Mr Ricco, a little-seen 1970s crime thriller, marked the last starring role in film for ‘The King of Cool’ Dean Martin (unless you count his cameos in the two Cannonball Run films). The Italian-American entertainer, who had seen great success in several of his earlier roles including Rio Bravo and Ocean’s Eleven (with his fellow Rat Pack members), would continue to make popular TV appearances and music recordings but never headline a film again. After reading the reviews on IMDb it appears he was probably getting too old to convincingly pull-off the action scenes that roles like this one required.

Martin appears in the title role as Joe Ricco, a San Francisco lawyer who successfully defends Frankie Steele (Thalmus Rasulala) a member of a black militant group charged with murdering a woman. Shortly afterwards two cops are gunned down and Steele is implicated in the crime after witnesses describe seeing him fleeing the scene. The detective in charge of the case, George Cronyn (Eugene Roche), is angered that Steele appears to have got away with it again and decides to kill one of the members of the Black Serpents (Steele’s group) and implicate another in the cops’ murder. Ricco agrees to defend the wrongly-accused man but soon after is targeted by a lone sniper who almost kills him. Once again, Steele is implicated in the attempted murder so Ricco sets out to discover why his former client is trying to kill him.

This US 30×40 features artwork by an American artist called Larry Salk about whom I’ve been able to discover very little. A now defunct gallery site described him as a freelance illustrator who worked on around 165 film posters, as well as painting for advertisements, video game covers, record sleeves and more. IMPAwards features a few of his posters (I have his one sheet for the 3D re-release of House of Wax and the advance for Superman III) and he was the artist who painted the famous portrait of Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld. He apparently passed away in 2004.

Ron Lesser artwork on this 30×40 for the American release of this 1973 crime thriller starring Donald Sutherland and the gorgeous Jennifer O’Neill. Sutherland plays an insurance investigator who begins romancing O’Neill’s character when he suspects her of being a diamond thief. It was apparently made following the success of other ‘romance and thievery’ films such as The Thomas Crown Affair.

Lesser studied as a fine artist and much of his output appears to have been in the area of Western and military paintings, with particular focus on the American Civil War. He also worked on a number of book covers and multiple film posters during the 1970s, including the fantastic one sheet for High Plain’s Drifter. This website features galleries of his work as well as a mini biography.

The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

I’m a big fan of the none-more-1970s typeface used for the title and top-billed names, and it can be seen on a number of posters from the era. You’ll notice an Aston Martin DB5 is featured inside the diamond, along with several other scenes from the film.

The tagline references the previous hits of the two stars and for some reason the Italian title of the film even has Klute in the title, despite Sutherland playing a completely different character.

Not one for the faint of heart, Jee-woon Kim‘s ‘I Saw the Devil‘ is further proof that some of the most exciting, visceral and challenging cinema continues to come out of South Korea. The film sees a serial killer, played by Min-sik Choi [Oldboy], enter into a brutal game of cat and mouse with a secret agent (Byung-hun Lee ) after killing his pregnant fiance. To say it features some disturbing scenes would be an understatement – this is not a date movie – it’s still a must see for fans of crime thrillers and Korean cinema; if you enjoyed Chan-wook Park‘s Vengeance Trilogy you need to see this film.

This simple but effective one sheet was designed by Gravillis Inc. for the limited release in the US earlier this year. There is also a style B one sheet which is markedly different but just as good, IMO.

The trailer is on YouTube.

A striking illustration by Wieslaw Walkuski on this B1 poster for the first release in Poland (in 1990) for Alan Parker‘s 1988 crime thriller Mississippi Burning. The film was loosely based on the real life case of the murders of three civil rights workers in the titular American state in 1964. Screenwriter Chris Gerolmo based his script on an article and several books on the FBI investigation of the case that had been written in the intervening years. Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe play two FBI agents sent to the fictional town of Jessup County in order to investigate the disappearance of the three workers. Their investigation is met with suspicion and hostility by local residents, as well as the local police and the KKK. As attacks on African-American families intensify, the pair must use unorthodox methods to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Wieslaw Walkuski was born in 1956 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Since 1981 Walkuski has worked as a graphic designer and artist for publishing houses and theaters, as well as for the Polish film organisations Polfilm and Film Polski. He’s worked freelance since 1987 and has painted over 200 film posters. He continues to live and work in Warsaw. Walkuski’s official website features galleries of many of his designs and images of his other work.

