One of over fifty film and TV adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson‘s classic 19th century novel of the same name, this version of Treasure Island is only really notable for the fact that it starred Orson Welles. Apparently Welles contributed to the script under the pseudonym ‘O. W. Jeeves’ and also had his voice dubbed by another actor in post-production.

This poster features an excellent portrait of Welles by an unknown artist. There is what could possibly be a signature and date to the right of the open-mouthed boy (Jim Hawkins). If anyone has any ideas who may have illustrated it please get in touch.

The sans-serif typeface to announce Welles is an odd choice since it doesn’t match with the rest of the poster at all, although it’s quite clear what the producers felt was the main selling point of the film.

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.

One of my favourite British posters of all time, this is the supposedly withdrawn quad for Terry Gilliam‘s 1985 masterpiece Brazil. A film that is near impossible to categorise, the story  is a heady mix of dystopian sci-fi, surreal dark fantasy and anarchic satirical comedy set in an alternative universe in which an overbearing government has practically strangled society with its mixture of paranoia, crippling bureaucracy and unreliable technology. That one of the film’s working titles was ‘1984 and 1/2’ gives you some idea of the Orwellian overtones that Gilliam and his fellow screenwriters Tom Stoppard and Charles McKeown intended to evoke.

Jonathan Pryce stars as Sam Lowry, a low-level employee at the ‘Ministry of Information’ who is seemingly content with his role as a cog in the giant machine, but at night he escapes in dreams where he is a knight is shining armour with giant wings strapped to his back, often rescuing the same damsel in distress from malicious forces. When a clerical error caused by a dead beetle falling into a printer causes the wrong man to be rounded up, tortured and killed by government forces (“we didn’t know he had a weak heart!”), Sam is given the task of correcting the error. Whilst visiting the wife of the deceased man, Sam meets Jill Layton (Kim Greist) a neighbour who bears a striking resemblance to the girl in his dreams.

Naturally he is instantly smitten and sets in motion a series of events that ends up with Sam and Jill pitched against his employer and on the run. The film features several memorable appearances from the likes of Ian Holm as Sam’s bumbling, inefficient boss, Michael Palin as an ambitious and ultimately ruthless friend within the Ministry, and Robert De Niro in a cameo role as Harry Tuttle, a rogue heating engineer who was meant to be the original target for the government round-up.

The film is visually stunning with some of the most incredible production design ever committed to celluloid. Gilliam and his skilled crew of technicians stretched every penny of the modest budget and created countless memorable sets, brilliantly realised props and entirely believable environmental details that all add up to something unforgettable. The special effects are also top notch, with the dream sequences deserving special mention, particularly Sam’s battle with a giant Samurai warrior and the literal flights of fantasy in his winged suit.

Infamously, Gilliam would end up in a bitter wrangle with the American distributors Universal after they decided his final cut was overlong, confusing and the ending was too depressing. The then Universal president Sid Sheinberg ordered a small team of editors to cut the film down from its original length of 2 hours and 20 minutes to just over 90 minutes for a version unofficially dubbed ‘The Love Conquers All’ cut. Most of the dream sequences were excised, the opening scenes completely chopped around and many scenes were horribly truncated. Worst of all, the original darker ending was replaced with a bizarre ‘happy’ denouement that completely ruined the tone of Gilliam’s film.

Understandably furious, the director refused to have anything to do with the new cut and actually began a campaign to get his original version seen by as many American film fans and critics as possible, much to the chagrin of Universal’s management. Eventually this culminated in the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarding the original cut their prize for Best Film and this led to Universal relenting and agreeing to release a near complete version to cinemas (minus around 10 minutes from the European cut). The bastardised ‘Love Conquers All’ version never saw the inside of a cinema.

The image on this poster is actually a combination of imagery from the flying sequences and a deleted scene that was only ever storyboarded by Gilliam in which a dreaming Sam finds himself at a vast wall of filing cabinets. The title treatment is taken directly from the opening title of the film itself, which is an actual neon signage that falls away from the camera to the accompaniment of Michael Kamen’s excellent score.

I have heard from at least three independent sources that this particular quad was withdrawn from cinemas by the distributor 20th Century Fox because it was felt the image wasn’t the right one to sell the film to UK audiences and was replaced by this bizarre ‘flying bed’ quad that is a world away from this striking design. If anyone knows for sure that this quad was withdrawn or any more details about it, please get in touch.

