A true cult horror – you only have to look at the list of references in pop culture on its Wikipedia page to get an idea of how much impact the film has had – this poster features a memorable tagline and a teaser of the creatures of the title. The story may be schlocky; toxic mutants living in the sewers of New York are attacking its inhabitants and it’s up to ragtag group of people (cop, fashion reporter, soup-kitchen owner!) to save the day, but the film works with its low budget to create some memorable gore-filled scenes and features fun acting from the likes of John Heard and Daniel Stern. It also has an excellent none-more-80s synth soundtrack.
Chud has since been appropriated to describe ugly, stupid people thanks mainly to its use in Kevin Smith’s Clerks II. It’s also used as the domain name of an excellent cult film website (Cinematic Happenings Under Development).
Here’s the original trailer.
Italian writer/director Sergio Martino is responsible for several notable Giallo films including Torso and The Case of the Scorpion Tail. His output also includes several exploitation and genre films that directly ‘homage’ the work of American directors, including After the Fall of New York (see Carpenter’s Escape From NY) and Hands of Steel, which shamelessly apes James Cameron’s classic Terminator (1984).
The plot sees Daniel Greene‘s cyborg Paco Querak (great name!) sent to kill a blind environmentalist who is interfering with the plans of industrialist Frank Turner (genre legend John Saxon). During the assassination attempt Querak’s human conscience somehow stops him carrying out the deed and he escapes into the Arizona desert. He ends up at a bar in a small town and before long he’s using his strength to arm wrestle truckers and partake in bar brawls, however a team of hitmen has been sent after him and it’s not long before he is tracked down.
Tragically, Claudio Cassinelli, who played one of the hitmen, was killed in a helicopter crash during filming of an action sequence.
I’m crediting the artwork to the great Renato Casaro because the main figure is clearly his illustration as can be seen on this Japanese B2 for the film, which features his signature. The rest of the art is likely to have been done by another artist, but I’m not certain to whom it can be credited. The typeface used for the tagline could not be more 80s if it tried.
Note that Hands of Steel, like many Italian exploitation films, has multiple alternative names and had a different moniker in most major markets.
The full film is available to watch on YouTube. The trailer is also YouTube.
A true cult horror – you only have to look at the list of references in pop culture on its Wikipedia page to get an idea of how much impact the film has had – this UK quad poster for C.H.U.D. features a memorable, lengthy tagline and a teaser of the creatures of the title. The story is nicely schlocky; toxic mutants living in the sewers of New York City are attacking its inhabitants and it’s up to ragtag group of people (cop, fashion reporter, soup-kitchen owner!) to save the day, but the film works with its low budget to create some memorable gore-filled scenes and features fun acting from the likes of John Heard and Daniel Stern. It also has an excellent none-more-80s synth soundtrack.
Chud has since been appropriated to describe ugly, stupid people thanks mainly to its use in Kevin Smith’s Clerks II. It’s also used as the domain name of an excellent cult film website (Cinematic Happenings Under Development).
This UK quad is very similar to the US one sheet but features a different tagline and more muted colours around the creature (his eyes glow more on the one sheet, for example). Here’s the original trailer.
Design and artwork by Tom Jung, featuring an excellent portrait of Ernest Borgnine, on this US 30×40 for this largely forgotten Western directed by Daniel Mann and starring the brilliant William Holden. Mann had made his name in the 1950s with a string of successful dramas, including Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), The Rose Tattoo (1955) and had helped Elizabeth Taylor win her first oscar for Butterfield 8 (1960).
The Revengers was seemingly an attempt to cash in on the success of Sam Peckinpah’s landmark film The Wild Bunch (1969), which had pushed the boundaries of violence in the Western genre and featured a very similar storyline based around a ragtag bunch of criminals getting together to carry out a job. In this case it’s Holden’s rancher who enlists the help of a gang of lawless convicts to help him in his quest for revenge after his family is killed and his farmstead destroyed by outlaws. Holden and Borgnine had headlined Peckinpah’s earlier film so the studio were obviously hoping for a similar level of success.