He’s responsible for some incredible designs and two of my favourites include those he painted for Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves and the Dustin Hoffman comedy Tootsie.

Ace director Michael Mann‘s debut film was released as Violent Streets in the UK (and was originally filmed with that title) but is now better known as Thief. Starring James Caan, in arguably his best role outside of The Godfather, it’s a neo-noir crime caper featuring the ‘one last job’ plot device. Frank (Caan) is an expert safecracker, jewel thief and hardened ex-con who works with a dedicated team of thieves on high-end robberies that are planned to an exacting degree. After a run in with the Chicago mob Frank agrees to do one last big heist that will allow him to follow his dream of getting out of the game to spend time with his new wife Jessie (Tuesday Weld). It quickly becomes clear that getting out isn’t as easy as Frank hoped and, as the caper escalates, his usual wariness and mistrust is set aside, putting his very life at risk.

This quad features a unique design not seen on any other poster for the film, with neon colours evocative of the noir urban settings seen in the film. The American one sheet is markedly different and features stylised artwork of Caan, which can be seen on the cover of the record advertisement as detailed to the left.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

A striking design by the artist Martin Ansin features on this official screen print for the 2012 sci-fi film Looper. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, creator of the superb ‘Brick’ (2005), the film is a futuristic, somewhat dystopian crime-drama based around the theme of time travel. Looper is set in both 2044 and 2074 and stars Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the same character from each era, with the latter made to look uncannily like the former thanks to the skills of makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji. The audience learns that time-travel was invented in 2074 but then immediately outlawed. Because the tracking of individuals is so advanced and accurate, enterprising criminal gangs begin using the technology to dispose of victims they want disappeared.

These individuals are sent back in time 30 years and killed by the titular loopers who are paid in silver bars strapped to the victims. Eventually, however, all loopers must accept that they too are sent back in time to be killed by their younger selves. They are sent with reward of a packet of gold bars strapped to them and this moment known as ‘closing the loop’, is intended to stop the future authorities seeing a link to the use of time-travel. Young Joe (Gordon-Levitt) discovers that his flat-mate Seth (Paul Dano) failed to close his own loop because his older self warned him of a mysterious figure in the future known as the Rainmaker who has begun to overthrow the crime bosses and is murdering each of the loopers one by one. Joe reluctantly agrees to help his crime boss Abe (Jeff Daniels) track down Seth and close the loop.

One day Joe comes face to face with his older self and the older Joe (Willis) manages to overpower his younger self and he escapes. Older Joe is determined to kill the Rainmaker when he was just a child and young Joe discovers the target is a young child called Cid (Pierce Gagnon) who lives on a remote farm with his mother Sara (Emily Blunt). Sara confides that Cid has advanced telekinetic powers and that the young boy is barely able to control them when he gets angry. Soon, Abe’s henchmen come looking for young Joe and he must try to survive whilst also protecting Cid from older Joe and attempting to stop him from fulfilling his destiny as the Rainmaker.

Johnson also introduces an alternative timeline in which young Joe kills his older self before he can escape but then shows how the timelines are then ingeniously linked together. The film was met with great critical acclaim and performed brilliantly at the box-office, with takings several times the original production cost. Some recent reviews on IMDb have been pretty brutal and unforgiving of what are perceived to be plot holes focused around the time travel concepts, but the director himself has since explained that the film was never intended to get too focused on the technicalities of how it works:

‘Even though it’s a time-travel movie, the pleasure of it doesn’t come from the mass of time travel. It’s not a film like Primer, for instance, where the big part of the enjoyment is kind of working out all the intricacies of it. For Looper, I very much wanted it to be a more character-based movie that is more about how these characters dealt with the situation time travel has brought about.’

This screen print was commissioned by the limited edition poster outfit Mondo for a screening of the film at the 2012 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It was created by the talented Uruguayan designer and artist Martin Ansin, whose work has graced many of the best posters released by Mondo, including several in the Universal Monsters series, like this amazing Phantom of the Opera one. This design for Looper cleverly captures the time travel concepts and the two versions of the lead character.  The artist also worked on a variant of the poster that features a silver colourway.