John Carpenter’s excellent action adventure Big Trouble in Little China marked the director’s fourth outing with lead actor Kurt Russell and also saw him satisfy his long-held desire to make a film featuring martial artistry. The film apparently started life as a Western but the screenwriter W. D. Richter was tasked with retooling the script and modernising it completely. Russell stars as Jack Burton, an all-American trucker who arrives in town with cargo to deliver and, after beating him at a card game, offers to drive his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) to the airport to pick up his fiancee, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai). When a gang of thugs from the Lords of Death street gang abduct Miao Yin, Burton and Wang chase them back to the alleys of Chinatown.

After interrupting a funeral procession the pair become embroiled in a battle between two rival Chinese gangs, which is brought to a conclusion by the arrival of The Three Storms, a trio of supernaturally strong warriors. Whilst attempting to escape, Burton inadvertently runs over the crime lord Lo Pan (James Hong) who then blinds Burton after he exits his truck. As Lo Pan’s gang steals the truck, Wang leads Jack out of the area and to his restaurant where they meet up with a lawyer called Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), Wang’s friend Eddie Lee (Donald Li) and magician Egg Shen (Victor Wong). The gang then plan a mission to rescue Miao Yin from the clutches of Lo Pan, who aims to sacrifice her in order to break an ancient curse. What follows is an action-packed romp that sees Burton and the others descend into the crime-lord’s lair to face-off against a series of adversaries, both human and otherwise.

Russell plays Burton with a perfect mix of tough-guy bravado and goofball charm and the character makes a nice change from the gruff, no-nonsense roles he played in Escape from New York and The Thing. Sadly, the film was to prove a flop at the box-office and it struggled to even regain its $25 million budget. Carpenter and Russell have since revealed that they feel the studio didn’t really know how to sell the film to audiences, plus it was also (unluckily) released with a couple of weeks of James Cameron’s mega-hit Aliens. Big Trouble in Little China became a huge cult hit on video and has subsequently seen a large amount of critical reappraisal and now stands at 82% fresh on RottenTomatoes.com, for example.

In the States the film was marketed with a Drew Struzan illustration, whilst the UK was treated to a wonderful Brian Bysouth painting. This is the German poster that features exclusive artwork by someone who signs their work A. Helden. It’s a decent portrait of Russell and Cattrall and also features Burton’s truck, the Pork Chop Express. Despite numerous searches I’ve been unable to discover much about the artist, so if you have any ideas about them please get in touch.

Director John Carpenter followed his debut sci-fi film Dark Star (1974) with the action thriller Assault on Precinct 13. Carpenter had originally hoped to create a Howard Hawks style western, but when the $100k budget organised by his producer friends Joseph Kaufman and J. Stein Kaplan prohibited the kinds of sets and production design needed, he retooled the script to work in a modern day setting. With strong echoes of Hawks’ Rio Bravo, Carpenter completed his script in just eight days and peppered it with multiple references to classic westerns.

Taking place over the course of one Saturday (a number of time and location cards are displayed throughout) the story is set in a crime-infested Los Angeles ghetto and begins at 3.00am as six members of a gang called Street Thunder are ambushed and killed by the LAPD. Soon afterwards the warlords of the gang swear a blood oath of revenge against the whole city. Later that day, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) arrives at the local Anderson police precinct in order to help the remaining skeleton staff, including Captain Chaney (Henry Brandon) and two secretaries, close the building for good.

A bus carrying three convicts, including Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston), makes an unscheduled stop at the precinct seeking medical help for one of the men. At the same time across town, a gang of the warlords shoot and kill a young girl and an ice cream seller (a shocking sequence that Carpenter almost had to remove at the request of the MPAA) and the girl’s father, Lawson (Martin West) immediately retaliates and kills one of the warlords. The rest of the gang chases Lawson through the streets and into the Anderson police precinct. Before they know it, the inhabitants of the station are under assault from the gang and must fight for their very survival.

