This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of the first of two sequels to the 1967 drama In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier as the eponymous police detective. The actor had made history in 1964 by becoming the first African American to win the Oscar for Best Actor (for Lilies of the Field), and 1967 saw him star in three hit films that all dealt with the issue of race and race relations. This included Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which tackled the controversial issue of interracial marriage that was still illegal in several states, and To Sir, with Love, a British drama that dealt with racial issues in an inner-city school. It was In the Heat… that was the biggest hit that year and the film would go on to win 5 Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Actor for Rod Steiger, who played alongside Poitier.

Three years later, the original film’s producer Walter Mirisch decided there was an opportunity to try and create a franchise around Virgil Tibbs. Without a source novel to base a screenplay on Mirsch hired to two successful screenwriters in Alan Trustman (Bullitt) and James R. Webb (the original 1962 Cape Fear), as well as the prolific director Gordon Douglas (Them!). They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (the capitalisation is intentional and part of the original title) was named after a famous line spoken by Poitier in the first film and saw the detective, now based in San Francisco, investigating the murder of a prostitute. The death has been pinned on Logan Sharpe (Martin Landau), a street preacher with whom we’re told Tibbs has a long-standing friendship. The film follows the detective as he attempts to prove Sharpe’s innocence whilst dealing with domestic family issues and ends on something of a down note, which I won’t spoil. 

The film was criticised for being a very routine police procedural and certainly had none of the cultural urgency that the first film was able to capitalise on. It was something of a damp squib both critically and at the box-office but that didn’t stop Mirisch producing another sequel called The Organization only a year later. Again that film failed to make an impact, even though it was able to capitalise on the then popular blaxploitation subgenre, but by then Poitier had started to field accusations of typecasting. Virgil Tibbs would thus hang up his badge for 17 years until the TV series In The Heat of the Night, based on the original film and novel and starring Howard E. Rollins Jr., which was aired between 1988 and 1992.

Another Earth, an excellent, haunting sci-fi drama released in 2011 marked the feature film debut of director Mike Cahill, who co-wrote and co-produced the film along with Brit Marling, the main actress in the film (and focus of this American one sheet). Marling stars as Rhoda Williams an enthusiastic astronomy student living in West Haven, Connecticut who discovers she’s been accepted to study at MIT and, after celebrating with friends, foolishly decides to drive home drunk. As she listens to a story on the news about a recently discovered Earth-like planet, her attention drifts long enough to cause her to smash into another car, instantly killing a woman and child and putting the driver, John Burroughs (William Mapother) into a coma.

Wracked with guilt, and having served four years in prison, Rhoda hides herself away from contact with much of the outside world and works as a janitor at a local school. She visits William, who has since emerged from his coma and has no knowledge of who killed his wife and child, at his home under the pretence of being a house maid offering her services and the pair spark up a relationship. All the time William is unaware that she was the person responsible for the death of his loved ones, but when the other Earth moves closer to ours Rhoda enters a competition to win a (potentially one-way) ticket to visit the new planet and their relationship is jeopardised, the truth is revealed and William struggles to cope. The film cleverly weaves the intriguing idea of a mirror Earth into a relationship drama, and the subtle ending hints at multiple possibilities for the characters’ journeys beyond the time which the audience shares with them.

This one sheet was designed by the hugely prolific Los Angeles (and London) design studio Ignition Print, who also appear to work on video advertising and film trailers for various big name brands.

A striking portrait of the underrated actor Chris Cooper features on this Japanese B2 for the release of the 2007 drama Breach. Based on a real incident, Cooper plays Robert Hanssen, a senior FBI agent who was discovered to have been an undercover spy for the Soviet Union and later Russia for over twenty years. Ryan Phillippe plays a somewhat fictionalised version of Eric O’Neill, another FBI employee who was tasked with going undercover as Hanssen’s clerk under the pretense of trying to bring to light certain ‘sexual deviances’.

Initially frosty, the older agent grows to like O’Neill and the pair become closer as the film progresses, despite the misgivings of O’Neill’s wife Erica (Caroline Dhavernas) who resents Hanssen’s intrusions into their life, including encouraging the pair to attend church with his family. Eventually O’Neill tells his handler (played by Laura Linney) that he can find no evidence of odd sexual activity, but then he is told of the real reason he has been tasked with getting close to Hanssen and agrees to help catch him passing secrets to the Russians. The tension escalates as Hanssen suspects that the net is closing in on him and O’Neill reassures his boss that nothing is wrong as he helps to orchestrate his downfall.