The other posters I’ve collected by Ansin can be seen here. His official website is well worth a browse.

Legendary action star Bruce Lee was given his break into acting after being cast as Kato, one half of the crime-fighting duo in the 1960s TV show The Green Hornet. The masked vigilante began life as a radio show that was created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker and aired in 1936. It went on to be produced as film serials and as comic book series in the 1940s, before being adapted for a TV series in the 1960s.

Van Williams starred as Britt Reid, the playboy owner of The Daily Sentinel who runs his media empire whilst simultaneously fighting criminal gangs as the titular vigilante with assistance from his martial-artist sidekick Kato. The series was to only last for one season of 26 episodes but nevertheless proved popular in the States and elsewhere, with Lee being catapulted to fame on the back of the show. In Japan the series was apparently even aired as The Kato Show.

This Japanese B2 poster was printed for the 1975 release of the first of two films based on the character that were cobbled together from several episodes of the TV show and are apparently as incoherent as that would suggest. As can be seen from the design, the emphasis was placed firmly on Lee’s character, particularly since the studio was clearly keen to cash in on the star’s fame following his run of classic action films that ended with Enter the Dragon (1973) and his untimely death that same year.

White Line Fever was made during the heyday of trucking in American popular culture and tells the story of Vietnam veteran Carol Jo-Hummer (played by Jan-Michael Vincent) who returns from the war and takes over his father’s trucking business, only to run up against the corrupt shipping firm Red River who are a front for an organised crime gang. Kay Lenz stars as Carol’s sweetheart Jerri who awaited his return from Vietnam and eventually helps him take a stand against the gang.

It would later be followed by other trucking-based action films such as the Burt Reynolds mega hit Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy (1978). Director Jonathan Kaplan would go on to direct Jodie Foster to an Oscar win in 1988’s The Accused.

This style B US one sheet depicts a moment from one of the climactic scenes in the film and I’m unsure who is responsible for the artwork so please get in touch if you have any ideas.

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 poster for Francis Ford Coppola‘s classic crime epic The Godfather was designed and illustrated by Antonio Pérez González Ñiko. Born in Havana in 1941, Ñiko (as he is known) studied a Bachelor degree in Art at the city’s university before getting a job at a graphic design agency. He was instrumental in designing multiple posters for the Cuban revolutionary movement in the 1960s and 1970s as well as many film posters in conjunction with the ICAIC.

Now a resident of Mexico, Ñiko works as a professor of Graphic Design at the Gestalt Design School in Xalapa, Veracruz. He continues to design and paint and his work has been featured in countless exhibitions around the world. His personal blog can be viewed here. Galleries of his work can be viewed on his Cargo Collective website here, and the sheer number of film posters he’s worked on is nothing short of incredible.

Whilst in Havana I also picked up a few other posters, one of which (A Clockwork Orange) I have already posted here.

Roger Kastel artwork on this poster for the 1978 heist-caper starring Donald Sutherland and Sean Connery and directed by the late Michael Crichton. The film is based on his book of the same name, which is itself loosely based on an actual heist known as the Great Gold Robbery of 1855 in which a large quantity of gold was stolen from a train by a master thief and his accomplices. Pierce (Connery) works with Agar (Sutherland) to acquire the four keys that are required to break into the storage compartment on the moving train and must then attempt to escape with the loot.

The film is notable for the stunt-work, including walking on the roof of a moving train, that was apparently done by Connery himself. It’s also worth noting that the film was renamed to The First Great Train Robbery in the UK so it wouldn’t get confused with an infamous British train robbery in 1963 in which £2.6 million was stolen from a train in Buckinghamshire. The crime was dubbed The Great Train Robbery by the British press.

Roger Kastel’s website can be viewed here and it features plenty of great images of his brilliant work, including the iconic image that he originally drew for the paperback cover of Jaws, which was later used on movie posters for the film all over the world.. He’s also responsible for the excellent ‘Gone with the Wind’ style one sheet for The Empire Strikes Back.

The original trailer for the film is on YouTube.