The film failed to make much impact in terms of box office takings or critical reception on its original American release in 1976, but when the film was shown at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival it received very favourable reviews from several critics, particularly those from Britain. After being invited to show the film at the 1977 London Film Festival, Carpenter was delighted by the positive critical and audience reaction. Derek Malcolm, the then film critic of the Guardian newspaper (whose quote graces this poster), reported that the film’s screening was greeted with deafening applause. On the back of the strong reception, Michael Myers (a Carpenter coincidence!), the head of Miracle Films, purchased the British distribution rights. This quad was printed for the film’s UK release and features a stylised title laid over the top of an image from the scene in which one of the convicts attempts to escape through the sewers. The ‘award-winning’ line refers to the fact that Carpenter won the 1978 annual British Film Institute award for the “originality and achievement of his first two films”, Dark Star and Assault, at the 1977 London Film Festival.

An excellent portrait of Sean Connery surrounded by an action montage features on this German poster for Never Say Never Again, a non-canon James Bond film. The existence and status of the film is due to a long-running legal issue involving Bond creator Ian Fleming and a film producer called Kevin McClory. The pair had worked together on an abandoned Bond project called Longitude 78 that Fleming later turned into the novel Thunderball without crediting the producer or another writer who worked on the project. The case went to the high court and McClory was then given the right to produce the resultant Thunderball film in 1965 as well as the ability to remake the novel turned film after 10 years had elapsed. It took a bit longer than that but eventually McClory brought the same story to the screen in 1983, which happened to be the year that Octopussy, an official entry into the series starring Roger Moore, was released.

Connery wasn’t always in the frame to return as Bond, but after he developed an initial draft of the script with novelist Len Deighton in the 1970s, his name became attached to the project and he was eventually persuaded to star thanks to a significant fee as well as a share of the profits and the ability to veto script and casting decisions. Irvin Kershner came onboard to direct and the rest of the cast was filled with the likes of Max von Sydow as the arch-villain Blofeld and Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximilian Largo (key villain in Thunderball). A young Kim Basinger appears as Domino, the partner of Largo and later a love interest for Bond.

The film’s plot about the hunt for stolen nuclear warheads features a great deal of similarities with Thunderball, given that it is effectively a remake, but there are significant stylistic differences and also several references made to the fact that Connery is playing an older Bond (he was 52 at the time). The ending is hugely different from Thunderball and ditches the now embarrassing sequence on the out-of-control ship and replaces it with a bit of an anticlimactic showdown underwater. The rest of the film is entertaining enough with excellent use of locations and some thrilling action and stunt sequences, although it’s certainly no match for the best of the canonical series. It was favourably received critically at the time of release and supposedly went on to outperform Octopussy at the box office in 1983, which no doubt annoyed the folks at Eon Productions

The poster was designed and painted by one of my favourite artists, Renato Casaro, an Italian with a prolific movie poster output that lasted over 35 years. He began his career in 1953, aged 19, at the famous Studio Favalli in Rome and would go on to design and paint posters for many of the biggest directors in the world. His skill at accurately portraying actors and his brilliant use of colour and composition saw him much in demand from studios and actors alike. His artwork has featured on posters used in multiple countries, including Japan, Germany, USA as well as in his native Italy.

Check out the incredible amount of work on his official website here, which also features a biography of the artist. In March 2014 I published an exclusive interview with Renato and it can be read by clicking here. In it he mentions working on this poster and he showed me the original art for the version of the poster where it’s just Connery alone (the advance poster).

The other posters I’ve collected by Renato Casaro are here.

Another superb design by Martin Ansin on this screen print for the original 1968 sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes, which was released in January 2012 as part of a series of Apes inspired prints by Mondo, the celebrated Austin-based limited-edition art boutique. A true cult classic, the first Planet of the Apes was adapted from the book La Planète des singes by the French author Pierre Boulle and went through several iterations at the scripting stage, with the first draft handled by American TV legend Rod Serling, plus a few potential directors before Franklin J. Schaffner was handed the job and production began. The film was shot mostly on location and used some stunning locales, including Lake Powell in Utah/Arizona and along the Colorado river.

Charlton Heston stars as George Taylor, one of a group of astronauts who awake from deep space hibernation to discover that their craft has crash landed on an alien planet 2000 years into the future. The group set-off across the barren landscape in search of life. Eventually they come to an area with lush vegetation and fresh-water lake, which they dive into with relief. Soon afterwards they come across a group of primitive, mute humans but suddenly the whole group is attacked and rounded up by talking, armed, unif0rm-wearing gorillas. One of the astronauts is killed by gunfire, Taylor is shot in the throat and he and his friend are captured and taken back to Ape City. There he meets chimpanzee archaeologist Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and his fiancee, animal psychologist Zira (Kim Hunter), who soon discover Taylor is not like the other primitives. Eventually he regains his ability to talk and must answer to the President of the apes Assembly Dr. Zaius (James Whitmore) who is determined to discover Taylor’s origins at any cost.