Cooper is probably best known for his role as the domineering, military neighbour of Kevin Spacey’s character in Sam Mendes’ American Beauty, but he has been acting for almost 30 years and is one of those classic ‘that guy’ character actors. He received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Hanssen and the film itself was well received upon its release.

One of Clint Eastwood’s lesser known outings, Bronco Billy is nevertheless apparently one of the actor-director’s favourites amongst his myriad films. It was pitched firmly in the vein of his earlier Orangutan-featuring screwball comedy dramas, Every Which Way But Loose and its sequel. The studio presumably hoped to ape their success, but in the end the film failed to generate similar box-office numbers.

Eastwood stars as the titular Billy, the leader of a traveling Wild West show and so-called ‘fastest guns in the West’. Things aren’t looking too great for the show and go from bad to worse when they pick up Antoinette Lilly (Sondra Locke) a wealthy heiress who has been abandoned by her future husband. Antoinette must learn to cope without the luxuries she has become accustomed to whilst Billy struggles to keep the show afloat. Eventually the pair strike up a relationship, but it’s not long before Antoinette’s former life catches up with her.

This US one sheet features artwork by American Roger Huyssen, a commercial artist who has worked on advertising campaigns for some of the world’s largest brands, as well as magazine covers, packaging design and several movie posters. His website features plenty of samples of his work and this poster can be seen on there. He often partners with lettering designer Gerard Huerta (working as 2H studio) as is the case on this poster. You’ll notice both signatures are included on the poster.

It’s a brilliantly detailed and colourful design and works perfectly for the film it’s advertising. I particularly like the idea of using a billboard in the style of the Wild West show to display the film’s title.

The film’s trailer is on YouTube.

The brutal, brilliant ‘revenge’ drama Hard Candy is the film that put Ellen Page firmly on the map. Patrick Wilson is also excellent and perfectly conveys the terror that would fill any bloke faced with ‘that’ situation. The Japanese B2 features a still from the infamous scene.

This one sheet by Art Machine perfectly captures the mood of the film and is one of my favourite film posters of the last decade.

You can watch the trailer on Youtube.

This is one of two Japanese B2 posters (that I’m aware of) for the release of the 1977 crime drama Le Gang. The film was an Italian-French co-production and was directed by Jacques Deray, a Frenchman who helmed a number of crime thrillers during his career. French superstar Alain Delon, who collaborated with Deray on a number of similar films, plays the leader of the titular gang of criminals. The story is set in France during the 1940s and the plot, apparently based on true events, is described thusly on IMDb:

In 1945, as World War Two comes to a close, five small time crooks unite to form a gang. After several bold robberies they become notorious as “the front-wheel drive gang”. The police attempt to stop their crime spree with little success, but how long will their luck last?

The other style B2 can be seen on emovieposter.com here.

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.

British director Gareth Edwards’ excellent Monsters was one of the best films released in 2010 and transcended a micro-budget to become one of the freshest entries in the sci-fi genre for several years. The film is set slightly in the future and several years after a NASA probe crashed back to earth infected with alien life. Half of Mexico had to be quarantined off as the creatures grew and took over the area, and the US military patrols the borders. Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) is a US photojournalist who is hired by his boss to escort his daughter Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) from the safe part of Mexico back to the States. The pair are forced to head through the quarantined zone despite the threat of the creatures who are moving across the country on their yearly ‘migration’.

The film was shot entirely on location by a tiny crew, using prosumer cameras and, aside from the two leads, the majority of the characters were played by non-actors. The dialogue was improvised around a loose scene outline and the results were edited whilst the crew was on the road. Gareth Edwards had previously worked as a special effects editor and spent four months designing and creating all of the effects himself, once again using off the shelf equipment and software. It’s a superb achievement and well worth a watch, but don’t go in expecting some kind of fast-paced, gory creature-feature as some cinema-goers were, back in 2010.

