus around 10 minutes from the European cut). The bastardised ‘Love Conquers All’ version never saw the inside of a cinema.
The image on this poster is actually a combination of imagery from the flying sequences and a deleted scene that was only ever storyboarded by Gilliam in which a dreaming Sam finds himself at a vast wall of filing cabinets. The title treatment is taken directly from the opening title of the film itself, which is an actual neon signage that falls away from the camera to the accompaniment of Michael Kamen’s excellent score.
I have heard from at least three independent sources that this particular quad was withdrawn from cinemas by the distributor 20th Century Fox because it was felt the image wasn’t the right one to sell the film to UK audiences and was replaced by this bizarre ‘flying bed’ quad that is a world away from this striking design. If anyone knows for sure that this quad was withdrawn or any more details about it, please get in touch.
A View to a Kill, Sir Roger Moore‘s last outing as James Bond was definitely not his finest hour, although it is memorable for a few reasons, including Christopher Walken‘s turn as the psychotic bad guy Max Zorin, Duran Duran’s great title theme and the appearance of the incomparable Grace Jones as Mayday, Zorin’s accomplice. She may not be the greatest actress but she’s never anything less than a striking presence and is definitely not a lady to mess with, as British chat show presenter Russell Harty infamously found out.
The film features a climactic fight atop the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which sees Bond and Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) face off against Zorin and his henchmen in the Zorin Industries airship. Special effects supervisor John Richardson filmed a series of sequences featuring stunt performers on top of the actual bridge that were later matched up against green-screen shots of the actors. This was the first Bond film to have its premiere held outside the UK; it opened on the 22nd of May, 1985 at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.
The excellent artwork on this advance one sheet (those are some very long legs!) is by the American poster artist Dan Goozee who was also responsible for a few other Bond posters, including Moonraker and Octopussy, as well as several other classic designs from the 1980s. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.
A true cult horror classic, Re-Animator was based on H. P. Lovecraft‘s 1922 short story ‘Herbert West–Reanimator‘ and was director Stuart Gordon‘s first feature film. Originally planned to be a TV series set around the beginning of the 20th century, a pilot and a number of episodes were scripted by Dennis Paoli and William Norris. Eventually the trio decided to update the story to present day Chicago since the period setting was increasing production costs, and were then persuaded to make it as a feature film after Gordon was introduced to producer Brian Yuzna. The infamous horror director/producer Charles Band‘s Empire Pictures agreed to help with post-production in return for distribution rights (note the logo on this poster).
One of the reasons for the films cult success was the hiring of Jeffrey Combs to play the lead role of scientist Herbert West, which led to one of horror’s all-time great performances. Coombs’ portrayal of West is pitch-perfect, blackly comic and the film is unquestionably elevated by his presence. At the beginning of the film West’s medical student is dismissed from a Swiss University after a failed experiment to bring his dead professor back to life using a concoction he has been developing for several months.Some time later, West arrives at a New England university and immediately carries on his experiments, enlisting the help of his room mate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott). When Dan’s girlfriend Megan grows suspicious of their activity, a series of events see the body count rising and West is able to test his new serum and ‘defeat death’.
The film has brilliant, gore-heavy special effects that stand up well nearly thirty years on and it’s a perfectly paced horror that was, unusually for the time, lauded by most critics. It went on to spawn sequels and launched Gordon’s career as a horror director of note.
This is the photo style one sheet and features one of the all-time great horror tag-lines. There is also an illustration style one sheet that can be seen here.
Iconic horror artwork on this British quad for the release of the superior original Fright Night, an excellent vampire flick directed by Tom Holland. Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) is an average high school kid who’s a fan of gothic horrors and often stays up late to watch Fright Night, a horror film TV series hosted by ageing actor Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), known for playing vampire hunters in the past. One day the mysterious, suave Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon) moves in next door and before long Charlie sees him attacking and biting the neck of a woman leading him to suspect that Jerry is a creature of the night.
