Brian De Palma‘s mesmerising Carrie still stands up today as a perfectly paced thriller and a powerful portrait of the torment suffered by a social outcast on the receiving end of a bullying campaign. Sissy Spacek delivers a breakout performance as Carrie White, the teenager who is picked upon by her teachers, peers and her domineering, abusive mother Margaret (played brilliantly by Piper Laurie). What nobody knows is that Carrie has discovered that she has a latent telekinetic power that flares up when she’s upset or angry. The film also features memorable turns from several young actors who were relative unknowns at the time, including John Travolta, Nancy Allen and William Katt as Tommy.

The unforgettable prom night sequence that sees Carrie’s destructive powers fully unleashed was clearly seen as the marketing cornerstone for the film, as evidenced by the images and tagline used on this 30×40 poster. A still from the scene features on the brilliant Japanese B2. The striking image of Sissy Spacek drenched in blood is often used to promote the film and has been used for multiple DVD covers and other marketing materials. A remake is being readied for release in 2013 and the teaser poster depicts star Chloe Moretz in a similarly bloody state.

Brian De Palma‘s horror classic Carrie still stands up today as a perfectly paced thriller and a powerful portrait of the torment suffered by a social outcast on the receiving end of a bullying campaign. Sissy Spacek delivers a breakout performance as Carrie White, the teenager who is picked upon by her teachers, peers and her domineering, abusive mother Margaret (played brilliantly by Piper Laurie). What nobody knows is that Carrie has discovered that she has a latent telekinetic power that flares up when she’s upset or angry. The film also features memorable turns from several young actors who were relative unknowns at the time, including John Travolta, Nancy Allen and William Katt as Tommy.

The unforgettable prom night sequence that sees Carrie’s destructive powers fully unleashed was clearly seen as the marketing cornerstone for the film, as evidenced by the images at the bottom of this Turkish one sheet. A still from the scene features on the brilliant Japanese B2. An image of Sissy Spacek drenched in blood is often used to promote the film and has been used for multiple DVD covers and other marketing materials. This artwork only appears on the Turkish poster but my friend Sim Branaghan confirmed that it was originally used by the UK publishing company NEL on the cover of the paperback reprint of Stephen King’s novel as early as 1975. Here’s a link to it on a later 1978 edition, also published by NEL. I’ve searched but am unable to find an artist to whom I can credit it.

A striking design on this poster for the US release of Brian De Palma’s The Fury, the movie that followed his horror classic Carrie (1976). The director continued the theme of telekinesis that he’d started with Sissy Spacek’s teenager pushed over the edge, and in this picture there are two young telekinetics who start the picture unsure why they’ve been granted this strange power and who are unable to control it. The film opens with Kirk Douglas‘ Peter Sandza, an agent for an ‘organisation you didn’t even know exists’, and his son Robin relaxing on a beach in the Middle East with Sandza’s colleague Ben Childress (played by John Cassavetes). Suddenly the peace is shattered with an attack by terrorists who rush the crowded beach and attempt to shoot Peter who manages to fight several of them off before being seemingly killed in an explosion. The audience soon discover that Childress has double-crossed his friend in order to kidnap Robin and investigate his apparent telekinesis for shadowy means. Peter survives the explosion and realises what his friend has done, almost killing him with gunfire, but Childress escapes with Robin.