This striking US one sheet teaser was designed by Gravillis Inc. and features Whitney Able in a gas mask with a reflection of one of the creatures in the visor. Because the poster is so dark it’s hard to photograph without losing some of the details so check out the original digital file here.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

‘Underwater’ is simply but effectively conveyed using a single block of colour on this American one sheet for Richard Ayoade’s excellent British indie film, Submarine. It was the debut directorial effort from Ayoade, who was best known for his appearances on multiple British TV comedy shows, including The Mighty Boosh and The IT Crowd. The film is a coming-of-age comedy-drama featuring breakout performances by its two young leads, Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige. Roberts plays Oliver Tate, a precocious and neurotic teenager who struggles to cope with life at home and school but when the sultry Jordana takes interest in him (initially as an act of revenge against another boy) Oliver’s world is turned upside down.

Not only must Oliver deal with swirling feelings of romance, excitement and anguish but his parents (played by Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor) are also struggling with their relationship, particularly when one of his mother’s old flames, a brilliantly nutty new-age guru played by Paddy Considine, moves back in next door. The film wears its influences proudly on its sleeve and the cinema of the French New Wave clearly informed many Submarine’s quirkier scenes, whilst Oliver’s neurosis calls to mind vintage Woody Allen. The film is set in Swansea and Ayoade and his cinematographer Erik Wilson make excellent use of locations, whilst the soundtrack is absolutely perfect and features several tracks from Arctic Monkeys’ frontman Alex Turner. If you’re yet to see the film I highly recommend tracking it down.

I’m unsure who is responsible for this poster and if you look at the closeups you’ll notice that the image of Oliver appears to have actually been illustrated. I had assumed it was simply a photograph but if anyone knows anything more about who put this together I’d appreciate it if you’d get in touch.

The trailer is on YouTube.

Polish director Andrzej Zulawski‘s Possession is a definite marmite film; you’ll either love it or totally detest it. I’m firmly in the former camp but it’s not hard to see why it might rankle with certain viewers. A multinational production, the film was shot in West Berlin (whilst The Wall was still standing), financed largely by French money and stars Kiwi actor Sam Neill alongside the stunning French actress Isabelle Adjani. Possession begins as what seems like a straightforward relationship drama, depicting the breakdown of the marriage between husband and wife Mark (Neill) and Anna (Adjani) as it gets increasingly fraught. The audience witnesses several scenes of extreme shrieking, hysteria and mental breakdown from both parties as Mark comes to terms with his wife’s infidelity.

It’s when Mark decides to investigate who his wife has been seeing that the film takes a turn for the surreal and horrific. At first he discovers that she had been having an affair with a new-age sleaze-ball called Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) but after confronting him at his house they both realise that Anna has also been meeting a mysterious third party. Mark then hires a private detective to try and discover where his wife disappears to when she’s not at their apartment. As alluded to with this poster’s tagline, the audience soon discovers that what Anna is tending to in a dingy apartment in the Turkish district of Berlin is not altogether human. When the detective (and later his lover) go missing, both Heinrich and Mark uncover the horrifying truth. I won’t spoil the reveal except to say that Italian special effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi (of ‘Close Encounters…’ and ‘E.T.’ fame) was involved in the creation of several versions of a slimy, tentacled creature.

Isabelle Adjani won the best actress prize at Cannes for her dual performance as the hysterical, unhinged Anna and the ‘is she real-or-not?’ Helen, a kind and gentle teacher who works at the school where the couple’s son Bob is a pupil. As Anna, the actress turns everything up to 11 and at times the shrieking is almost unbearable. In perhaps the most infamous sequence in the film, the so-called ‘miscarriage’ scene, she has a full-on orgiastic meltdown in a dingy German subway that culminates with her oozing blood and a white liquid from her face and neck. Neill also gives an over-the-top performance throughout and it’s the level of hysteria that likely sees many viewers heading for the remote (or cinema exit if they were in attendance back in 1981).

For reasons which aren’t really clear, the film was embroiled in the Video Nasties debacle here in the UK and was banned outright in 1983, but not before having it’s cinema debut thanks to New Realm distributors two years earlier. It’s inclusion on the DPPs list is a complete mystery as it’s nowhere near as gruesome or brutal as some of the other titles on there and is unquestionably one of the best titles to fall foul of the whole thing.