After everyone, including the local police, his girlfriend Amy and his best friend ‘Evil’ Ed doubt Charlie’s claims, he visits the TV studio and tries to convince Peter Vincent to help him uncover the truth about Jerry. Although initially dismissing Charlie as a deluded fan, the financially struggling Vincent eventually agrees to help once Amy, worrying about her boyfriend’s sanity, hires him to look into his claims. Soon the pair are engaged in a game of cat and mouse with Jerry who first goes after Ed, biting and converting him into a vampire. When Jerry turns his attentions to Amy, Charlie and Vincent must try to outwit him before it’s too late.
An effective, fun horror film with solid special effects, a creepy atmosphere and memorable characters, Fright Night was a box office and critical hit at the time of release, despite its modest production budget. A middling sequel followed three years later which saw Charlie and Peter Vincent facing off against Jerry’s sister and friends. The poster for the sequel used a very similar design to this one. After wondering for years who was responsible for the artwork on the original poster I was contacted by a fellow poster fan in relation to the Japanese poster (which uses the same art) and was given the name of Peter Mueller as the artist behind the one sheet, done for the design firm B.D. Fox Independent. The quad is a slightly zoomed in reproduction of the same art. I’ve credited it to Mueller but if anyone knows anything different please get in touch.
A View to a Kill, Sir Roger Moore‘s last outing as James Bond was definitely not his finest hour, although it is memorable for a few reasons, including Christopher Walken‘s turn as the psychotic bad guy Max Zorin, Duran Duran’s great title theme and the appearance of the incomparable Grace Jones as Mayday, Zorin’s accomplice. She may not be the greatest actress but she’s never anything less than a striking presence and is definitely not a lady to mess with, as British chat show presenter Russell Harty infamously found out.
The film features a climactic fight atop the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which sees Bond and Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) face off against Zorin and his henchmen in the Zorin Industries airship. Special effects supervisor John Richardson filmed a series of sequences featuring stunt performers on top of the actual bridge that were later matched up against green-screen shots of the actors. This was the first Bond film to have its premiere held outside the UK; it opened on the 22nd of May, 1985 at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.
The excellent artwork depicting an action scene on the Eiffel Tower in Paris (which is not exactly accurate in terms of events in the film) is by the American poster artist Dan Goozee who was also responsible for the other ‘legs’ advance and the final US one sheet which features another action-packed scene. He also worked on the posters for a few other Bond posters, including Moonraker and Octopussy, as well as several other classic posters designs from the 1980s. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.
Great artwork by Renato Casaro features on this UK quad for the release of the largely forgotten 1985 b-movie Certain Fury. As this poster is keen to point out, the film stars two young award-winning actresses, Tatum O’Neal (daughter of Ryan) and Irene Cara, a singer-songwriter who had won awards for her work on Fame and Flashdance. Tatum plays Scarlet, a tough, young delinquent who supports herself with prostitution and drug-dealing and Irene is Tracy, the daughter of a doctor, who has been arrested for drug possession and resisting arrest. The pair first meet in a courtroom and are waiting to be seen by the judge when other defendants begin attacking the court staff and police, leading to a deadly shootout. Scarlet and Tracy manage to escape the carnage and enter into the city’s sewers whilst being pursued by the police who believe they were part of the shootout. Soon the accidental death of a policeman is blamed on their actions and they have most of the force after them as well as various criminals who Scarlet asks for help before they turn on her and Tracy.
The film was poorly reviewed at the time and hardly set the box-office on fire. It’s never been released on home video since the days of VHS and, if the IMDb reviews are anything to go by, there’s probably a good reason. It sounds like a film that’s not even ‘so bad it’s good’ and this seems like one of those cases where the poster art is the best thing about the film!
One of my favourite artists, Renato Casaro is 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.
Lurid artwork features on this one sheet for Hard Rock Zombies, a 1985 horror-comedy from notorious schlock-peddlers Cannon films. Directed, produced and co-written by Indian-American Krishna Shah, the film was apparently originally conceived as a short that would be the film within a film for Shah’s American Drive-In (also 1985). At some point the production team decided to make HRZ into a feature-length production so the director had two films on the go in a single year.