Fast forward a few years and we learn that Peter has been obsessively searching for his son whilst being pursued by the shadowy agency intent on killing him. At the same time, teenager Gillian Bellaver (Amy Irving, a Carrie alumni) is struggling to understand the powers she’s been gifted with and, after a few incidents involving other pupils at her school, her mother decides to put her into a special institution that has been set up to deal with those with psychic potential. The viewer discovers that the place is actually funded by Childress and his nefarious organisation but, unbeknownst to them, Peter has a mole inside the school and is hoping that Gillian will be able to help find the whereabouts of his son. After Gillian makes a connection with Robin, Peter and his compatriot stage a breakout and set off to try and rescue Robin, but it may already be too late…

The Fury is definitely one of De Palma’s better efforts, even if it’s not up there with Carrie. It features several exciting sequences, including the initial faked terrorist attack, and at least one trademark bravura slow-motion sequence that’s impeccably executed. Both Douglas and Cassavetes are excellent and Amy Irving also puts in a decent performance. The special effects mostly stand-up and it’s a thrill to see the full power of telekinesis being unleashed after having it teased at several points in Carrie (we see what happens if the power is directed at a single human body, pre-Scanners). I’m unsure who’s responsible for this poster so please get in touch if you have any ideas.

The film that launched Christopher Nolan into the international cinematic limelight, the ingenious mystery thriller Memento was written and directed by the man who would go on to helm the phenomenally successful Dark Knight Trilogy. Based on a short story by Jonathan Nolan the story focuses on a man called Leonard, played by Guy Pearce (an important role for the actor), who has no short term memory and is obsessively trying to solve the murder of his wife. Using scribbled notes, polaroids and tattoos, Leonard attempts to make sense of discoveries he makes and the interactions he has with people along the way, which includes Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Carrie-Anne Moss, two characters who shift and change throughout the film as Leonard, and the audience, try to understand who’s ultimately responsible.

What makes the film so memorable is the way that the story is told with two timelines being shown one after another, one in black and white and chronologically ordered, and the other in colour and in reverse chronological order. The film opens with Leonard shooting and killing Teddy, but as the film progresses we see Teddy alive and the reason for the shooting eventually becomes clear, with a devastating reveal at the end of the film. This diagram gives you an idea of the way the story is told and the film continues to be discussed almost 15 years since its release (see here and here, for example). Critics and audiences responded positively to a film that felt genuinely fresh and different, particularly compared against a glut of sequels and identikit plots that were flooding the cinema at the end of the 1990s.

This is the Japanese B2 (red style) from the original release there back in 2001 and the design is unique to this poster. The American one sheet is markedly different and includes Carrie-Anne Moss.

This is the excellent ‘style D’ poster for the original sci-fi classic Star Wars, which was printed for the 1978 re-release of the film in the US. The artwork, which only appears on this US one sheet, was a collaboration between two talents; Charles White III who was at the time an established and well regarded artist well known for his skills with an airbrush, and Drew Struzan who was early in his film poster painting career and yet to paint the iconic images for which he is famous for today. This is Struzan’s first poster for the Star Wars franchise and he would later go on to be one of Lucasfilm’s most trusted artists, painting several other posters and related images for the Star Wars universe over the following 35 years.

In an interview with Airbrush Magazine in August 1999, Struzan said:

‘I will never fail to give credit to Charlie White for what he did for me. It may have been a small thing to him, but a life changer for me. He is an extraordinary artist famed for his airbrush work. He had the desirable assignment to do the one-sheet poster for the re-release of Star Wars in 1978. He is marvellous at painting objects, but was hesitant to paint portraits for the poster. Somehow, he asked me to paint the portraits while he would paint the droids and the like…Only an extraordinary individual does anything so generous and unselfish. It is the individual who deserves the honor. I have no doubt that there was a desire on Charlie’s part to do the best job possible on the Star Wars project…It was to his advantage to use the best talent he could find. He also gave the lettering to a great letterer. It made for an outstanding poster. All of us who worked on it have been proud ever since to have had the opportunity. It remains a perennial favorite, even among Hollywood executives.’

The style D page on TheForce.net notes that this is said to be George Lucas’ favourite Star Wars poster and the original artwork apparently hangs on the wall in his house. It is often described as being a ‘circus’ style poster as the main image has been illustrated to appear that it’s sitting on a wooden board with other older, torn paper surrounding it.