This very scarce original UK quad was created by the brilliant British designer and artist Tom Chantrell whose dynamic and colourful designs featured on hundreds of posters over a forty year period. His official website features a great biography written by Sim Branaghan, author of the must-own British Film Posters. The artwork is unquestionably based on the French poster artwork that was painted by the Polish artist Barbara Baranowska (AKA ‘Basha’). I’ve been unable to discover much about the artist, other than a short biography on the Horse Hospital website. It seems that her work for Possession is the poster for which she is most well-known.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

They sure don’t make, title or market them like this anymore! Black Hooker is an obscure 1974 drama that was written, produced and directed by a man named Arthur Roberson whose sole film credits are all for this film (according to IMDb he also did the production design, art direction and set decoration). Seemingly only released in the States, the reason for its obscurity is explained in the reviews section of its IMDb page. In 2004 a reviewer with the handle ‘spropes’ wrote the following:

‘When I worked with L.A. County, I knew Art Roberson fairly well, tho I have no idea of his current status or whereabouts. We were both social workers in the ghetto (really) in the 1970s. My impression was that being a social worker was his day job, that being a movie maker was his primary ambition…so what else is new? The movie, some interiors of which were shot at the legendary Joe Jost’s in Long Beach, premiered for friends and associates at Warner Bros. screening room in Burbank. At the end of the showing, it was greeted by dead silence, replacing excitement or applause. 

I think the viewers realized that the director had blown a pretty good chance to do something worthwhile after all his work, investment and attention to this film. Originally entitled something like “Don’t Leave Go My Hand” (or maybe “Don’t Let Go My Hand”), it was supposed to sensitively portray the horrible life of a neglected (or abused, I don’t recall which) black child, the son of a…you guessed it…black hooker! But that original intent didn’t play, so the title was changed to “Black Hooker,” presumably to piggyback on the blaxploitation movement at the time.’

This would explain why the film has several alternative titles and why it is often listed as a blaxploitation film despite the storyline having barely anything in common with other entries in the genre. Another reviewer sums up the film thusly:

‘Whatever the hell this is, it is quite the mean-spirited, uncomfortable little obscurity, which caters only to collectors of the most obscure B-cinema available. A hostile, impersonal story, with zero light at the end of the tunnel. none of the characters even have names. What kind of director makes a movie like this? A director who didn’t have a very happy childhood, that’s who. I mean, this isn’t exactly Cannibal Holocaust, or I Spit On Your Grave, or anything like that, but Black Hooker is just hateful.’

I have no clues as to who is responsible for the design or artwork of this one sheet and I doubt I’ll ever be able to discover who should be credited with it, but if you have any ideas please get in touch.

Notorious Danish director Lars von Trier‘s apocalyptic drama Melancholia‘s 2011 release was somewhat overshadowed by the controversy surrounding his comments at the Cannes festival press conference for the film in which he expressed various (idiotic) thoughts, including ‘What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. … He’s not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathise with him a little bit.’ This and various other comments saw the director being declared ‘persona non grata’ by the festival’s directors in an unprecedented move. Von Trier apologised for his remarks hours later and even held a press conference in Danish, but the damage was done.

Arguably the director’s most accessible film, certainly when compared to his earlier Dogme 95 features and 2009’s Antichrist, Melancholia opens with a stunning CGI sequence showing the destruction of Earth as the titular planet smashes straight into it. Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Justine (Kirsten Dunst) are sisters dealing with different forms of anxiety and depression during the latter’s wedding reception taking place on the family estate. Justine is shown to be almost catatonic with depression whilst Claire is dealing with her fears over a large blue planet which is revealed to be on a collision course with Earth. The film is split into two sections and follows the way each woman deals with the impending destruction and their relationships with the people around them.

According to this interview article with the director, ‘the idea for the film emerged while he was in treatment for the depression that has haunted him in recent years. A therapist told him a theory that depressives and melancholics act more calmly in violent situations, while “ordinary, happy” people are more apt to panic. Melancholics are ready for it. They already know everything is going to hell.’

This is the ‘static lightning’ style American one sheet for the film that, like the ‘water‘ style is pretty much a still shot from the film (with likely some minor adjustments). It was designed by the Los Angeles-based company Gravillis inc. who are responsible for some of my favourite recent one sheets, including Monsters and I Saw the Devil. IMPAwards features a gallery of a lot of their work. Melancholia was also given a set of teaser posters that can be seen on IMPAwards and features, bizarrely, a Lars von Trier version!

