Zombi Holocaust is an unusual entry in the history of Italian exploitation films in that it combines three popular horror themes, with cannibals, zombies and a mad doctor all featuring. The prolific producer Fabrizio De Angelis was behind Lucio Fulci’s legendary Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) and clearly decided to cash in on the popularity of that film, rushing Zombi Holocaust into production the same year. Marino Girolami was in the director’s chair and Ian McCulloch, star of Zombie Flesh Eaters, appears as a doctor investigation a series of strange murders.

Beginning in New York City, the film starts in a hospital where cadavers are being mutilated and the staff discover that a male nurse has been eating body parts. Whilst the staff try to subdue him, he manages to escape and jumps through a window, falling to his death. Lori Ridgeway (Alexandra Delli Colli) is a morgue assistant at the hospital who is also interested in anthropology and is interested to discover that the cannibal nurse is from the same Asian Molucca islands that she was originally from. Dr. Peter Chandler (McCulloch) arrives at the hospital and explains that a number of other deaths have occurred all over the US in which natives from Molucca have been implicated.

The pair travel to the islands along with an investigative reporter (Sherry Buchanan) and meet up with a Doctor Obrero (Donald O’Brien) who has apparently been looking into the mystery. Soon after they arrive, their group is attacked by vicious cannibals and several members of the party are eviscerated. Whilst trying to escape the island they are once again attacked by cannibals, but just before they are killed a handful of disfigured zombies show up and scare off the cannibals. They discover that Dr Obrero has been covering up his experiments on the islanders which have been turning them into the undead and before long Chandler is on the mad doctor’s operating table. Lori, who was snatched by the cannibals, is accepted as their queen and she sends her new friends to rescue Chandler.

The film is entertaining enough and certainly doesn’t scrimp on the gore, with barely any cutting away at the critical moment as is often the case (at least in the uncut version I recently watched). Rather bizarrely, the film was marketed as a kind of slasher film in the US as Doctor Butcher M.D. (Medical Deviant) and had several cuts made as well as a new scene inserted that was taken from another, unfinished film.

The artwork is unique to this Thai poster and is by the artist Kwow. If anyone has any biographical information about him please get in touch.

I’ll admit to not having seen John Frankenheimer’s film about a war between two rival crime gangs and the hitman (the late Richard Harris) who is caught between them. From reading various reviews and articles online it seems like the film is trapped between genres; it was intended as a black comedy but apparently features many scenes of over-the-top violence and the humour often falls flat. This quote from an IMDb review gives you some idea:

The substandard mafia plot sits second tier to the film’s sporadic comedy spoofing and mugging, much of what both fails and succeeds simultaneously at the hands of its dramatic director who must have been at the peek of his well publicized cocaine binge.

It certainly sounds like an interesting film (one reviewer describes it as a ‘beautiful mistake’) and I intend to check it out soon because Shout Factory, a US DVD label, are releasing the film in a double-bill with another 1974 film The Nickel Ride this week.

The title is definitely an odd one and is apparently referencing the advertising slogan (at the time) of Ivory Soap, a popular brand of cleaning product that is still available today. Here’s a none-more-1970s advert that features the tagline. The name was obviously simplified at a certain point as it’s now known as ‘Call Harry Crown’ on IMDb.

This US 30×40 poster was designed by the great Bill Gold and features a Roy Lichtenstein-esque pop-art image. I’m not sure who is responsible for the artwork but it’s possible it could be John Van Hamersveld who illustrated the awesome Get Carter pop-art style one sheet. If anyone knows this for sure I’d appreciate the confirmation so leave a comment or send me an email.

This pop-art inspiration also extended to the opening sequence that can be watched here.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

A unique design on this Japanese poster for the classic sci-fi thriller The Andromeda Strain, which was based on Michael Crichton’s book of the same name. Despite clearly being a product of the early 1970s the film still stands up today and the events depicted are no less terrifying than they were 41 years ago; the threat of an unknown and deadly disease hangs over us all.

The story focuses on the mysterious deaths of the inhabitants of a small town in Arizona after a satellite crashes back to earth nearby. It’s suspected that the satellite was carrying an unknown extraterrestrial organism and a specialist team of scientists is despatched to investigate. They recover the satellite and also discover there are two survivors in the town; a delirious elderly man and a baby.  The team then heads to the specially constructed ‘Wildfire’ underground bunker where they must race against time (and the threat of nuclear destruction) to neutralise the alien threat with the help of the two survivors.