This is the US one sheet for the release of the feature debut of British director Guy Ritchie, 1998’s crime comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. In addition to it being Ritchie’s first, it also introduced audiences to Jason Statham, best known for the Transporter films and recently the Fast and Furious franchise. It also marked the first appearance of British ex-footballer Vinnie Jones. Ritchie had come to attention with his short film The Hard Case which was seen by Trudie Styler and her husband Sting, leading to Styler executive producing Lock, Stock and Sting appearing in the film. Matthew Vaughan, a friend of Ritchie and now a successful director in his own right produced the film.

The film focuses on four lifelong friends who are small-time criminals, Eddy (Nick Moran), Tom (Jason Flemyng), Soap (Dexter Fletcher) and Bacon (Statham). At the start of the film Eddy has entered a high-stakes underground card game after the four put together the £100,000 entry fee. The game has been organised by local gangster Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty) and the quartet soon discover that the odds are rigged in Harry’s favour. Before they know it they are half a million pounds in debt and under pressure from one of Harry’s enforcers, Big Chris (Jones).

A desperate Eddy overhears his next door neighbours, a gang of robbers, discussing plans to hold-up a local cannabis farm which also has cash and valuables. Eddy relays the information to his friends and they decide to rob the gang once the heist has taken place. So begins a madcap caper that continues to spiral into violence and an increasing body count. The two barrels in the title refers to a pair of antique shotguns that also feature in the story.

The film was given only a limited release in the US in March of 1999 and this one sheet was designed by the Hollywood marketing agency New Wave Creative. The company has been working on campaigns for major studios for over 25 years and, as well as posters, they also work on trailers and other aspects of film and TV campaigns. Their page on IMPAwards indicates how prolific they were at creating posters and it appears their first one was for a 1998 re-release of Gone with the Wind. It also looks like they stopped working on posters around a decade later and presumably now only focus on other aspects of marketing campaigns. The other posters I have collected by New Wave can be seen here.

This is a British quad poster for a 2003 re-release of the classic French crime-thriller Le Cercle Rouge, which was coordinated by the British Film Institute. The film was the penultimate release from the legendary French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville who was born in 1917 and worked as a fighter in the French resistance during World War II. Melville was infatuated with American cinema and in particular films in the crime and thriller genres. After failing to break into the established French film industry he decided to become an independent, even setting up his own studio in a suburb of Paris. He soon became known for his film noir crime dramas and saw great success with titles such as Bob le Flambeur (1956), Le Doulos (1962) and Le Samouraï (1967). 

Le Cercle Rouge saw Melville reunited with the French superstar actor Alain Delon, who had appeared in Le Samourai, and the cast also included the celebrated Italian-French actor Yves Montand. Other actors in the very male-heavy cast include Bourvil (known by a single moniker), best known for comedy features, and Italian actor Gian Maria Volontè, a collaborator with Sergio Leone during the 1960s. Delon plays Corey, a man with a criminal background who is released from prison, but not before a corrupt guard tells him about an ‘easy’ job that could net him big money. At the same time, the audience also sees a prisoner named Vogel escape from a moving train and evade recapture by Commissaire Mattei (Bourvil).

Eventually the two men are brought together when Vogel happens to climb into the boot of Corey’s car whilst on the run in the French countryside. The two establish a companionship of sorts and Corey details the possible heist. Vogel likes what he hears and suggests a sharpshooter who will be able to help them in the form of Jansen (Montand), a former police officer and noted crackshot. Once plans are in place, the trio pull off the heist in a famous 25 minute sequence in which not a word is spoken by any of the characters. Once the loot is secure the film then follows their attempts to sell it with Commissaire Mattei still in hot pursuit. The film was a critical success despite initially being released in some markets (such as the US) in a truncated version that saw over 40 minutes removed. Today the film is a cult favourite and celebrated as one of Melville’s best films. 

I’m unsure who is responsible for the design of this quad so if anyone has any ideas please get in touch.

Artwork by the great Drew Struzan features on this one sheet for the release of the 1982 crime drama I, the Jury. Based on a novel of the same name by the late American author Mickey Spillane the story was previously brought to the screen in 1953 (and in 3D to boot). This version features several story elements that aren’t in the original novel.