Notorious Danish director Lars von Trier‘s apocalyptic drama Melancholia‘s 2011 release was somewhat overshadowed by the controversy surrounding his comments at the Cannes festival press conference for the film in which he expressed various (idiotic) thoughts, including ‘What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. … He’s not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathise with him a little bit.’ This and various other comments saw the director being declared ‘persona non grata’ by the festival’s directors in an unprecedented move. Von Trier apologised for his remarks hours later and even held a press conference in Danish, but the damage was done.

Arguably the director’s most accessible film, certainly when compared to his earlier Dogme 95 features and 2009’s Antichrist, Melancholia opens with a stunning CGI sequence showing the destruction of Earth as the titular planet smashes straight into it. Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Justine (Kirsten Dunst) are sisters dealing with different forms of anxiety and depression during the latter’s wedding reception taking place on the family estate. Justine is shown to be almost catatonic with depression whilst Claire is dealing with her fears over a large blue planet which is revealed to be on a collision course with Earth. The film is split into two sections and follows the way each woman deals with the impending destruction and their relationships with the people around them.

According to this interview article with the director, ‘the idea for the film emerged while he was in treatment for the depression that has haunted him in recent years. A therapist told him a theory that depressives and melancholics act more calmly in violent situations, while “ordinary, happy” people are more apt to panic. Melancholics are ready for it. They already know everything is going to hell.’

This is the ‘water’ style American one sheet for the film that, like the ‘lightning‘ style is pretty much a still shot from the film (with likely some minor adjustments). It was designed by the Los Angeles-based company Gravillis inc. who are responsible for some of my favourite recent one sheets, including Monsters and I Saw the Devil. IMPAwards features a gallery of a lot of their work. Melancholia was also given a set of teaser posters that can be seen on IMPAwards and features, bizarrely, a Lars von Trier version!

A superb design on this 30×40 poster for the US release of the excellent Australian thriller Road Games. The film’s director Richard Franklin was born in Melbourne but went on to study at the acclaimed film school at the University of Southern California, alongside future filmmakers such as George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis and John Carpenter. Franklin returned to Australia at the beginning of the 1970s when the country’s film industry was in resurgence and began directing, first on the TV police drama ‘Homicide’ and then helming a pair of soft-core porn features. In 1978 he directed Patrick, a horror film featuring a man in a coma wreaking havoc using telekinetic powers, which was a pivotal moment in Franklin’s career as it ultimately led to him being entrusted with the budget for Road Games, at the time Australia’s most expensive feature film.

Scripted by Everett De Roche, an Australian screenwriter who was a frequent collaborator with Franklin, the film was funded in part by Avco Embassy, the American independent studio and distributor, who paid $500k for all rights outside of Australia. Franklin apparently originally wanted to hire Sean Connery in the lead role but when salary demands ruled this out the production went with the prolific American character actor Stacy Keach, who is excellent in the role of Quid, a cross-country truck driver who features in practically every scene in the film. Whilst driving his cargo of meat across the country Quid becomes convinced that a man driving a green panelvan is a serial killer who has been butchering young women in various towns across Australia. Jamie Lee Curtis features, in what is essentially an extended cameo, as a hitchhiker who Quid picks up and quickly becomes embroiled in his plans to apprehend the suspect. The film is well paced and features several tense sequences and a moments of Mad Max-esque automobile carnage (the boat!).

In this 2002 interview with Franklin the director complains that the US distributors sold the film as a Psycho-esque slasher, which he feels hurt its box-office performance. This artwork certainly backs up that claim, despite the early guitar string murder happening almost exactly as its depicted on this poster. The film is certainly more of a paranoid thriller than a true horror but it’s easy to see why the distributors wished to sell it as as such.

With thanks to a visitor to the site named Rudiger (see comment below), the artist was confirmed in 2023 as the late Joann Daley, an American who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Joann (as she signed her artwork) passed away in 2005 but before then she worked on several classic film posters, including one for David Cronenberg’s Scanners and the superb one for George A. Romero’s Creepshow. This poster was painted to a design by her husband James Costello.

The same image has been used several times since the original cinema release on VHS and DVD covers. The Australian poster is markedly different.

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.

This is the poster for the Czech 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 Czech poster was designed by Jan Weber about whom I’ve been able to discover very little, other than that he was active from the 1970s to the 1990s and mainly specialised in posters for Hollywood films being released in Czechoslovakia. The site Terry Posters has a gallery of many of his posters.