The visual effects were designed by Douglas Trumbull who has worked his magic on multiple classic films over the years, including 2001, Blade Runner and recently on The Tree of Life. Using techniques he’d honed on 2001, Trumbull was able to create realistic looking (for the time) screen displays without the need for an actual computer. The production design by Boris Leven is also fantastic with the bunker interior being particularly notable.

The US one sheet features the same shot of James Olson in the hermetically sealed suit with the uninfected baby.

The original trailer is available on YouTube.

The Last Dragon is a martial-arts cult classic from the 1980s that (at least in the US) stands alongside films like The Goonies and Back to the Future as a defining youth-oriented film of the era. It’s definitely less well known in the UK and I think that has something to do with the fact that it was released with a ’15’ rating over here, meaning it was out of bounds for the younger audience it clearly attracted in the US (with a PG rating).

That it was rated 15 was probably to do with the video nasties situation of the time and the passing of the Video Recordings Act of 1984 that meant all home video had to be classified by the British Board of Film Classification, designated by the government as the upholders of film ratings. Martial arts films were seen as an undesirable genre as they were (stupidly) thought to have a strong potential to cause cases of copycat violence in school children across the nation. In addition to being given a 15 rating, the film had cuts made totalling almost 2 minutes for the cinema and subsequent home video releases.

To say this action by the BBFC was excessive would be an understatement as, aside from a couple of moments of profane language, the film is really quite mild, with none of the fight scenes being at all brutal. The film was produced by the founder of Motown records Berry Gordy and was intended to mix musical numbers (predominantly hip-hop) with the popular (at the time) martial arts genre. The lead role of Leroy Green (AKA Bruce Leroy), a young warrior who wishes to attain the ultimate level of martial arts skill known as ‘The Glow’, was given to the 20-year-old, single-monikered Taimak, a martial artist who apparently learned to act whilst on the set of the Last Dragon.

Leroy leaves his master on the quest to find Master Sum Dum Goy whom he believes will teach him the final lessons needed to attain The Glow. Along the way he must battle with the malevolent Sho’nuff (a hilarious performance from Julius Carry) another martial artist who sees Leroy as standing in the way of total domination, as well as deal with the machinations of the twisted video arcade mogul Eddie Arkadian (Christopher Murney). Laura Charles (Vanity, single-monikered protege of Prince) the VJ of a popular music video channel is kidnapped by Arkadian’s men in an attempt to convince her to play his girlfriend’s awful music video. Leroy sets out to rescue her and romance soon blossoms between them. He soon learns the truth about attaining The Glow and the final fight with Sho’nuff features the use of rotoscoped special effects.

The film contains a few almost full-length music videos, including the DeBarge song, ‘Rhythm of the Night‘. The fight scenes are all well choreographed and entertaining, with Taimak clearly having skills in that area (if not so much as a thespian). The excellent Last Dragon Tribute site features a recent letter from the man himself in which he explains why he’s not starred in many films since then. It’s not hard to see why the film was so popular as it played to the adolescent fantasy of many a young male teen who dreamed of using martial arts to win the heart of a girl.

This Japanese poster is rather excellent and the artwork is unique to the Japanese campaign. Seito is one of my favourite Japanese artists who was responsible for several fantastic illustrated posters during the 1970s and 1980s. Little is known about the man himself, even in his native country.

To see the other posters I’ve collected by Seito click here.

A striking design features on this German poster for the 1975 re-release of one of the greatest war films ever released, 1963’s The Great Escape. Director John Sturges (Magnificent Seven) helmed the film and it’s based on the 1950 non-fiction book of the same name, written by Paul Brickhill, which tells the story of a mass escape by allied prisoners from the high-security Stalag Luft III prison in Nazi Germany. Although partly fictionalised, many of the events depicted in the film did occur and the filmmakers only changed certain events and characters to add to the film’s commercial appeal.

An absolutely star-studded affair, the film features many of the finest male actors of the day, including Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough and Donald Pleasence. American actor Charles Bronson also appears as one of the prisoners and his popularity in Europe at the time of this 1975 re-release explains why he’s given equal billing on the poster alongside McQueen. Despite the roster of big names it will undoubtedly always be known as McQueen’s film since his turn as Virgil ‘The Cooler King’ Hilts, the cocky, determined Air Force captain, is really the centre of the film. It was McQueen’s image that was used to promote the film on various posters around the world. 