Fearing his life is in danger, Cornelius and Zira help Taylor escape the city and lead him to a cave by the sea in which the history of the planet’s inhabitants is shown to be at odds with the Assembly’s teachings. After an ambush by the Dr Zaius and his gorilla troops, Taylor is eventually allowed to leave and before long he has made a horrifying discovery about the planet, in what is arguably the most famous twist ending in the history of cinema. The film was a success worldwide and spawned a number of sequels of varying quality, plus a short-lived TV series, and a whole raft of merchandising, including what is often cited as the first action-figures tied to a film property, certainly pre-dating the phenomenally successful Star Wars figures.

One of my favourite artists working today, Martin Ansin‘s work has graced many of the best posters released by Mondo, including several in the Universal Monsters series like this amazing Phantom of the Opera print and an excellent Dracula (1931) one. You only have to look at the gallery on his official site to see how talented an artist he is, with an eye for composition and detail unmatched by most of the artists in Mondo’s roster. To see the other posters I’ve collected so far that were designed by Ansin, click here.

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.

This US one sheet was printed to mark the 1996 re-release of a restored print of director Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic thriller Vertigo. The film marked the first time Hitchcock worked with the celebrated American designer Saul Bass and the pair would collaborate on two further films together. Hitchcock had himself started his film career developing inter-title cards for silent movies and he commissioned Bass to create the title sequences for Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho. As detailed in the must-own book ‘Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design’ (designed by Bass’ daughter Jennifer), the director knew of Bass’ work well before the commission as he kept a close eye on movie graphics and was a subscriber to Graphis, a print journal that had featured Saul’s work.

As well as creating the influential title sequences for each film, Bass was also commissioned to design the advertising campaign for Vertigo. He created the central motif of two figures swirling in a vortex, which is detailed in ‘A Life in Film & Design’:

‘The main poster also captures the sensation of vertigo by having a couple sucked into a vortex. The slightly off-kilter, irregular capitals further hint at the vertiginous. The figures were drawn by Art Goodman, who recalled Saul specifying and sketching out a black silhouette for the man and a light outline, like an apparition, for the woman of his obsessions.’

Several different colours and variations were utilised for the various elements of the ad campaign (trade ads, large posters, brochures, etc) with the concept that the variation of colour and design around a central theme ‘was spinning the viewer in another direction’. Some of these alternatives can be seen in this excellent blog post.

Even if the film wasn’t a great box-office and critical triumph during its initial release, with a reappraisal and celebration not happening until several years later, the title sequence advertising campaign was declared an immediate success and was to win Bass several awards. This one sheet is practically identical to the original 1958 poster with the exception of an altered credits block at the bottom and slightly darker shade of orange (note that this poster is also double-sided, for use in lightboxes)

The film’s Wikipedia article details how the 1996 restoration proved quite controversial since the experts charged with the task were forced to alter the soundtrack (during the creation of a new 6 channel track) and restore the colour as best as they could since the original negatives had faded over the years.

This article on Mubi.com by Adrian Curry does a thorough job of detailing all the various posters printed for Vertigo around the world.

For more on Bass I thoroughly recommend picking up ‘Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design’ and also check out the extensive page about him on the brilliant Art of the Title

An excellent portrait of Sean Connery surrounded by an action montage features on this German poster for Never Say Never Again, a non-canon James Bond film. The existence and status of the film is due to a long-running legal issue involving Bond creator Ian Fleming and a film producer called Kevin McClory. The pair had worked together on an abandoned Bond project called Longitude 78 that Fleming later turned into the novel Thunderball without crediting the producer or another writer who worked on the project. The case went to the high court and McClory was then given the right to produce the resultant Thunderball film in 1965 as well as the ability to remake the novel turned film after 10 years had elapsed. It took a bit longer than that but eventually McClory brought the same story to the screen in 1983, which happened to be the year that Octopussy, an official entry into the series starring Roger Moore, was released.