Upon its release in 1988, Dead Ringers was arguably Canadian director David Cronenberg‘s most mainstream release to date (as close as he’d come at least) and it was his first psychological thriller following a slew of horrors, including Scanners (1981) and The Fly (1986). Based on the novel ‘Twins’ by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, the film was also influenced by the real life case of Stewart and Cyril Marcus and focuses on twin gynaecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle (both played by Jeremy Irons) who practice in a Toronto clinic dealing with fertility problems. For years they have operated a system where the more confident Elliot seduces women who visit the clinic and then passes them onto the shy Beverly when he’s bored of them, with the women usually not noticing the deception.

One day troubled actress Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold) visits the clinic and Elliot does his usual seduction trick. Beverly then becomes infatuated with her, leading to a destabilising of the relationship between the brothers and, after Beverly begins taking the prescription drugs that Claire is addicted to, things take a turn for the worse. Soon paranoid delusions of ‘mutant women’ lead Beverly to purchasing a series of bizarre tools from a metallurgical artist. When he later attacks a patient at the clinic the twins are suspended from practice and set in motion a chain of events with a deadly conclusion.

Although more drama focused, the film still gave Cronenberg plenty of scope for his usual body horror tricks and although it’s not as bloody as previous efforts the film is no less disturbing. Irons impresses with his performance and the actor would win a few awards during the year of release.

The poster was designed by Spiros Angelikas who was a prolific designer and artist of film posters during the 1970s and 1980s. He owned a design agency called Spiros Associates. Some of his most famous work includes the poster he designed for Friday the 13th, with artist Alex Ebel, and for his collaborations with the legendary artist Richard Amsel. They worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Nijinsky together and there’s a great article on the late artist’s website about their efforts. He also worked on several of the posters for the original Star Trek films, including the gorgeous Bob Peak original. There’s an interesting article by Angelikas’ son Harry on the Trek Core website which has photographs of concepts for the posters by Spiros that never made it to the print stage.

For this poster, not only did Spiros design the layout and type but he also put together the photo montage used for the central image of the melded faces.

This is one of two Japanese B2 posters for the release of the 1974 drama The Klansman that marks a low point in the careers of the main participants involved and, in my opinion, deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of film history. British director Terence Young (best known for his work on the first two James Bond films and Thunderball) helms this tale of racial tension in a small Southern town that has a large Ku Klux Klan contingent. Lee Marvin plays the lone Sheriff of the town who has to deal with the fallout when a white woman is raped, apparently by a black man. Tensions are escalated when a lone gunman (played by O.J. Simpson) decides to stir things up with the Klan by shooting white townsfolk with a sniper rifle. Richard Burton plays a local landowner who has long opposed the views of the Klan and harboured black people on his land but he gets drawn into the conflict with deadly consequences.

There are many issues with the film, including a confusing script that was clearly trying to imbue the film with something of a social justice message but bungles it badly, and all scenes involving the Klan are cringeworthy and obviously massively politically incorrect. The performances from the two leads are also pretty terrible with Lee Marvin mumbling and drawling through all of his scenes looking like a man who wishes he was elsewhere. Richard Burton also phones his performance in, with an accent that attempts Southern American but ends up sounding altogether wrong, and he also affects a limp in some scenes that disappears in others. Legend has it that the two men were both drunk during the entire shoot and that might explain things. It also doesn’t help that the only version of the film available on home video has been badly cut to remove a lot of the violence and a pivotal rape scene.

This Japanese poster features artwork 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.

The Models (AKA by the racier title ‘In Love with Sex’) was a French-Canadian-Italian co-production and a sexploitation drama directed by the Parisian Claude Pierson who seems to have made a living from helming these kind of films. I can find little information about the film itself but the various tag lines on this poster give you an idea of what you’re in for. The only synopsis I could find was on a now removed page on the BFI website for the film and simply said ‘About the problems of frigidity encountered by a young married woman and how they are overcome with help of her husband.’ The artwork on this poster is by the legendary artist Robert McGinnis and it’s a wonder that the production company were able to secure his talents (his services can’t have been cheap at this point in his career).