Tom Jung is perhaps best known for his iconic ‘style A’ one sheet for Star Wars and 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 posters he worked on. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.
The Bounty was the fifth film based on the true life story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, which took place at sea onboard the British Royal Navy ship of the same name in 1789. The event saw a mutinous group of sailors led by Fletcher Christian place Captain William Bligh, and a group of sailors loyal to him, onboard a small launch (boat) before sailing back to the island of Tahiti where they wished to settle. Incredibly, Captain Bligh was able to navigate the tiny boat over 3600 nautical miles to Timor in the East Indies from where he was able to travel back to London and report the mutiny.
A Royal Navy ship (HMS Pandora) was dispatched with the task of rounding up the mutineers and the crew were successful in capturing fourteen of them, but were unable to locate Fletcher Christian or The Bounty itself. After setting sail back to England, the ship ran aground on part of the Great Barrier Reef and sank shortly thereafter, killing a number of the crew and four of the prisoners. Eventually the remaining mutineers were returned to face court martial in Britain, whilst those who escaped continued to try to evade justice aboard the Bounty before settling one of the tiny Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the east of Australia.
This version was originally being prepared for the screen by the legendary British director David Lean, but problems were encountered with getting the requisite financial backing for his vision of two films, later reconfigured to a TV series. Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis stepped in with the financial support and the film was reconfigured as a single feature. When Lean’s screenwriter partner Robert Bolt suffered a massive stroke, Lean decided to leave the project but had already overseen the construction of a replica Bounty and had successfully cast most of the roles.
Mel Gibson, who was to play Fletcher Christian, brought in a fellow Aussie Roger Donaldson to helm the film and production got underway. Featuring an extremely impressive cast, including Anthony Hopkins (as Captain Bligh), Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson, the film was considered to be something of a revisionist take on the event and was certainly more accurate than the two previous Hollywood versions. The Bounty was warmly critically received but was sadly something of a flop at the box office, failing to recoup even half of its budget in the US.
The artwork on this British quad was painted by the British artist Brian Bysouth, from an original design by Eric Pulford. When I interviewed the artist in 2012 this poster was discussed and the following is an excerpt from the article:
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One Bond poster you worked on is the quad for For Your Eyes Only. It had the Bill Gold designed element of the long legs, but you modified the montage when doing the finished illustration?
Eric Pulford created the U.K. poster design that was approved. The inclusion of the very iconic Bill Gold legs concept was a must in any design that was submitted, so I suppose the scope for fresh designs was limited. In my opinion Eric’s original montage was not his best work and, although I tried to re-arrange some of the elements, the reference material supplied was not very exciting and I think the surrounding montage looks rather ordinary.
A similar difficulty arose with the design Eric had done for The Bounty (1984). His atmospheric colour rough was exciting, but when I began to sketch out the finished painting I realised the perspective of the ship was flawed. Eric’s exciting random montage of characters had initially disguised the shortcoming. I spent a day redrawing the ship and rigging to ensure it was reasonably correct, and then moved the characters to try to improve the composition. I was pleased with the final painting but was never happy with the montage, which I really thought needed recomposing. I didn’t think a confrontation with Eric was in my best interest.
Some weeks later I asked for the return of my painting only to be told, ‘it could not be found’. Obviously, a light-fingered person took a fancy to it. Much of my work has been lost to me in that way, including my teaser art for A View to a Kill.
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The other posters I have that were designed and/or painted by Brian Bysouth can be viewed here.
Norris versus Carradine was always going to be a good match and this is definitely one of Chuck’s better films. His character, a Texas Ranger named J.J. McQuade, was the inspiration behind his successful TV series Walker, Texas Ranger that began 10 years after this film. This US one sheet features great action artwork by C.W. Taylor.
The uncensored trailer can be watched on Youtube.
Someone has made a clip called Lone Wolf McQuade in four minutes, handy if you never intend to watch the film in full. Also, here’s the film’s body count.
A Japanese double-bill poster for re-release of ace director Werner Herzog‘s two masterpieces. Made ten years apart, both films star Klaus Kinski, a frequent collaborator, and the stories behind the making of the films are legendary.