I’m unsure why the film was re-released in the then West Germany in 1975 and am also unsure who was responsible for the design and art on this A1 poster. If anyone has any ideas please get in touch.

A striking design on this poster for the 1977 British-Canadian horror anthology The Uncanny, which is based around the unlikely theme of malevolent cats. The film is often mistakenly credited as being an Amicus Productions anthology (like Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror) but it was in fact a Rank release with the involvement of Milton Subotsky, one half of the Amicus team, which had disbanded in 1975.

The film features three stories told as part of an overarching framing tale that sees Peter Cushing as a British author visiting his agent in Montreal to present the idea for his next book, which is that all cats are inherently evil, supernatural creatures. To illustrate his reasoning he tells three separate tales, each from different eras and locations. The first is set in London and sees Miss Malkin (Joan Greenwood) a sick, wealthy widower leave her fortune to her houseful of cats, which angers her only nephew. He enlists the help of the housemaid Janet (Susan Penhaligon) who attempts to steal the copies of the will but disturbs the elderly woman as she’s doing so and kills her in the struggle that follows. Much to Janet’s surprise, the moggies then take their revenge on her and the nephew.

The second story is based in Quebec and sees Lucy (Katrina Holden Bronson) an orphaned girl, going to live with her Aunt and bringing her beloved cat Wellington with her. After being mistreated by the family who decide to try and dispose of Wellington, Lucy seeks help from her collection of witchcraft books and takes out her anger on her malicious cousin Angela. The final story is set in Hollywood during the 1930s and features Donald Pleasence giving it his all as an actor who rigs an onset accident that kills his wife so he can shack up with his mistress, a younger actress. Unfortunately, his wife’s cat is none too pleased with its owner being offed and sets out to get its revenge, which it does in a ridiculous finale.

The film features very little in the way of horror, with only some very fake looking blood in a few scenes and absolutely nothing in the way of suspense. The special effects are mostly awful and in the scenes where cats are supposedly attacking people you can practically see the hands of the animal handlers who’ve just thrown them at the victim. The middle story set in Canada is particularly poor, thanks to a woeful performance by the actress playing Lucy. The simple fact is that cats are not particularly scary and anyone who owns a cat knows that the worst that might happen is a bit of scratched skin. Apparently the film flopped at the box office and was never even given a release in American cinemas.

This poster was designed and illustrated by Vic Fair, who is one the most important designer/artists ever to work on British film marketing. He is responsible for several iconic posters, including The Man Who Fell To Earth, posters for Hammer horrors like Vampire Circus, and the withdrawn advance one sheet for A View to a Kill. I interviewed Vic for this site and that article can be viewed by clicking here.

To see the other posters I’ve collected by him click here.

This is the UK video poster for the release of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento‘s Creepers, which was a heavily cut version (over 30 minutes missing!) of his 1985 film that was released as Phenomena in Italy and elsewhere. The film stars a young Jennifer Connelly as Jennifer Corvino, the daughter of a famous actor, who is sent to study at a Swiss boarding school in an area where a series of grizzly murders have taken place. Jennifer suffers from sleepwalking and also discovers she has the ability to telepathically communicate with insects. Eventually she puts this skill to use for an investigation into the murders, aided by local forensic entomologist John McGregor (Donald Pleasence). The film also stars Argento’s long-time partner Daria Nicolodi as Jennifer’s chaperone Frau Brückner and mother of a boy who has connections to the spate of deaths.

This poster was painted by the renowned British artist Graham Humphreys and we discussed the poster when I interviewed him about his career in 2011. The excerpt is below:

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You ended up doing a lot of work for Palace, obviously they were Palace Video at the time and they had a huge catalogue that they were distributing. There’s a great bit of artwork you did for Dario Argento’s Creepers – the psychotic chimp.
Yep, the cheeky chimp. They told me that they had this Dario Argento film and at that time I was quite naive and didn’t know who Argento was, having not seen Suspiria or any of those great films. I had the full uncut VHS copy of Creepers, or Phenomena, and it just blew me away. I thought it was fantastic and thoroughly distasteful, plus Donald Pleasance’s awful accent made it quite funny as well. They said ‘do something, whatever you want’ and I showed them the sketch – I had one idea – and they said ‘yep, this is it. Go for it.’