Robert McGinnis was responsible for some of the most iconic James Bond posters, including Thunderball,  The Man With the Golden Gun and Diamonds are Forever as well as multiple other classic posters from the 60s, 70s and 80s. He was born in Cincinatti, Ohio in 1926 and was given an apprenticeship at Walt Disney studios before studying fine art at Ohio State University. After serving in the Merchant Marines during World War II, he started work in the advertising industry and later moved into painting book jackets for several notable authors, as well as editorial artwork for the likes of Good Housekeeping, TIME and The Saturday Evening Post. McGinnis’ first film poster was the now iconic one sheet for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, painted in 1962, and he went on to paint over 40 others during his career, including one for The Incredibles in 2004.

To see the other posters I’ve collected that were painted by McGinnis click here.

This is the advance quad poster for the UK release of the first Afrikaans-language film to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, 2011’s Beauty, which was directed by Oliver Hermanus. Set in Bloemfontein and Cape Town, the film is a drama that is intended to highlight the bigoted attitudes towards homosexuality in South Africa, which forces men like François van Heerden (Deon Lotz) to lead a closeted life. François has become bored with his marriage to wife Elena Michelle Scott, is frustrated with his daughter’s behaviour, and is bored of his job at a local sawmill. He is shown to be regularly meeting a group of gay men at a remote farm where they engage in sexual activities and then return to their families.

After meeting Christian Roodt (Charlie Keegan), the handsome son of an old friend, at a wedding he becomes obsessed with him and begins to fake reasons to travel to Cape Town where Christian lives with his family. When he sees his daughter relaxing on the beach with Christian, François starts to descend even deeper into his dangerous obsession. After spending a drunken evening out in Cape Town, he calls Christian asking him to pick him up and when the pair drive back to François’ hotel an incident occurs that neither are prepared for. The ending is fairly ambiguous but we’re led to believe that life will be no happier for the married man.

This fantastic UK quad was created by Sam Ashby, a London-based graphic designer who has worked on a number of film posters, including quads for films like Weekend (2011). According to this interview, Sam used to work at the poster design firm AllCity as Head of Design before leaving to set up his own studio in 2010. His website hasn’t been updated in a number of months so I’m not sure if he’s still active as a film poster designer.

It’s worth noting that I bought this poster directly from the UK distributor Pecadillo Pictures and it’s printed on thicker paper than standard quads. The printing quality is not as high as would usually be expected.

A striking image features on this Polish poster for the release of the obscure Hungarian drama Adj Király Katonát (literally ‘Give the King Troops’), which was titled as Księżniczka (Princess) for its Polish release. I’ve struggled to find out much about the film other than it was the directorial debut of Budapest-born Pál Erdöss who worked on 17 films right up to his death in 2007. The film is available to view in full on YouTube should you so wish.

The poster was designed by Maciej Woltman, a Polish artist who was born in 1952 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań under the professor (and artist in his own right) Waldemar Świerzy for posters and illustration and under John Świtki for painting. After graduating in 1982 he began to work with the film poster outfit Polfilm and worked on plenty of film posters as well as other illustrations for editorial content and commercial projects. The Polish encyclopaedia site Pomeranica lists a large number of exhibitions that he has held over the years. He also practices as a fine artist and some of his paintings can be seen on this page on Galeria Kapitanska and on this site.

Other film posters Woltman has worked on include those for Gandhi and Star 80.

This is one of two Japanese B2 posters for the release of the 1974 drama The Klansman that marks a low point in the careers of the main participants involved and, in my opinion, deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of film history. British director Terence Young (best known for his work on the first two James Bond films and Thunderball) helms this tale of racial tension in a small Southern town that has a large Ku Klux Klan contingent. Lee Marvin plays the lone Sheriff of the town who has to deal with the fallout when a white woman is raped, apparently by a black man. Tensions are escalated when a lone gunman (played by O.J. Simpson) decides to stir things up with the Klan by shooting white townsfolk with a sniper rifle. Richard Burton plays a local landowner who has long opposed the views of the Klan and harboured black people on his land but he gets drawn into the conflict with deadly consequences.