I’ve not yet seen the film but it’s nutty plot is described on IMDb:
‘A hard rock band travels to the tiny and remote town of Grand Guignol to perform. Peopled by hicks, rubes, werewolves, murderous dwarves, sex perverts, and Hitler, the town is a strange place but that doesn’t stop the band’s lead singer from falling in love with a local girl named Cassie. After Nazi sex perverts kill the band to satisfy their lusts, Cassie calls the rockers back from the grave to save her, the town, and maybe the world.’
The reviews on there aren’t exactly favourable either, for example:
‘The tepid, dreadful zombie flick scrapes the bottom of the barrel, in a way that is truly insulting to barrels. Every possible cliché is driven home with all the subtlety of a steam hammer; every aspect of professional production is gleefully shredded by the intense non-talent in this film. BUT… You simply have to see it. A mess beyond all messes.’
The bizarre trailer is on YouTube if you want to watch it.
John Alvin artwork features on this British quad for the release of director Ridley Scott‘s 1985 fantasy oddity, Legend. It’s a film that is often scrubbed from both Scott and star Tom Cruise’s filmography whenever their previous films are discussed. There are a number of reasons for this, not least the fact that it had a troubled production as well as a fairly brutal critical mauling. Cruise’s performance is a shadow of what the actor brought to Tony Scott’s seminal Top Gun only a year later. part of the blame for this has to be down to the way the film was extensively edited by both Scott and the studio prior to release. Scott’s first version ran 125 minutes and this was then cut down to 113 minutes following some test screenings. The final UK (European?) release was 95 minutes and US audiences had another 6 minutes removed for their version.
There are things to admire about the film, including the production and set design which created some memorable environments in which the action takes place. Tim Curry is near unrecognisable as the evil Darkness (as featured on this poster) and the make-up effects, created by Rob Bottin and his team, are incredible. Mia Sara also impresses as Lili and it’s hard to believe she was just 16 at the time of filming. Whilst it failed to recoup its budget on initial release, the film has definitely gained something of a cult following in the years since, particularly with those coming of age around the time of its release on home video.
The late American designer and artist John Alvin was responsible for over 135 film poster designs over a thirty year period. Alvin painted many unforgettable pieces of artwork, including Blade Runner and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, and this image he created for Legend was used around the globe to promote the film, including in multiple European countries and on the international one sheet. Alvin sadly passed away too early, just shy of his 6oth birthday (in 2008), but his fantastic designs will live on for generations to come.
To see the posters I’ve collected by Alvin click here.
This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of Luc Besson‘s 1985 comedy drama Subway. It followed on from the director’s first film, The Last Battle, which was released two years earlier. Subway reunited him with several of the actors and crew from that film, including Jean Reno, who who would go on to feature in many of Besson’s directorial efforts. French-American actor Christopher Lambert appears in the lead role of Fred, a grifter who steals documents from a rich businessman and escapes into the Paris Metro.
Lambert stars alongside Isabelle Adjani who appears as Héléna, the frustrated wife of the businessman from whom Fred has stolen the documents. The film is set largely on location in the Metro and makes great use of the halls, concourses and even the areas usually off-limits to the public. After being locked in overnight, Fred begins to explore and eventually meets Le Roller (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a petty thief who has made a home in an abandoned storage room. Le Roller introduces Fred to the other characters who called the underground their home, including the musclebound Big Bill (Christian Gomba) and The Florist (Richard Bohringer).
The admittedly slight plot sees Fred continue to evade a bunch of hired goons sent by the businessman, as well as the subway police. The commissioner (a great performance by Michel Galabru) gets increasingly frustrated as his men, including one he’s nicknamed Batman (Jean-Pierre Bacri) fail to catch Le Roller time and time again. Héléna becomes increasingly infatuated with Fred, eventually realising his carefree attitude is the perfect antidote the marriage she feels trapped in. The film features a typically great score by regular Besson collaborator Éric Serra who also appears in the film as a member of a band that Fred brings together. The film was a success with critics as well as the French box-office. A year later Lambert would star in Highlander, a film that shot him to international stardom and lead to him winning multiple Hollywood roles.