The blade-wielding chimp was an image that had stuck in your mind from the film?
Yes. They used it for a poster as well, for a limited cinema release of the film. If you were releasing a film on VHS you’d give it more kudos if you could say that it had been released theatrically. It would be a big selling point on the sales sheet if it said ‘released in cinemas’ and all you had to do was show it one screen for a couple of days and that was enough.

Ah, so it might have been that this was actually the first release of Creepers in the UK, direct onto VHS with a quick cinema release?
The VHS was released and for one week only it appeared in one or two cinemas, only in London. Actually, it might have just been the Prince Charles Cinema. The chimp design would have been fly-posted as well.

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Check out the other posters I’ve collected that were designed and illustrated by Graham by clicking here. You can read the Film on Paper exclusive interview with Graham by clicking here.

Graham’s official website can be seen 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.

The horror anthology The Monster Club was produced by ex-Amicus co-owner Milton Subotsky and was the final feature film from director Roy Ward Baker. Subotsky had seen great success as one half of Amicus (his partner was the screenwriter Max Rosenberg) with the release of several ‘portmanteau’ horrors, including three directed by genre stalwart Freddie Francis; Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1964), Torture Garden (1967) and Tales from the Crypt (1972). Roy Ward Baker is best remembered for his work on the Titanic film A Night to Remember (1958) and several successful horror films for one of Amicus’ rival studios, Hammer, including the excellent Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1972). Baker directed a handful of horrors for Amicus, including the anthologies Asylum (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973), as well as the ghost story And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973).

The Monster Club features American horror legend Vincent Price as the vampire Eramus who bumps into the horror writer R.Chetwynd-Hayes (played by the prolific John Carradine) and feasts on his blood but ‘doesn’t bite deep enough’ to turn him into one of his own. Eramus then invites the writer to visit the titular club claiming that he’s sure it will offer plenty of inspiration as it’s home to all manner of werewolves, ghouls, beasts and other assorted creatures (read: extras in hastily prepared rubber masks). What follows is three fairly dull horror stories featuring several notable actors (Donald Pleasence, Richard Johnson and Britt Ekland) but it’s the surrounding sequences in the club itself that are more interesting with a handful of catchy musical numbers and one memorable sequence in which a stripper takes everything off, including her skin (via a shadowy animation).

The poster was designed and painted by the brilliant British illustrator Graham Humphreys. Because it wasn’t a poster we discussed during our 2011 interview I wanted to speak to Graham to hear the story of the making of this poster in more detail. The interview with Graham can be read here.

After John Carpenter’s original horror classic Halloween made over $70 million at the global box-office on a budget of $325k – earnings equivalent to $250 million adjusted for ticket price inflation – it was only a matter of time before a sequel was put into production. Carpenter passed on the chance to direct Halloween II, but offered to both produce and write the screenplay (and apparently even direct a few scenes) and the film was put into production with a significantly increased budget of $2.5 million. A relatively unknown director called Rick Rosenthal was offered the job and filming got underway with a targeted release date of Halloween 1981.

This is one of those sequels that picks up immediately after the events at the end of the previous film and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is being loaded into an ambulance having survived the attack by Michael Myers who was shot by Dr Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) before escaping into the night. We follow Myers as he stalks the neighbourhood, murdering an unlucky teenager as he searches for the whereabouts of Laurie. Dr Loomis and the Haddonfield police desperately hunt the killer as the true extent of his actions in the previous film come to light. Meanwhile, Laurie arrives at the town’s hospital and soon falls into a catatonic state thanks to the shock of her ordeal. When Michael learns of her whereabouts after overhearing a news broadcast he heads towards the hospital and the carnage begins again.

Rosenthal is definitely no Carpenter but it’s still a strong horror film, which has several creepy moments despite upping the body count and leaning towards quick, gross-out murders rather than tense, drawn-out pursuit sequences. It’s interesting to see the aftermath of the events in the first film and the hospital makes for an excellent location for Myers to stalk his prey. At the time, the explosive ending seemed to draw a line under the story of Michael Myers and, infamously, Halloween III made no mention of him, but when that film was something of a box-office flop the producers of the next sequel brought the man in the mask back from the dead.