Fitzcarraldo tells the true story of one man’s obsession to build an opera house in the Peruvian jungle, a task that sees him having to drag a full-sized steamer boat over a mountain from one river to another. Rather than rely on special effects or clever editing, Herzog and the crew actually did drag a steamer boat over a mountain! The story of the shoot was told in the excellent documentary Burden of Dreams.
Aguirre, Wrath of God was a similarly chaotic and pressured shoot and the story goes that when Kinski decided to leave the set and return home, Herzog pulled a gun on him and threatened to shoot him and then turn the gun on himself.
Herzog once said of Kinski: “People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other’s murder”.
I believe this double-bill poster was for a Japanese release in either 2000 or 2001 and the artwork is by an artist called Suzuki Cohjizukin about whom I know very little. Some of his other works can be found with a google search but if anyone knows anything more about him please get in touch.
Here are the original trailers for Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre.
Something of a cult classic, Victory (AKA Escape to Victory) is arguably the most famous film to revolve around The Beautiful Game. Based on 1962 Hungarian film called Két félidő a pokolban by director Zoltán Fábri the film, which is set during WWII, tells the story of a football match played in Paris by a team of Prisoners of War against a German side, seen as a propaganda event. The team is led by John Colby (Michael Caine) who is determined to win the game despite the distraction of other POWs who want to use the cover of the game to escape. Sylvester Stallone plays Hatch, an American POW who is at the vanguard of the escape attempt and actually manages to get out of the camp prior to the game to meet up with resistance leaders in Paris. After planning the big breakout, Hatch must get recaptured and returned to the POW camp in order to communicate the plans to the others. When the big day arrives, Hatch is put into goal and Colby persuades the team to see the match through to the final whistle before they make their escape.
The film notoriously features a host of real life professional footballers who were involved in the game and doubled for the actors or played on the German team, including the Brazilian superstar Pelé, Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles and a whole host of players from the English team Ipswich Town, who were one of the most successful British sides at the time of the film’s release. English goalkeeping legend Gordon Banks, who played during the 1966 world cup that England won, worked behind the scenes and coached Stallone to ensure his scenes in goal were realistic enough for the film’s audience.
This US one sheet was illustrated by the artist David Jarvis who is perhaps best known for his illustration on the poster for Walter Hill’s The Warriors. Having completed a degree in illustration at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design, Jarvis went on to work as a freelance illustrator producing over thirty designs for film posters, as well as record sleeves, magazine covers and more. He also worked as an artist for Disney studios on the films Mulan and Tarzan. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.
Check out the UK quad that also features Jarvis’ artwork but adds a montage by Vic Fair.
I’m 99% sure that this is actually a commercial print, but some dealers sell it as an original theatrical item. The text at the bottom is a pretty good giveaway.
Notice that there are symbols hidden in the black that are printed with a type of varnish.
The distinctive German filmmaker Werner Herzog directed his frequent collaborator, the equally eccentric Klaus Kinski, for the first time in this 1972 German New Wave adventure film Aguirre, Wrath of God. The story follows a 16th Century Spanish expedition from the mountains of Peru into the jungle surrounding the Amazon river as a band of conquistadors search for the mythic city of El Dorado and the riches that supposedly dwell within. After struggling through the difficult terrain the leader of the group selects a small band of people to scout ahead. Commanded by Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), with Don Lope de Aguirre (Kinski) as his second in command, they soon encounter further difficulties and the expedition descends into a nightmare from which there may be no return.
Tales of Herzog and Kinski’s battles behind the scenes are legendary and the film is known to have had a very high pressured shoot. Apparently, before every shot featuring Kinski, the director would deliberately infuriate the actor in order to get the performance he desired. The story goes that when Kinski made the decision to leave the set and return home, Herzog pulled a gun and threatened to shoot him and then turn the gun on himself.
Herzog once said of Kinski: “People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other’s murder”.
This is the poster for the film’s first release in Japan in 1983.
The original trailer for Aguirre is on YouTube.