The screenplay was written by B-movie legend Larry Cohen who was original set to direct but left the production after one week of filming when it became clear that the budget was already out of control. Cohen is the writer and director of films like Q: The Winged Serpent and The Stuff but has concentrated on screenwriting during the 1980s and 2000s. Cohen was replaced by Richard T. Heffron, perhaps best known for helming Futureworld, the sequel to Westworld.

Armand Assante plays detective Mike Hammer who discovers an old detective buddy of his, Jack Williams, has been shot and killed and he sets out to catch who was responsible. The trail leads him to a secretive sex therapy clinic that’s headed up by Dr Bennett (Barbara Carrera). Hammer discovers that Jack was on an undercover mission in the clinic and that’s what cost him his life. Before long the detective realises that he’s uncovered a conspiracy involving a rogue element of the CIA and the New York mafia who will both stop at nothing to keep their secret under wraps. 

Drew Struzan is an artist who barely needs an introduction given that he painted many of the most iconic film posters of all time, including several for Star Wars, Indiana Jones and a slew of other beloved classics like The Thing and The Goonies. The artist’s own site features 4 pages of his work for films and Drew also worked in other areas, including product marketing, book and magazine covers, editorial and multiple paintings as a fine artist. Drew declared that he’d retired in 2008 but has worked on a handful of special paintings since then, including one to announce the most recent Star Wars film in 2015.

To see a gallery of the other posters by Drew that I’ve collected click here.

This is the US one sheet for the release of Werner Herzog‘s 2011 documentary, Into the Abyss. The film is one of the legendary German director’s best films from the past decade and focuses on the situation of a prisoner in a maximum security prison in Texas who is awaiting execution. The subject is one that Herzog had wanted to focus on for a number of years and he had originally intended to look at life inside a maximum security prison in Germany. Originally the director planned to interview a number of death row inmates but ended up focusing on just one, Michael Perry, and looking into the reason for his incarceration and (at that time) imminent execution.

Using the director’s trademark interview style, where he asks questions off-camera typically to a single person, the film looks at the crime that Perry and an accomplice are said to have perpetrated and the effect it has had on the victims’ families. Herzog shies away from trying to decipher whether Perry is guilty or innocent (the man himself claims innocence) of the murder of three people in Conroe, Texas in 2001. The film is gripping throughout and some of the most memorable scenes are when the siblings of the murdered people are interviewed. One person in particular has suffered such imaginable loss it is almost breathtaking.

This poster was designed by P+A (Percival and Associates) an established and prolific design company whose output can be viewed on IMPAwards. Their official website is not currently up and running. Mojo design were also involved but the company now appears to be defunct (Into the Abyss was one of their last posters) – their output can also be viewed on IMPAwards.

A painting by the American artist Tom Jung, who is best known for his work on the style A poster for the release of the first Star Wars film, features on this one sheet for the 1972 crime-drama, Prime Cut. The film was directed by the late Michael Ritchie (Fletch, Downhill Racer) and stars two heavyweight actors of the time in Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman. The former had a string of box-office hits playing tough guys in films such as Point Blank and The Dirty Dozen, and the latter had just starred in the unforgettable The French Connection and was to appear in The Poseidon Adventure in the same year as Prime Cut. It also marked the acting debut of Sissy Spacek who would appear in her most famous role four years later in Brian De Palma’s Carrie.

The plot sees Nick Devlin (Marvin), a Chicago mob enforcer, sent with a crew of men to Kansas City to track down Mary Ann (Hackman) and recover a $500,000 debt. Previous men sent by the mob have disappeared and we witness one being ‘processed’ through Mary Ann’s meat factory, ending up as the filling in a string of sausages that are then sent to the mob boss as a taunt. After driving to Kansas, Devlin first attacks Mary Ann’s brother and warns him that the group are there to collect the debt. The following day they find Mary Ann in a barn where he is the ringleader of a white-slave auction in which young girls are being auctioned off to older men. The women are kept naked in pens like livestock and drugged up so they don’t try to escape. Devlin threatens Mary Ann and rescues one of the women called Poppy (Spacek) “on account”. The rest of the film sees him attempting to secure the missing money and avoiding Mary Ann’s gang of denim-wearing, shotgun-toting farm boys.