This is the British quad for the release of John Carpenter’s 1987 horror Prince of Darkness. As well as being in the director’s chair, Carpenter wrote the soundtrack and also the screenplay under the pseudonym Martin Quatermass, which is a direct homage to Bernard Quatermass, the lead character in Hammer’s film and TV series that started with The Quatermass Experiment and that features several elements in common with Carpenter’s story. The film is the second in what the director calls his ‘Apocalypse Trilogy’ that started with The Thing (1982) and ended with In the Mouth of Madness (1994) and is the result of Carpenter’s interest in theoretical physics and atomic theory as well as the idea of an ultimate evil or ‘anti-god’ combined with the physics-based concept of matter and anti-matter.

The plot sees Los Angeles priest Father Loomis (Donald Pleasence, his character name directly referencing Halloween) invite Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong, returning from Big Trouble in Little China) and a group of his students from a local university to help him investigate a mysterious, liquid-filled canister in the basement of an abandoned church that was being guarded by an elderly priest who passed away leaving a diary and a key to the basement. Amongst the group  is Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker) a theoretical physics student and a sceptical science student called Walter (Dennis Dun, also from Big Trouble in Little China), plus several other scientist types – one of the film’s weak spots is that it fails to give any explanation or back story to characters we’re supposed to care about/have some interest in.

Something in the canister is stirring and is causing strange events such as insects swarming the church and the local homeless population, which includes rocker Alice Cooper as ‘street schizo’, behaving as a zombie-like group. One of the students, Susan (Anne Marie Howard) is possessed by a burst of liquid from the canister and begins to kill and spread the possession to other members of the group, which has clear echoes of the way The Thing moves through the Antarctic camp. Meanwhile, the rest of the group have been experiencing the same ‘tachyon transmission’ purportedly from the future and warning them of the danger they face. They soon come to realise that the container actually holds the son of an even greater evil and one that is determined to escape from the realm of anti-matter and into our world. Brian and the handful of non-possessed team members must battle to stop the anti-god from fulfilling its plans before it is too late.

The film features a creepy atmosphere helped no-end by Carpenter’s superb score – one of his very best in my opinion. Despite the aforementioned underdeveloped characters there are still several decent performances, including that of the ever-reliable Pleasence and Lisa Blount, one of the students who is instrumental in stopping the anti-god at the end of the film. The make-up and special effects still stand up well and the set and production design are also worth a mention. It might not be up there with Halloween or The Thing, but it’s still one of Carpenter’s better films and one that definitely deserves its cult reputation.

This image of the screaming, disfigured face with the bug in its mouth, as well as the church and the oozing green liquid was used around the world, including the US one sheet and (partially) on the Japanese B2.

Warlords of Atlantis was the fourth and final entry in a series of British sci-fi/fantasy b-movies that were directed by Kevin Connor and starred the prolific American actor Doug McClure, known for his hammy leading man performances (McClure was one of the inspirations for The Simpsons’ Troy ‘You may remember me from…’ McClure). The series began with The Land That Time Forgot in 1975 and continued with At the Earth’s Core (1976) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). The initial three were shepherded through production by Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky’s Amicus Productions, which was based at Shepperton studios and is perhaps best remembered for its series of portmanteau horror films. By the time Warlords of Atlantis was released the company was almost defunct and so EMI Films stepped in and produced it, utilising many of the same cast and crew as the previous films.

The story is typically ludicrous and the film begins with a red hot meteorite crashing into the earth’s ocean during the title sequence. The film then moves to a large boat floating out at sea at the end of the 19th century with an English archaeologist Professor Aitken (Donald Bisset) and his son Charles (Peter Gilmore) onboard. The pair have chartered a crew, led by engineer Greg Collinson (McClure), to take them out to a spot in the ocean where they plan to use a diving bell to explore the ocean floor for reasons unclear. When Charles and Greg travel below the surface the craft is attacked by a (very rubbery) prehistoric sea monster, which they manage to fight off before discovering a strange gold statue.