In another interview with Struzan carried out by Cinefantastique in 1997, the artist recalls how the design came about:

‘The novel idea of making the poster appear as if it were pasted on a wall came about almost by accident. “We had already done the lettering of the title, painting it in as part of the poster,” recalled Struzan. “Then, when we got the billing, we discovered there wasn’t enough room for all the credits, so we had to figure out a way to make more space. We thought, ‘Why don’t we take what we already have and paint it to look like it’s wild posted on top of other posters?’ That gave us the extra room we needed for the billing at the bottom. It was a case of Necessity being the Mother of Invention.” …”We had to do other art to fill it out, so we had a chance to include more characters. We added Han Solo in a little vignetted circle, and Alec Guinness was an afterthought. It kind of grew to include everybody.”‘

Note that this is the ‘studio’ version of the one sheet and there is also the National Screen Service (NSS) version which has all of the associated markings on the bottom edge of the poster. The studio style was printed by the studio itself, whilst the NSS version would have been produced at one of their own printing offices. There were also two official reprints done around the time of the film’s 15th anniversary but they are pretty easy to spot since they are undersized and feature several new lines of text (copyright and so on). Moviepostercollectors.com features a page on the poster that’s well worth a read.

Drew Struzan barely needs an introduction to film fans worldwide but he also has an official website featuring galleries of his work. To see the other posters I’ve collected by Struzan click here.

This is one of four B2 posters printed for the original Japanese release of Return of the Jedi in 1983. Although ROTJ, the third in the original trilogy of Star Wars films, was often maligned by fans who complained it was a weak end to the series and derided for featuring the child-friendly Ewoks, all was forgiven with the release of the 1999′s The Phantom Menace and its ‘galactic trade disputes’ and the risible Jar-Jar Binks. Now, although certainly not as highly acclaimed as the original 1977 film or the classic The Empire Strikes Back, ROTJ is still beloved by fans of the series. In 2015, director JJ Abrams will release Episode VII into cinemas, mooted as a direct sequel to this film and much anticipated by fans worldwide. JJ is seen as a much safer pair of hands than George Lucas after his shepherding of a well-received reboot of the Star Trek franchise.

Even if the Ewoks are loved and hated in equal measure, ROTJ still features many memorable, fan favourite characters, locations and scenes, including the attempted rescue of Han Solo from Jabba the Hut’s palace leading to a memorable showdown above a Sarlacc pit monster (which features the ignominious exit of fan favourite Boba Fett). Later the film sees the passing of Yoda along with more revelations about the Skywalker family, and an excellent scene that sees Luke Skywalker confront the evil Emperor Palpatine with Vader standing by. Meanwhile, the Ewoks (essentially child-sized teddy bears) join forces to defeat the ground forces of the Empire on the surface of the planet Endor.

The artwork on this poster was painted by the late Japanese-American artist Kazuhiko Sano and also appeared on a US one sheet and multiple other posters around the world. As detailed in the notes for the one sheet, I discovered the following information about the artwork from an ebay auction description:

‘The art is by Kazuhiko (Kazo) Sano. The art direction and design were by Christopher Werner. There was some resizing of Lando’s head on this poster, which needed to match the general size of the other actors. Because Sano was in Japan when this decision was made, they had another artist come in to do it. This retouch artist may have been Vincent Malizia, an airbrush artist in Los Angeles. I have an old newspaper clipping with him standing in front of the Jedi B poster and a caption that reads he was an airbrush artist for this poster.’

Kazuhiko Sano was born in Toyko in 1952 and studied oil painting before moving to Los Angeles in 1975 and majoring in illustration at the Academy of Art College. He graduated in 1980 with a Master in Fine Art qualification and soon began working in commercial illustration, working on book covers, editorial illustrations and film posters for a whole range of internationally famous clients. He also returned to the Academy of Art College in 1986 to teach and worked there until his death in 2011. Unquestionably his most famous film poster work was this one for Return of the Jedi but there are a handful of others too.