The film is fairly brisk at just under 90 minutes and both leads are entertaining to watch throughout. Spacek is also excellent as Poppy and it’s not hard to see why her career took off quickly following her appearance in Prime Cut. There are several memorable scenes in the film, including one faintly ridiculous one where Devlin and Poppy are chased through a wheatfield by a combine harvester, which then goes onto chew up an entire car!

As well as the iconic one sheet for Star Wars, Tom Jung is also known for the style B one sheet for The Empire Strikes Back. He was a prolific designer and illustrator for film campaigns from the 1950s through to the 1980s. IMPAwards features a gallery of his work and his Wikipedia article has a selected list of the many posters he worked on. Rather unusually, at least in comparison to other film poster artists, Jung was also a designer of his posters as well as the artist. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

Note that this is the Style A one sheet and style B is photographic. Rather unusually, the decision was taken to insert ‘A’ in next to the title at the bottom of the poster which makes it look like the title is ‘A Prime Cut’.

Based on the biography of the same name by Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers recounts the story of Joseph Valachi a mafia member turned government informant in the 1960s. Director Terence Young, famous for directing the first two James Bond films (and Thunderball), was reunited with Charles Bronson whom he’d collaborated on for his previous two films (Red Sun and Cold Sweat). The film begins in the 60s in a Federal Penitentiary with an ageing Valachi (Bronson) serving time for heroin smuggling. In prison he meets the boss of the crime family he worked for Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura) who is convinced that Valachi is an informant and gives him the ‘kiss of death’. When Valachi later kills a prisoner whom he mistakenly thinks has been sent to assassinate him, he agrees to be an informant for the government. The rest of the film deals with incidences from his life, all the way back to the 1930s when he was starting out as a young criminal.

The design on this Japanese B2 is unique to the poster.

This is the Japanese B2 for the 1973 blaxploitation crime drama Gordon’s War, directed by Ossie Davis (Cotton Comes to Harlem) and starring Paul Winfield as the eponymous Gordon Hudson. After returning from the Vietnam war he finds that his neighbourhood in Harlem has been taken over by drug dealers and that his wife has died from a heroin overdose. He gathers some of his fellow soldiers together and sets out to rid the area of the dealers.

The film is unavailable on blu-ray but receives decent enough reviews on IMDb, with one praising its use of real locations:

The location shoot in Harlem is an essential ingredient in making this film work. The feel of the streets, shops, people, cars, bars, abandoned buildings, rundown apartments and ramshackle appearances bolsters the movie greatly. There is a chase scene, car following motorcycle, that ranks among the very best of any movie anywhere, including those in poliziotteschis. That alone makes the movie.

A nice photo montage on this poster for the Japanese release of Trick Baby, a 1972 crime caper, often placed in the blaxploitation genre, despite featuring a lot more in the way of plot and character development than many of the films under that banner.  Based on the novel of the same name by the infamous former pimp Iceberg Slim, the film follows two conmen, ‘White Folks’ (Kiel Martin)  and ‘Blue’ Howard (Mel Stewart), as they pull off the biggest score of their lives and inadvertently raise the ire of the local Mafia and a corrupt cop.

The former was given the odd moniker after he was born to mixed-race parents and can pass as a white man, which proves useful for the pair’s criminal antics. The title Trick Baby comes from the other nickname he is given because of his prostitute mother and ‘trick’ father.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Following the shocking death of British director Tony Scott in 2012 there was plenty of discussion amongst fans as to the film that defined his career, which included such films as the none-more-80s Top Gun and several excellent Denzel Washington-starring thrillers such as Crimson Tide. There was only one film that I reached for from my blu-ray collection when I wanted to pay tribute to Scott and that was True Romance, the 1993 crime thriller starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette and a whole host of acclaimed actors. Featuring a fantastic script by Quentin Tarantino, the film is arguably the apex of Tony Scott’s directing career and clearly benefits from his skill at injecting energy and verve into every scene. The film is also likely to be the defining role in the careers of both Slater and Arquette who were perfectly cast as Clarence and Alabama, the young lovers thrown together at the start of the film and who set off on a rollercoaster ride that leads them from Detroit to Los Angeles with murderous gangsters on their tail.