There are many issues with the film, including a confusing script that was clearly trying to imbue the film with something of a social justice message but bungles it badly. All scenes involving the Klan are cringeworthy and obviously massively politically incorrect. The performances from the two leads are also pretty terrible with Lee Marvin mumbling and drawling through all of his scenes looking like a man who wishes he was elsewhere. Richard Burton also phones his performance in, with an accent that attempts Southern American but ends up sounding altogether wrong, and he also affects a limp in some scenes that disappears in others. Legend has it that the two men were both drunk during the entire shoot and that might explain things. It also doesn’t help that the only version of the film available on home video has been badly cut to remove a lot of the violence and a pivotal rape scene.

This is the style A Japanese B2 poster but I also have the style B that features artwork unique to the Japanese campaign by Seito.

Wild artwork features on this Czechoslovakian A1 poster for the release of the 1978 Yugoslavian film The Call of Spring (AKA Return of Spring). I’ve been unable to find out much about the film other than it’s a drama that was directed by France Stiglic, a Slovenian with 22 films to his name who died in 1993. If anyone has any more information about the film please get in touch.

The art features the signature ‘Dóka’ which I believe belongs to the Slovakian artist Jozef Dóka ml. who was born in Sered in 1948. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava from 1970 – 1976 and, according to the website of the Ján Koniarek Gallery in Trnava, soon established himself as a major presence on the poster design scene. He began to exhibit outside Slovakia, first in Poland and Slovenia, then later in exhibitions all over the world. He actually founded Trnava’s Ján Koniarek gallery in 1976 and established it as a venue for poster exhibition shortly afterwards. In 1991 he established the internationally recognised Trnava Poster Triennial, which continues to run to this day. Dóka sadly passed away in 2011.

A striking design by the artist Romuald Socha on this Polish poster for the release of the Soviet drama Anna i Komandor, which appears to have never been released in the US or UK. I’ve struggled to find out any details about the film other than the information on its IMDb page. It was directed by the late Yevgeni Khrinyuk who died 3 years after this film was released and has only 3 directorial credits to his name. The actress who plays Anna, Alisa Freyndlikh, was somewhat more prolific and appeared in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, amongst other films.

The artwork is credited to Romuald Socha and I’ve had a similarly hard time discovering much about him, other than he was born in 1943 and that he’s responsible for a number of other posters, as can be seen on Polishposter.com  and GaleriaPlakatu.com.pl. If anyone has any more information about Socha please get in touch.

This is one of two Japanese B2 posters printed for the release (in 1971) of the landmark Swedish drama I Am Curious (Yellow) from the controversial director Vilgot Sjöman. Yellow is a companion film to I Am Curious (Blue) and the pair were originally meant to have been released as one 3.5 hour film. The colours in the titles refer to the Swedish flag. They were part of a series of left wing films that were made after the founding of the Swedish Film Institute in the early 1960s and the attempt, by prominent Swedish cultural figure Harry Schein, to start Sweden’s own flavour of New Wave cinema. 

Filmed in a pseudo-documentary, cinéma vérité style, the film sees Sjöman playing a version of himself, a director who decides to make a film starring his 22-year-old lover Lena Nyman (also playing herself) who is a theatre student interested in social issues. The film within the film is called ‘Lena on the Road’ and sees her leaving the flat she shares with her father and, when not getting involved in socio-political activism with a group of friends, she is shown traveling around Stockholm interviewing people she meets about issues including social classes and gender equality.

Later she meets another man called Börje who she begins a love-affair with but this becomes fraught when she discovers he has hidden the fact that he has another lover and a daughter. After traveling to a country retreat Lena begins meditating, practicing yoga and studying about non-violence, but her lover catches up with her and the pair continue their stormy relationship. Soon after the film within a film begins to break down as the ‘actors’ form a ‘real’ relationship that causes the ‘director’ to get jealous and wrap up shooting.

The film is most notable for its then ground-breaking use of full-frontal shots and scenes of (simulated) sexual intercourse that until then had been confined to sex films and not used in a dramatic context. The film was released in a cut form both in the US, UK and elsewhere but it was in the US that it attracted the most controversy with some states even going so far as banning the film outright on grounds of obscenity (Massachusetts in 1969, later overturned). As is the case with any censorship case brought against a film featuring sex and nudity, the box-office takings were helped greatly as punters flocked to see what the fuss was about. The film was the highest-grossing foreign film in the US for many years afterwards. This article on Vulture.com goes into more detail about the original release.

The other style of Japanese poster features a similarly colourful image but has white text down the side instead of black.