This is the UK quad for the release of the Coen Brothers’ 1994 film The Hudsucker Proxy. The script for the film was over a decade in gestation and Joel Coen began writing it with Sam Raimi during the editing of the latter’s Evil Dead (1981). The trio began sharing a house during the filming of Raimi’s Crimewave (1985) and the brothers’ Blood Simple so the script continued to evolve. It wasn’t until the completion of Barton Fink in 1991 that the brothers decided to fully focus on it.

They decided that they wanted to work on more of a more mainstream film and felt the script needed a decent budget behind it. Legendary Hollywood producer Joel Silver, who was a fan of the brothers’ previous films, agreed to help them and pitched it to Warner Bros. Further financial backing came from the now defunct PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, a British-American production company responsible for some of the biggest box-office hits of the 1980s and 1990s, including Batman (1989) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). Note their logo in a prominent position on the left side of the credit block.

The film marked the first time the Coens had worked with big name stars, with most of their previous casts made up of relative unknowns (many of whom would go on to find fame afterwards). Set in 1958 in the world of big business, the story sees idealistic business school graduate Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) arrive in New York City looking for a job. Without the necessary experience he ends up working as a mailroom clerk in a manufacturing company called Hudsucker Industries. When the founder and president Waring Hudsucker commits suicide during a business meeting (a classic scene involving an open window) the nefarious chairman of the board, Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman) realises that all of Hudsucker’s shares are to be sold to the public. 

Mussburger hatches a plan to buy the stock at what will be a knockdown price by installing what he sees as an incompetent in the top role, the titular proxy, hoping to depress the share price. Whilst delivering mail one day, Norville makes a pitch to Mussburger that involves a simple drawing of a ring (“Y’know for kids!”) and the latter thinks he has found the perfect person. Things don’t go exactly to plan when the board agree to produce Norville’s idea, which turns out to be the phenomenally successful hula hoop (invented for real in 1958). Meanwhile, an undercover reporter called Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) has joined the firm as Norville’s secretary hoping to write a juicy article on the man who replaced Hudsucker. She soon discovers the details of the plot but has a hard time convincing her superiors. Norville allows success to go to his head and begins acting like any other uncaring tycoon. However, Mussburger discovers Amy’s real identity and uses this against him. The finale takes place at the top of the firm’s tower, as depicted on this poster, and sees the Coens at their most surreal.

This UK quad features a design that has clearly borrowed from the US one sheet (see here) with an enterprising British designer reusing the image of Tim Robbins holding the hula hoop and replacing the hoop with wads of dollar bills. The same images of Paul Newman and Jennifer Jason Leigh are reused and the cogs seen on the one sheet are also present. If anyone has any ideas who designed it please get in touch.

The Greatest Film Ever Made (IMDb) was re-released with a brief cinema run on its 10th anniversary in 2004. Director Frank Darabont approached legendary illustrator Drew Struzan and asked him to work on the poster. This design is featured in the brilliant book ‘The Art of Drew Struzan’ (available at Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk).

The book reveals several of the other designs that he and Darabont worked on together and explains how the pair first met:

You know how I met Frank Darabont? He ordered two copies of the Creature from the Black Lagoon print and liked them so much he called me on the phone, out of the blue, to thank me and ask to meet. Frank became my friend through his appreciation of my work, same as Guillermo [Del Toro].

Once Frank approached Drew to work on the Shawshank re-release poster the pair quickly struck up a close working relationship:

Warner Bros. Home Video was ready to accept whatever Frank wanted, so I did some comps [comprehensive roughs] directly for him. The trouble with working a director who loves my stuff: He couldn’t decide what he wanted: he wanted them all! He ultimately chose my reprise of Tim Robbins in the rain for the cover.

Drew clearly has a fond recollection of the project and remarks on the fact that the style of painting stands out from the rest of his work:

It was a real blessing – he got me the job, he used the art, and I got to do a kind of painting that is completely different from what I had done for movie posters. The experience was all about Frank. We didn’t meet in some office; he came over to my house, we collaborated, I showed him my pictures, and he watched me work.

And the fate of the other comps that can be seen in the Art of Drew Struzan book?

In the end, they’re hanging in his house because he fell in love with the art, and I fell in love with him.
The original US one sheet is the single photographic image of Andy (Tim Robbins) in the rain after his escape and, whilst that image is a well-known one, I do prefer Drew’s moody collage. The use of light and dark on the faces is superbly done and the layout of each of the characters works very well.

The other posters in my Drew Struzan collection can be seen here.

A colourful montage on this Japanese B2 poster for Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla, which was the 21st film in the series featuring the King of the Kaiju (giant monsters). The film was the sixth release in the second generation of Godzilla films, which were part of the Heisei era of Japanese monster movies (daikaiju eiga). The monster movie eras are named after the Japanese emperor at the time, so the first generation of Godzilla films were part of the Shōwa era.