This Japanese poster features the same artwork that was used on the French poster. It appears that the Japanese designer simply took a copy of a French poster, including all the flaws which that particular copy had. If you look closely at some of the images you can see hairs, scratches and other blemishes that must have been present on the poster. The artwork is credited to an artist called Bernard Bernhardt about whom I’ve been able to discover very little. Some of his other film posters can be seen on Cinematerial. According to this translated interview he was born in Paris in 1950 and worked on posters for several famous directors, including Roman Polanski and Michael Mann, over a thirty year period.
Colourful artwork, and a nicely stylised logo, feature on this one sheet for the 1985 action-adventure sequel, The Jewel of the Nile. It followed only a year after the original film, Romancing the Stone, which was directed by Robert Zemeckis and had been a worldwide box-office hit, launching the career of star Kathleen Turner and cementing Michael Douglas‘ leading-man credentials. The sequel was apparently rushed into production, with both leads contractually tied to making it, but Zemeckis declined to return to the director’s chair. Douglas and Turner were apparently both unsure about returning, although the former was onboard as producer and the latter threatened to leave the project until Douglas intervened and had the script rewritten to assuage her worries. Danny DeVito also reprises his comedic role from the first film.
Jewel was helmed by Lewis Teague, who is perhaps best known for a pair of animal-themed Stephen King adaptations; Cujo (1983) and Cat’s Eye (also 1985). Reports during filming painted a poor picture of the director who was apparently struggling with the location shooting and action scenes. The plot finds ex-smuggler Jack (Douglas) and novelist Joan (Turner) onboard their yacht, moored off a sleepy town in the South of France. The love affair that started during ‘Romancing…’ is growing stale as Joan finds the easy life too boring. At a book signing event she meets Omar (Spiros Focás), a charming Arab ruler, and is invited to travel with him back to his country to write his biography. Despite Jack’s protestations, she takes up the offer.
Soon after Joan leaves Jack meets up with Ralph (DeVito), the swindler who is still after the titular stone from the first film. He’s then visited by another arab called Tarak (Paul David Magid) who warns Jack that Omar is not the benevolent ruler he claimed to Joan and that she’s in danger. He also informs him that Omar is in possession of “The Jewel of the Nile”. As Tarak finishes his explanation the yacht mysteriously explodes and so Jack and Ralph set off to track down Joan and see if they can’t get their hands on the “Jewel”. Despite less than favourable critical notices, the film was another box-office success, earning even more than the original film.
With thanks to readers of the site, the artist of the poster has been identified as Robert Rodriguez, an American artist not to be confused with the Texas-based film director of the same name. I own at least two other posters that were painted by Rodriguez, the US one sheet for the Jack Nicholson-starring Two Jakes (1990) and the US one sheet for a 1994 re-release of The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
His own website, which can be seen here, features a biography which I’ll reproduce in its entirety in case the site ever disappears:
Chances are you’ve been having breakfast with Robert Rodriguez for years and never knew it….If you’ve ever fixed yourself a bowl of Quaker Oatmeal, his painting of the old Quaker has probably been watching over you as you ate.
After graduating from Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), he embarked on a career as an illustrator, picking up awards and medals along the way. From being a Grammy Award finalist for best album cover art, to gold and silver medals, to receiving a platinum award for his “Cowboys of the Silver Screen” postage stamps this last year. From doing Broadway theater posters for plays like, “Anything Goes”, “Nice Work If You Can Get It”, “Sister Act” and “Lend Me A Tenor”, to a SuperBowl poster, a half dozen Ringling Bros. Circus posters, several movie posters, and creating the poster art over the last four years for the Tales of the Cocktail event held in New Orleans every summer, he is finally finding time to do some gallery work, exploring new directions and larger paintings.