Excellent artwork by Victor Gadino on this style B one sheet for the cinema release of the feature-length pilot for Buck Rogers in the 25th century, a sci-fi TV series that ran for two seasons on the US channel NBC between 1979 and 1981. The series was developed by legendary TV producer Glen A. Larson who had earlier worked on the first Battlestar Galactica TV series and later went on to produce the likes of The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider. Based on the character created by Philip Francis Nowlan, Buck Rogers first made an appearance in 1928 in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories and he would later go on to be adapted into a successful comic strip, a radio show, a 1930s 12-part film serial and a 1950s TV show.
The 1979 revival starred Gil Gerard as Captain William “Buck” Rogers, a US Air Force pilot who is in charge of a space shuttle called the Ranger III that is launched in 1987 and, following a freak accident, winds up frozen and floating through space. Buck is eventually revived 504 years later in the 25th century to discover that the forces of Earth were united as the Earth Defence Directorate following a devastating nuclear war soon after he left the planet. A new threat to earth looms as the armies of the planet Draconia plan to invade and Buck must work with the E.D.D. and starfighter Colonel Wilma Deering (Erin Gray) to put a stop to their plans.
As featured on this poster he is aided by a comic sidekick robot called Twiki (voiced by Mel Blanc) who carries around a disc-shaped sentient computer called Dr. Theopolis (voiced by Eric Server). Twiki’s infamous excalamation of ‘biddi biddi biddi’ would often precede a 20th Century catchphrase or piece of slang that had been taught to him by Buck.
Victor Gadino is a prolific and award-winning artist who has an incredible roster of commercial clients as well as an impressive amount of portrait work to his name, including ones for the likes of George Lucas and Clint Eastwood. He painted several music album covers as well as a handful of movie posters. Another one that is clearly signed by him is the artwork that appears on the UK quad for Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). If you know of any other film posters that Gadino worked on please get in touch. His personal website features a biography and several galleries of his art.
A wild design on this Polish poster for the 1983 American action film Blue Thunder. The late Roy Scheider stars as Frank Murphy, an LAPD pilot who’s given the chance to fly the world’s most advanced helicopter, nicknamed Blue Thunder, and use it in the war against crime. Following the death of a city councilwoman Frank begins a covert investigation and discovers that there are corrupt forces at work who plan to use the stealth helicopter for more than just crime prevention.
The artwork on the poster is by Wieslaw Walkuski who 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.
The trailer for Blue Thunder is on YouTube.
Nico (AKA Above the Law) was the debut film of the infamous action star Steven Seagal who was apparently persuaded to make the film by talent agent Michael Ovitz, a pupil at the martial arts school in Los Angeles that he ran during the 1980s. Seagal had become the first foreigner to run an aikido dojo in Japan and had reached 7th dan level before returning to America where he began to work as the martial arts coordinator for several Hollywood productions, such as The Challenge and A View to a Kill. After appearing in Nico, Seagal would go on to make several other action films, including Hard to Kill and Marked for Death, before gaining international success with 1992s Under Siege.
Nico sees Seagal’s ex-CIA police detective Nico Toscani uncover information about an illegal arms-deal that implicates a shady figure from his past. His determination to uncover the truth and place the criminals behind bars puts his wife (Sharon Stone) and kids in jeopardy, and Nico must use his martial arts skills to put a stop to the operation before it’s too late.
The artwork on this international one sheet is by the American illustrator David Grove who worked on several film posters, including the brilliant international one sheet for Pale Rider and the striking poster for Something Wicked This Way Comes. Grove had an incredible skill at using gouache and acrylic paints to create striking, stylised images of his subjects, which are full of energy and feature brilliant use of colour washes, shading and clever brush strokes.
It appears that the illustrator sadly passed away in October this year and the website of Artist Partners London (where he apparently worked for a while in the 1960s) features a gallery and information on him, including an obituary that was originally printed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Greg Newbold’s Life Needs Art blog features a great piece on Grove, which includes several images of his other film posters.
This is arguably the best Steven Seagal poster ever printed, although the Japanese poster for the film with artwork by Noriyoshi Ohrai comes very close.