The story is typically ludicrous and sees fellow kaiju Mothra travel in to space to stop a meteor hitting earth and inadvertently exposing cells from Godzilla (and Biollante) to the radiation from a black hole, which then triggers the creation of an aggressive extraterrestrial closely resembling the famous monster. SpaceGodzilla immediately heads to earth, destroying a space station on the way, and after battling and knocking out Godzilla it imprisons his son on Birth Island and heads to Japan intent on destruction. The Japan Self Defense Forces have time to scramble their latest weapon in the fight against kaiju, the penguin-like robot called Mogeura. But is it enough to stop the rampaging alien?

The artwork on the poster is by the late Noriyoshi Ohrai who was something of an enigma, even in his native Japan. He’s responsible for a number of Star Wars posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film and the brilliant design for The Empire Strikes Back.

Ohrai painted a poster for each of the Heisei era of Godzilla films, which were always accompanied by a photographic-style poster.

The other Ohrai posters I’ve added to the site so far can be seen by clicking here.

It’s hard to believe but Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece Pulp Fiction celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and it’s easy to forget just what an impact it has had on cinema since its release. Whilst certainly not the first film to use a nonlinear, fractured narrative, Pulp Fiction arguably introduced the idea to a wide audience and did it with incredible bravado. Few films (pre-Reservoir Dogs) had characters speaking in such rapid-fire, pop culture-aware dialogue as Tarantino’s creations and few had mixed humour and violence as casually (and cleverly) as this. Blessed with deft editing and a killer soundtrack, all the ingredients combined together to make for a worldwide critical and commercial success, and cemented Tarantino’s reputation as an auteur filmmaker.

The film marked a watershed moment for independent cinema, particularly in the way it was financed and distributed. After Tarantino and screenwriting partner Roger Avary agreed a deal with Jersey Films (the production company part-owned by Danny DeVito) which was beneficial for all parties, the team initially attempted to produce the film with Columbia Tristar. After the script was eventually rejected by them for a litany of reasons, Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax, newly acquired by Disney, stepped in and agreed to finance it. Tarantino’s producing partner Lawrence Bender had the canny idea of paying each of the main actors the same amount per week, no matter their status. Part of the film’s success was in its superb casting of familiar faces playing against type, including Bruce Willis as an amoral boxer, John Travolta as an ageing hitman (Travolta’s career saw a huge boost on the back of this film) and Uma Thurman as a drug-taking wife of a mob boss.

It was an image of a sultry, raven-haired Uma Thurman that was used in (virtually) every market around the world and made for one of the most iconic one sheets of the 1990s (in both teaser and final style formats). For its hugely successful release in the UK, Miramax decided to use the same image of Thurman but adapted it to the landscape format, created a unique title design and also incorporated the dictionary definitions of Pulp and Fiction seen at the start of the film. Note that the packet of Lucky Strikes which had caused the teaser one sheet to be infamously withdrawn (after the cigarette manufacturer complained about its inclusion) has been digitally manipulated to obscure the logo as it was on the final one sheet.

This is the Japanese B1 poster for the 1994 re-release of the late American director Sam Peckinpah‘s (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs) Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Following the horrendous experience he’d had making Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which had suffered multiple production setbacks and ultimately saw the director and studio (MGM) part ways, Peckinpah decided to make his next film on a low budget and hopefully free from interference. He was to have his wish come true and claimed before his death that it’s the only one of his films that was released in its intended form. The screenplay was written by Peckinpah and Gordon Dawson and the main character played by Warren Oates is now seen as a thinly-veiled self-portrait of the director himself (apparently the actor even borrowed a pair of the director’s sunglasses).

Set in Mexico, the story sees a bounty put out on a the titular character after he impregnates the young daughter of a powerful man known as El Jefe (Emilio Fernández). The $1 million prize sparks the interest of a number of bounty hunters who set off to track Garcia down. Eventually two of them enter the dive bar where Bennie (Oates), a retired American Army officer, is eking out a living. Bennie believes he might be able to track down Garcia so when his girlfriend, the prostitute Elita (Isela Vega), reveals that the man died in a car crash after leaving her bordello, he makes a deal with the bounty hunters to track down the body and bring it to them. He and Elita set off to find Garcia’s grave but they’re not the only ones in pursuit and it’s not long before Peckinpah’s trademark violence is visited upon Bennie and everyone else involved.

In most scenes you can practically smell the alcohol and sweat emanating from Warren Oates and it’s almost certain that he was well lubricated throughout filming. Sadly for Peckinpah, the film was roundly trashed by critics (with a few notable exceptions like Roger Ebert) and was also a box-office failure at the time. It has, however, cultivated a cult following in the years since and has received more favourable contemporary reviews. Many fans of the director see it as the last true Peckinpah film released.

This poster was printed for the re-release in Japan that was marking 10 years since Peckinpah’s death from heart failure in 1984. I’ve only ever seen it in B1 format but it’s possible that a B2 poster exists for this release.