Clarence is a film-obsessed, lonely video store clerk who is at a cinema watching a triple-bill of Sonny Chiba films when he is approached by Alabama. The pair strike up a friendship and before the night is over are head over heels in love. The only issue is that Alabama is a hooker, hired by Clarence’s work colleagues as a birthday present, and her pimp Drexl (a memorable Gary Oldman) is a violent drug dealer who none too keen to let her leave his employ. After a violent confrontation which sees Drexl dead and Clarence escaping with a suitcase full of cocaine. The pair first head to see Clarence’s father (Dennis Hopper) and then travel across the country to Los Angeles to see Clarence’s friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport) who has a potential lead for selling the drugs. Hot on their heels are a bunch of mobsters, as well as a pair of police detectives.

This is one of two styles of Japanese B2 posters and I’ve called this one the shotgun scream style as it features Arquette clutching a shotgun in one of the more intense scenes of the film. The other style features photographs of the rest of the cast and can be seen here.

Following the shocking death of British director Tony Scott in 2012 there was plenty of discussion amongst fans as to the film that defined his career, which included such titles as the none-more-80s Top Gun and several excellent Denzel Washington-starring thrillers such as Crimson Tide. There was only one film that I reached for from my blu-ray collection when I wanted to pay tribute to Scott and that was True Romance, the 1993 crime thriller starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette and a whole host of acclaimed actors. Featuring a fantastic script by Quentin Tarantino, the film is arguably the apex of Tony Scott’s directing career and clearly benefits from his skill at injecting energy and verve into every scene. The film is also likely to be the defining role in the careers of both Slater and Arquette who were perfectly cast as Clarence and Alabama, the young lovers thrown together at the start of the film and who set off on a rollercoaster ride that leads them from Detroit to Los Angeles with murderous gangsters on their tail.

Clarence is a film-obsessed, lonely video store clerk who is at a cinema watching a triple-bill of Sonny Chiba films when he is approached by Alabama. The pair strike up a friendship and before the night is over are head over heels in love. The only issue is that Alabama is a hooker, hired by Clarence’s work colleagues as a birthday present, and her pimp Drexl (a memorable Gary Oldman) is a violent drug dealer who none too keen to let her leave his employ. After a violent confrontation which sees Drexl dead and Clarence escaping with a suitcase full of cocaine. The pair first head to see Clarence’s father (Dennis Hopper) and then travel across the country to Los Angeles to see Clarence’s friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport) who has a potential lead for selling the drugs. Hot on their heels are a bunch of mobsters, as well as a pair of police detectives.

This is one of two styles of Japanese B2 posters and I’ve called this one the cast style. The other features a photo of Arquette clutching a shotgun in one of the more intense scenes of the film. Note that one of the cast members shown at the top of the poster is not actually seen in the film and if you’ve watched it you’ll know which one!

This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of the 1973 crime caper Harry in Your Pocket, which marked the directorial debut of Bruce Geller. A man of many talents, Geller was at various points a screenwriter, producer, lyricist and director. He started out writing scripts for various TV shows during the 1950s and later worked as a co-producer on the successful cowboy series Rawhide. During this period he conceived of a series based around the world of espionage and developed it into what would become Mission Impossible, a TV series that Geller executive-produced (and even appeared in) to great success. The show lasted for seven seasons (though not all had Geller’s involvement) and was shown around the world from 1966 to 1973.

Harry in Your Pocket was Geller’s first feature film as director and The Savage Bees (1976) was his last, although technically that started life as a TV movie. Sadly he died aged 47 when his light aircraft crashed in fog near Santa Barbara, California.

The late James Coburn stars as the eponymous character, a professional pickpocket who works with an older man Casey (Walter Pidgeon) who has started to make mistakes due to excessive drug use. A younger man named Ray (Michael Sarrazin) yearns to be as good as Harry and when his girlfriend Sandy (Trish Van Devere) falls victim to the professional pair, Ray decides to track them down and persuade them to take him under their wing. Harry and Casey eventually agree to let the pair work with them as the ‘stalls’, which means their task is create as much of a distraction as possible so that Harry and Casey can get close to their marks and make ‘the dip’. However, when it becomes clear that Harry has an interest in Sandy, and Ray tires of being only a minor member of the team, the group’s allegiances are tested, putting them all in danger from the law.