Connery wasn’t always in the frame to return as Bond, but after he developed an initial draft of the script with novelist Len Deighton in the 1970s, his name became attached to the project and he was eventually persuaded to star thanks to a significant fee as well as a share of the profits and the ability to veto script and casting decisions. Irvin Kershner came onboard to direct and the rest of the cast was filled with the likes of Max von Sydow as the arch-villain Blofeld and Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximilian Largo (key villain in Thunderball). A young Kim Basinger appears as Domino, the partner of Largo and later a love interest for Bond.

The film’s plot about the hunt for stolen nuclear warheads features a great deal of similarities with Thunderball, given that it is effectively a remake, but there are significant stylistic differences and also several references made to the fact that Connery is playing an older Bond (he was 52 at the time). The ending is hugely different from Thunderball and ditches the now embarrassing sequence on the out-of-control ship and replaces it with a bit of an anticlimactic showdown underwater. The rest of the film is entertaining enough with excellent use of locations and some thrilling action and stunt sequences, although it’s certainly no match for the best of the canonical series. It was favourably received critically at the time of release and supposedly went on to outperform Octopussy at the box office in 1983, which no doubt annoyed the folks at Eon Productions.

This Thai poster features excellent artwork by Tongdee Panumas (he signs his posters with just his first name) who was an incredibly prolific Thai film poster artist during the 70s, 80s and 90s. I’ve been unable to find out much about him, other than that he was born in 1947, so if anyone has any more details please get in touch.

Note that this is the re-release version of the poster. The first release version is larger in size and features a Pepsi logo and different printer credit in the bottom right. The re-release is missing the Pepsi logo and the painted image has a slight red tint to it. There’s also some noticeable damage that has been captured during printing. It’s possible that the original art was re-used and by that time it had been damaged, or a first release poster was scanned which had some damage on it. There are marks in various parts of the artwork but the most noticeable one is across Sean Connery’s forehead. Click here to see a picture of the two side by side. If anyone knows anything more about this please leave a comment below.

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

Colourful artwork features on this style B one sheet for the US release of the 1978 adventure comedy Corvette Summer. The film is perhaps most notable for starring Mark Hamill, fresh from his success with Star Wars a year earlier and prior to filming The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Production began only a short while after Hamill was involved in a car crash in Malibu that left him with facial injuries and visibly scarred. Matthew Robbins assumed directorial duties and he’s perhaps best known as the director of Batteries Not Included and the writer of two films that were directed by Guillermo Del Toro, 1997’s Mimic and 2015’s Crimson Peak.

Hamill stars as high-school senior Kenny Dantley who is obsessed with cars and builds a custom Corvette Stingray as part of a class project. The car has a heavily modified body, bright red paint with flames down the side and is adapted to be right-hand drive so Kenny can talk to girls as he rolls down the street beside them. Soon after unveiling the finished car it is stolen and Kenny manages to follow a trail that leads him to Las Vegas. On the way he meets Vanessa (Annie Potts) who describes herself as a ‘prostitute in training’ and who’s headed to Sin City to try and make it big.

After taking a job at a car wash, Kenny eventually spots the Stingray and sets out to try and steal it back, but the truth behind its disappearance, which involves a teacher from his high school (played by Eugene Roche), shocks Kenny. The revelation only makes him more determined to get his car back and Vanessa is ready to help him. The film received mixed critical notices and performed rather limply at the box-office. It has a minor cult following today, largely due to the Corvettes featured. An article about the ‘hero’ car in the film, which was originally found in a junkyard following a wreck, can be read here.

Frustratingly this poster doesn’t feature any indication of who painted the artwork and I’ve been unable to find anything online either. I did discover that the original painting was sold along with two others at Profiles in History’s ‘Hollywood Auction 56’ in 2013. The items are on page 93 of the auction catalogue PDF, or see here for a standalone page featuring the item on another site.  If anyone has any ideas as to who the artist is, please get in touch.

The original trailer is on YouTube and gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect.

This is the original UK quad for the release of Frightmare, a 1974 film by the British director, producer and writer Pete Walker, who specialised in exploitation pictures during the 1960s and 1970s. Walker started out making shoestring budget sexploitation pictures, including School for Sex that were often relative hits in the UK. This worked out well for him since his films were almost always self-financed and thus most of the profits were his to keep and plough into the next feature. In the early 1970s, Walker grew tired of feeding the ‘dirty mack brigade’ and turned his hand to horror.