After the statue is sent up to the ship, three of the crew members decide they want to keep it for themselves and set about sabotaging the mission by cutting the line to the diving bell and shooting the professor. Suddenly a giant octopus attacks the ship, grabbing the crew members and dragging them under, before collecting the diving bell and depositing them all in a mysterious undersea chamber. The group are greeted by Atmir (Michael Gothard looking like an electro-band reject) who explains that Atlantis is not a myth and that it is in fact comprised of seven cities, some of which are crumbling ruins thanks to attacks from huge creatures. After leading the group to the fourth city Vaar, most of the crew are thrown in to prisons but Charles is granted an audience with the Atlantean king and queen, which is where their true origins and intentions are revealed.

Whilst everything moves with a decent pace the story is more than a bit garbled and the low-budget is stretched to breaking point in several scenes with some terrible matte paintings illustrating the point. The creature work in particular is mostly of the low-grade variety, although the giant octopus scenes are relatively well done and some elements of the production design are very successful (the diving bell is great, for example). The acting is mostly good, whilst obviously of the b-movie variety, with McClure and Gilmore both being eminently watchable and the score by Michael Vickers deserves special mention. Despite its obvious shortcomings, Warlords of Atlantis is still a very enjoyable film and marked a decent end to the run of films from Connor and McClure.

The artwork on this Japanese B2 is by Seito, one of my favourite Japanese artists who was responsible for several fantastic illustrated posters during the 1970s and 1980s. Little is known about the man himself, even in his native country. To see the other posters I’ve collected by him click here.

Outback (AKA Wake in Fright) was originally released in 1971 to a strong critical reception and decent box-office figures in countries like the UK, but it was almost a lost film by turn of the century. Only released in a few markets during the early 1970s, the film was seemingly forgotten about by the end of the decade and when Anthony Buckley, the editor of the film began looking for the original materials in 1996 it would be six years before he finally tracked them down to a warehouse in Pittsburgh. He was just in time since they were due to be destroyed only a week later. A full restoration was instigated and the results were screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to great acclaim. The film was given a worldwide release shortly after and was put out on the blu-ray format at the same time.

An Australian-American co-production, the film was based on Australian author Kenneth Cook‘s 1961 novel Wake in Fright, which was the title it would be released with in Australia (and re-christened for its recent release everywhere). The film’s rights were acquired soon after the book was released but it would be several years before producers from NLT and Group W got involved and invited the Canadian director Ted Kotcheff (First Blood) to helm the adaptation. Kotcheff had never been to Australia before then and now admits to having known little about the outback and the situations he would go on to portray, but he immersed himself in the culture whilst filming on location and the results are clear to see on screen.

The late British actor Gary Bond plays John Grant, a teacher from Sydney who has agreed to the terms of a financial bond with the Australian government that guarantees him a tertiary eduction but means he has to take a teaching job in a remote outback township called Tiboonda. At the start of the Christmas holidays he sets off on a journey back to Sydney to see his girlfriend, which takes him via the mining town of Bundanyabba, known as The Yabba. He visits a bar where he meets a friendly but eccentric policeman (played by Chips Rafferty in his final role) who introduces him to the local gambling obsession of two-up. After winning a few rounds John gets carried away and decides to bet all his winnings to try and escape from the government bond. Unfortunately, luck is not on his side and he’s soon stuck in The Yabba, relying on the kindness of strangers to keep him afloat.

At another bar he meets a local called Tim Hynes (Al Thomas) who invites John back to his home. There he meets Tim’s daughter Jeanette and a bunch of his friends. Things take a dark turn from there as John is drawn into sordid events and descends into a drunken stupor with the aid of the gang of local men, led by alcoholic doctor Doc Tydon (played by a memorably wild-eyed Donald Pleasence). John eventually takes part in a horrific night-time kangaroo hunt that sees the men drunkenly shooting at the poor beasts before John is forced to stab an injured young kangaroo to death. Despite attempting to escape The Yabba via hitch-hiking, he soon finds himself back in the town carrying only a loaded rifle.

The film has a distinctly menacing atmosphere and you can’t help but put yourself in the shoes of John Grant, a man out of place, trapped in an oppressively hot and sticky environment. At some points you can practically taste the dust and sweat. The film attracted controversy for the kangaroo hunting scene, which featured graphic footage shot by Kotcheff and a camera crew after they’d joined a real kangaroo hunt during which the men with the rifles got progressively drunker whilst the night wore on. It’s still deeply unsettling to watch to this day, much like similar footage of animal cruelty in films like Cannibal Holocaust.