Sir Roger Moore‘s last outing as James Bond, A View to a Kill, was definitely not his finest hour, although it is memorable for a few reasons, including Christopher Walken‘s turn as the truly psychotic bad guy (Max Zorin), Duran Duran’s great title theme and the appearance of the incomparable Grace Jones as Mayday, Zorin’s accomplice. She may not be able to act very well but she’s never anything less than a striking presence and is definitely not a lady to mess with, as British chat show presenter Russell Harty infamously found out.
This poster is the UK one sheet that was designed by Vic Fair and illustrated by Brian Bysouth, a not insignificant pairing of two great English talents. Having been commissioned by the studio the poster was apparently then rejected and ultimately never used in cinemas to promote the film. Sim Branaghan, the man behind the must-own book ‘British Film Posters‘, interviewed Vic Fair who recalled that they were looking for a more conventional design, something that often frustrated the designer when working with clients:
‘Not very exciting are they, the Bond posters … always the same thing. So I had this idea of putting him in a white jacket, but they just threw their arms up in horror – “Ooh no, we can’t have that”. It was ridiculous really’
The poster is now known as the ‘recalled’ UK one sheet as, despite the poster having been printed, it was recalled by the studio and most copies were apparently pulped. Obviously, several did manage to escape destruction and made their way into the hands of poster dealers and collectors. I’d like to know a rough figure on how many did survive since it does show up at major auctions and on Ebay occasionally, so it’s certainly more than a tiny handful. If anyone has any more details on this please get in touch or leave a comment.
The artwork did end up being used for other countries, notably a Japanese B2 poster promoting the film.
For more information on Vic Fair and Brian Bysouth I highly recommend picking up a copy of ‘British Film Posters‘ as it features sections on both men. Here are the posters I’ve collected so far by Brian Bysouth and those by Vic Fair (with more to add over the coming months).
In 2012 I met and interviewed Brian Bysouth and this poster was discussed:
There are two specific collaborations you had with Vic Fair that I’d like to talk about. There was the UK one sheet for A View to a Kill, which you mentioned, and before I read Sim’s book I had no idea that it was one of yours. It’s quite different to others you’d worked on before then.
Ah yes, that poster was painted with a different technique than the one I’d typically work with. It has a very smooth look mostly done with an airbrush. The clients had started to require illustrations to have a less painted look and they were asking for much more photo-realistic illustrations. This requirement was because of falling sales in the video market. The clients had concluded that the paying public had become more discerning and distrustful of what was portrayed on the video sleeves, and to some extent on film posters. The public had begun to realise that an exciting illustration could flatter what in reality would be a truly awful film. So illustration had to take on a new, more highly-finished look, but this only worked for a short while before the use of photographs and the versatility of the computer took over completely.
Anyway, to continue, Vic asked me if I’d like to do the finished painting based on his rough; it was a really excellent and novel design, which required me to execute the painting in two stages. The first stage would be used as a teaser poster and this was just the image ofGrace Jones and Bond contained within a diamond motif. All I had to do was get the airbrush out and work up his design. I remember spending a while on the Grace Jones image, polishing and improving her look, as well as the pose of Bond. It went away to be printed but later we were disappointed to learn that it was going to be withdrawn because the clients were not happy with the legendary spy being portrayed in a white tuxedo; that being considered not very Bond-like!
For the second stage, Vic’s design included an exciting montage to fit either side of the central icon of the two characters. The preliminary painting was returned to me for completion and I continued by adding the montage of scenes from the film onto the artwork in a semi-drawn style, which I was experimenting with at the time. I was very pleased with the final results and Vic liked it too. That went off for approval but, for reasons unknown to me, the printing didn’t go ahead. I never saw the artwork again and pathetically, because it was not approved, I don’t even think a transparency was made. I entertain hopes that one day it will eventually re-appear and I will be able to establish my claim to ownership.
Here’s the film’s original trailer.
