Not only is this probably the best poster artwork for the film that started the biggest sci-fi franchise of all, it’s also considered by many to be the greatest work by the late, great British artist Tom Chantrell. Declaring it so is not an easy decision to make since Chantrell illustrated thousands of posters during his long career and there are many classic designs to choose from, including several Hammer posters and a brilliant design for ‘One Million Years B.C.’. I have a number of other posters by him on this site for you to peruse.
In 2013 I interviewed Chantrell’s widow Shirley about their life together and she recalled how Tom would often ask her to pose so he could capture the correct stance for female characters appearing on his posters. Shirley recalls how the project came about for Tom:
Tom was given an invite to the premier showing and we all went along as a family. As soon as he’d seen the film he had the synopsis, the 10” x 8” press stills and then he started to think about how he was going to tackle the project. From beginning to end it took one month, which is a lot of work for one poster. He’d never taken that long before and I don’t think he did again.
Shirley once again posed for Tom and this time she was his Princess Leia. She not only still has the reference photos taken that day but also still has the same dress she wore.
This poster perfectly captures the excitement and adventure of the seminal sci-fi blockbuster and, although originally intended just to be used for the UK market on the quad, the art was liked so much by Lucasfilm that the decision was made to use it for this style C one sheet, as well as for other posters around the world. George Lucas himself would later purchase the original artwork for his archives and I like to imagine it’s hanging on a wall in Skywalker Ranch.
This particular style of the poster is known as the ‘Oscars version’, so called because it was printed once the film had won a handful of Academy Awards a few months after the original UK release. Whilst it would be nice to have the non-Oscar version I’m certainly not complaining, especially since this one is rolled and in fantastic condition.
Sadly, Tom Chantrell passed away in 2001 and poster historian Sim Branaghan wrote his obituary for the Guardian. He may no longer be with us but his classic designs have stood the test of time and continue to impress decades later.
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.
It took me many years to track down a rolled copy of this poster but I finally managed to locate one and I’m very happy to be able to add it to my John Carpenter collection. It’s hugely different from the US one sheets (advance and final) but it does feature the same great tagline.
The artwork is by the French illustrator René Ferracci who is responsible for the French poster, though I’m not sure if any adaptation was required to fit it to the quad format. It may be that a British artist had to make some adjustments.
It’s one of the few posters for the film not to feature the destroyed Statue of Liberty in some form.
Here’s the original trailer.
This is one of those posters that you can’t quite believe the studio was willing to go ahead and print, but you’re very glad they did! The poster was designed and illustrated by the brilliant cartoonist Chris Ware, the man behind the sublime Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth graphic novel and other excellent creations such as Quimby the Mouse (one of his earliest charatcters).
In an article on the Vulture website, the artist says of the poster; “I wanted to get at both the transcendent solemnity of the film while keeping some sense of its loose, very unpretentious accessibility.” He also remarks,”This being a poster, however — and even worse, me not really being a designer — I realized it also had to be somewhat punchy and strange, so as to draw viewers in and pique their curiosity without, hopefully, insulting their intelligence.”
The intricate lettering, oblique imagery and brilliant use of colour is quintessential of Ware’s work and it’s a thrill to see it on such a big scale. I’ve read some complaints that it’s almost too difficult to read, but I think that’s part of its charm and it is infinitely more interesting than most of the bland photoshopped creations so prevalent today.
The film itself, as the title suggests, focuses on the reminiscences of Uncle Boonmee, a dying man who spends his final days recalling his previous lives with the ghost of his dead wife and his long lost son who has returned as a kind of ape creature with red eyes (as depicted on this poster). Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the film is based on a book that was written after a man named Boonmee approached Phra Sripariyattiweti, the abbot of a Buddhist temple in the director’s home town, claiming he could clearly remember his own previous lives while meditating. The abbot was so impressed with Boonmee’s ability that he published a book called A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives in 1983.
Winning the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, it’s certainly not a film for everyone with slow meditative sequences and bizarre, often hallucinatory imagery, but it’s definitely worth a watch, particularly for fans of world cinema.