This artwork was used for the American marketing campaign and I think it was an adaptation of the Australian art (the two are very similar but there are a few notable differences). I’ve been unable to determine the name of the artist so if anyone has an idea please get in touch.

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.

This is the original Thai poster for the release of John Carpenter’s 1987 horror Prince of Darkness. As well as being in the director’s chair, Carpenter wrote the soundtrack and also the screenplay under the pseudonym Martin Quatermass, which is a direct homage to Bernard Quatermass, the lead character in Hammer’s film and TV series that started with The Quatermass Experiment and that features several elements in common with Carpenter’s story. The film is the second in what the director calls his ‘Apocalypse Trilogy’ that started with The Thing (1982) and ended with In the Mouth of Madness (1994) and is the result of Carpenter’s interest in theoretical physics and atomic theory as well as the idea of an ultimate evil or ‘anti-god’ combined with the physics-based concept of matter and anti-matter.

The plot sees Los Angeles priest Father Loomis (Donald Pleasence, his character name directly referencing Halloween) invite Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong, returning from Big Trouble in Little China) and a group of his students from a local university to help him investigate a mysterious, liquid-filled canister in the basement of an abandoned church that was being guarded by an elderly priest who passed away leaving a diary and a key to the basement. Amongst the group  is Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker) a theoretical physics student and a sceptical science student called Walter (Dennis Dun, also from Big Trouble in Little China), plus several other scientist types – one of the film’s weak spots is that it fails to give any explanation or back story to characters we’re supposed to care about/have some interest in.

Something in the canister is stirring and is causing strange events such as insects swarming the church and the local homeless population, which includes rocker Alice Cooper as ‘street schizo’, behaving as a zombie-like group. One of the students, Susan (Anne Marie Howard) is possessed by a burst of liquid from the canister and begins to kill and spread the possession to other members of the group, which has clear echoes of the way The Thing moves through the Antarctic camp. Meanwhile, the rest of the group have been experiencing the same ‘tachyon transmission’ purportedly from the future and warning them of the danger they face. They soon come to realise that the container actually holds the son of an even greater evil and one that is determined to escape from the realm of anti-matter and into our world. Brian and the handful of non-possessed team members must battle to stop the anti-god from fulfilling its plans before it is too late.

The film features a creepy atmosphere helped no-end by Carpenter’s superb score – one of his very best in my opinion. Despite the aforementioned underdeveloped characters there are still several decent performances, including that of the ever-reliable Pleasence and Lisa Blount, one of the students who is instrumental in stopping the anti-god at the end of the film. The make-up and special effects still stand up well and the set and production design are also worth a mention. It might not be up there with Halloween or The Thing, but it’s still one of Carpenter’s better films and one that definitely deserves its cult reputation.

This Thai poster features a montage of unique artwork painted by the Thai artist who signs his work ‘Jinda’. I’ve struggled to find out much about him so if anyone has any ideas please get in touch. The artist has painted some of the more memorable gore sequences from the film, although the main image of the woman crashing through the broken mirror isn’t exactly accurate, as anyone who’s seen the film can attest.

The section featuring the church and the oozing green liquid featured on several international posters, including the US one sheet and (partially) on the Japanese B2.

A simple but effective teaser for the German release of John Carpenter’s sci-fi classic Escape From New York, released as Die Klapper-Schlange (Rattlesnake). I’d have a hard time choosing my favourite of the three (fictional) characters Carpenter and Kurt Russell created together; R.J. MacReady (The Thing), Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China) and Snake Plissken (EFNY). The latter is the gruff former war hero and convicted bank robber who is sent onto the island of Manhattan of an alternative 1997, which has been sealed-off as a lawless prison, in search of the American President whose plane crashed there after a terrorist attack. He’s arguably the coolest of the three and is a character much imitated in other lesser films featuring a reluctant hero.

The tagline on this teaser actually spells Plissken as Plessken, which is likely to have been simply an error on the copywriter’s part but may have been intentionally changed (no idea why!). A German friend translated the copy and it reads as follows:

‘Snake Plessken,  the “Rattlesnake”- he has to get in there, where nobody has yet escaped – in a city like a prison – 10 million inhabitants – everyone of them a gangster – New York 1997’

The rest of the John Carpenter posters I’ve collected can be seen by clicking here.