Frightmare, released in the US as Cover Up, was one of two horror films that Walker directed in 1974, with the other being the private-prison set House of Whipcord. Both films saw Walker reuniting with his regular screenwriting partner David McGillivray, and both feature memorable appearances by Sheila Keith, who would become another regular. In this film she plays Dorothy Yates, a cannibalistic killer who at the start of the film is sentenced to 15 years in prison. She is sent down along with her husband Edmund (Rupert Davies) who chose to take the punishment with her, even though he had nothing to do with the killings. The film picks up after their release and we find that their adopted daughter Jackie (Deborah Fairfax) is living in London and struggling to care for their biological daughter Debbie (Kim Butcher) a wayward 15-year-old who doesn’t realise her parents are still alive.

We follow Jackie as she leaves London to visit her parents, now living in a remote farmhouse. There she delivers a mysterious package to her mother who appears frail and innocent. Edmund fears that his wife is up to her old tricks but Jackie isn’t convinced and returns back to London. Soon we discover that Dorothy has put an advert in a magazine offering Tarot Card readings and willing customers are visiting the farmhouse. When she begins by checking that they have no close family or friends, or indeed anyone that would miss them, it’s fair to say that things aren’t looking up for her clueless customers. At the same time, Jackie struggles to control Debbie who is beginning to show signs that she has inherited her mother’s habits.

Arguably the best of Walker’s feature films, Frightmare is a masterclass in building tension and working towards a shocking final act. The film makes great use of various locations, including several in a London which looks barely recognisable today. Sheila Keith’s performance, in particular, is hugely memorable and her ability to portray frail innocence in one scene followed by genuinely disturbing menace in another has to be seen. In this Guardian article about Walker and his films, he describes his working relationship with Keith and how her on screen presence definitely didn’t match her off screen one; “Sheila Keith was a lady who lived a quiet life with her dogs and her cats and came into work to do, brilliantly, whatever was asked of her,” says Walker. “She was like your nice old aunt who would serve you cucumber sandwiches before ripping into a dismembered limb – without complaining.”

This British quad, which features crude artwork of a menacing Sheila Keith, was clearly designed by the team responsible for the quad for House of Whipcord (see here) and I feel fairly certain that the same artist or artists were involved too. If anyone knows who was responsible please get in touch.

A striking photographic image features on this one sheet for the release of Gus Van Sant‘s 2005 drama, Last Days. The film is a fictionalized account of the last few days in the life of a musician who is reminiscent of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana. Van Sant had been planning the project for over a decade and at one point had wanted to make a biography of the singer. After befriending Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, the director realised that doing so would cause too much pain for Love and the deceased singer’s family, so he decided to fictionalise the story.

Michael Pitt plays the main character Blake and Van Sant had cast him in the part seven years before filming commenced. The rest of the cast includes Lukas Haas, Asia Argento and Nicole Vicius, with notorious director Harmony Korine appearing as a character in one scene set in a nightclub. The plot is thin and Van Sant uses a technique he’s employed in a few of his films where the same scene is shown from different view points but at different times throughout the film, with the audience not given clear indication that this has happened. Most of the scenes follow Blake and take place in and around a large house surrounded by trees. Several interactions between him and his housemates, as well as visitors to the house take place, all leading up to a fatal moment with Blake and a shotgun at the end of the film.

The film received mixed critical notices and failed to make much of a dent at the box-office in the US. It received limited releases in several territories, including the UK.

This American one sheet was designed by Shoolery Design which now appears to be defunct as a company but was responsible for a large number of film posters from the mid-1990s up to 2007. A gallery of these designs can be seen on IMPAwards. The man who started the company, Mark Shoolery, seems to still be active and he has a website on which a lot of his work, including film posters, can be seen. It looks like he continues to work as an independent art director and artist and his Instagram feed features logo design work. According to his resume Shoolery has worked on projects for the film industry, the music industry, packaging for various products including toys, and marketing strategy for several companies. The LinkedIn entry for Shoolery design notes the following:

Conceived, developed and executed creative advertising campaigns for major studios, network and cable television, home entertainment, music and live events. Oversaw all in and out of-home advertising, collateral and promotional materials. Directed staff of 80-90 employees producing high-end advertising campaigns. Consulted with studio marketing executives as well as producers and directors of major motion pictures. Supervised celebrity photo shoots worldwide.

The other posters I have that were created by Shoolery Design can be seen here.