An excellent, stylised portrait of legendary actor Charles Bronson and the gorgeous English actress Jacqueline Bisset on this 30×40 for the US release of St Ives. Bronson stars as Raymond St. Ives, a former crime reporter and struggling author who is hired by a wealthy eccentric named Abner Procane (John Houseman) to help him secure the return of some important ledgers that were stolen from his mansion. After several unsuccessful attempts to recover them, he eventually gets his hands on the documents but then discovers that a few important pages are missing. He must then team up with Procane and his femme-fatale protege, Janet Whistler (Bisset), to track down the missing pages and St. Ives winds up caught up in a criminal plot that he didn’t see coming.

The film was the first of eight subsequent collaborations between British director J. Lee Thompson and Bronson, which included the likes of The White Buffalo (1977) and 10 to Midnight (1983).

This is the poster for the German release of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 crime-drama/musical The Cotton Club. Legendary producer Robert Evans had originally planned to direct the film and the initial story and screenplay had been written by Mario ‘The Godfather’ Puzo, but Evans had a last-minute change of heart and asked Coppola to step in. Puzo’s script was apparently re-written by the author William Kennedy who ended up writing multiple drafts and ended up with a shared screenplay credit along with Coppola. Production was apparently beset with problems, including a spiralling budget that was provided by various parties including Las Vegas casino owners, an Arab arms dealer and a vaudeville performer. In typical fashion, Evans was determined to make the film as extravagant as possible and constructed ‘no expense spared’ sets, hiring some of the best technicians in the business at eye-watering figures.

Another likely reason that filming costs ballooned is the impressive ensemble cast that Evans and the studio were able to hire, which included the likes of Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins and Gregory Hines. Loosely based on the real club of the same name that was located in New York’s Harlem neighbourhood, the story follows the machinations of various characters involved with the club in the 1930s, including Gere’s musician Dixie Dwyer whose dealings with the mobster owner of the club Owney Madden (Hoskins) sees him advance his career as an actor whilst having an affair with the girlfriend of the local kingpin, Dutch Schultz (James Remar). The film also follows Sandman Williams (Hines) a local dancer who falls for the club’s star performer Lila Rose Dwyer (Lonette McKee). Nicolas Cage appears as Dixie’s violent, racist brother Vincent who joins Schultz’s gang.

The film features several musical sequences and is soundtracked by several of the most popular jazz tunes of the era. Sadly, Coppola and Evans clashed regularly during the production and at a certain point the director apparently barred the producer from visiting the set. The Cotton Club was declared a flop when it opened in fourth place at the box-office and would eventually go on to recoup less than half of its reported budget of just under $60 million. Despite tepid critical reception the film was nevertheless nominated for several awards (only winning for Best Costumes at the BAFTAs). The film has something of a cult following today, with many fans speaking highly of the film’s production values and well-staged musical numbers. Rumours of a director’s cut release were ignited last year when Coppola declared that a restoration was in the works, reinstating several musical sequences that were apparently cut for its initial release.

This German poster was illustrated by Renato Casaro, 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.

Unique artwork on this poster for the Japanese release of French director Luc Besson‘s classic ‘hitman with a heart’ film, Leon (AKA The Professional in the US). The film reunited Besson with his  regular collaborator Jean Reno (he was one of the leads in Besson’s The Big Blue, amongst other roles), who’s superb as the titular assassin wrestling with his strict code of ethics after he witnesses the massacre of a family that leaves one survivor, a twelve-year-old girl called Mathilda (Natalie Portman in a breakout role). The perpetrator is the psychotic, corrupt policeman Stansfield, played brilliantly by Gary Oldman, and Leon decides to take Mathilda under his wing to protect her, but Mathilda wants revenge and Stansfield will stop at nothing to track down the witness to his heinous crime.

This Japanese B2 actually features a still from the director’s cut of the film. Japan was one of the only countries in the world (including France) to see a theatrical release of the so-called ‘Version Integrale’, or International cut, of the film that adds 26 minutes of extra footage – the poster for that release can be seen here. I also have the UK quad and the American one sheet.