The original trailer is on YouTube.
As with the film itself, the poster for the second Fright Night film is definitely a case of ‘if it’s not broken, why fix it?’. The artwork of the vampiric face is practically identical to the one that was used for the global marketing campaign for the original; the Japanese poster can be seen here. Note the slight difference in the eyes, which leads me to believe it may have been redrawn the second time around. The key difference for this version is the location and the suburban house of the first film has been replaced by the multi-storey town house of the second.
Set three years after the original, Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) has undergone psychiatric therapy and now believes that Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) was actually a serial killer who had disguised himself as a vampire, and is trying to get on with his life with new girlfriend Alex (Traci Lind). Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) has returned to being a burnt out vampire hunter on his Fright Night TV show, but one night a mysterious group of people move into his building lead by the alluring Regine (Julie Carmen). It’s not long before Charlie and Peter discover that she is Jerry’s vampire sister who plans to exact her revenge for his death and sentence Charlie to eternal damnation.
I’ve struggled to find out who was responsible for both the original and this sequel artwork so please get in touch if you have an idea.
The original trailer is on YouTube.
A wild design on this British quad for the 1977 release of Une Partie de Plaisir, from the late French director Claude Chabrol. The film follows middle-class couple Philipe (played by screenwriter Paul Gégauff) and Esther (his wife at the time Danièle Gégauff) whose apparently idyllic life is interrupted when they decide to add excitement to their lives by sleeping with other people and then describe the events to each other. Things turn tragic after Philipe is engulfed in jealousy. Life imitated art in 1983 when Paul Gégauff was tragically stabbed to death by his second wife on Christmas Eve, 1983. Chabrol and Gégauff had worked together on 14 films before his death.
Claude Chabrol was a critic for the influential French magazine Cahiers du cinéma before turning his hand to directing with Le Beau Serge (1958) a celebrated entry into what became known as the French New Wave (nouvelle vague) of experimental filmmaking. Chabrol was by far the most prolific director among his colleagues and contemporaries that included Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer. He was known for his thrillers and some of his more critically acclaimed films include Les Biches (1968), Les Noches Rouges (1973) and Violette Nozière (1978). Chabrol passed away aged 80 in 2010 and the Guardian newspaper published an excellent obituary.
The film was released in the UK in 1977 by the distributor Artificial Eye which is known for specialising in foreign language and art-house films. The company was formed in 1976 so it’s likely that this film would have been one of their first cinematic releases.
I’m unsure who is responsible for the artwork on this poster so if you have any ideas please get in touch.
An appropriately lurid design on this UK quad for the release of infamous independent studio Troma Entertainment’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High. The film was directed by Richard W. Haines and Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman (under the pseudonym Samuel Weil) and the story centres on the Tromaville High School in New Jersey, which is located close to a dodgy nuclear power-plant that continuously suffers leaks of hazardous material. The Cretins are the school’s anarchic gang (who feature heavily on this poster) and are responsible for peddling drugs to the other pupils. When they inadvertently buy a marijuana plant that has been contaminated by nuclear waste things start to get very messy indeed. Of particular note is the parasitic offspring birthed by Chrissy (Janelle Brady) under the influence of the toxic weed, which mutates into the spiky monstrosity seen at the top of this poster.
Criticising a Troma production is a bit like tearing down a school production; this is amateur entertainment at best, with acting that is hilariously awful across the board, choppy editing and a total lack of atmosphere. With that being said, if you go in expecting the usual Troma mixing-pot of gore, guns, girls and explosions you won’t leave too disappointed. Some of the effects are actually well-realised on what I can only assume was a minuscule budget.
The montage on this quad was designed and painted by one of my favourite British artists Brian Bysouth, whose wonderfully detailed illustrations featured on hundreds of posters over three decades. Some of his most famous posters include the withdrawn one sheet for A View to a Kill, Highlander, Big Trouble in Little China and The Living Daylights. In 2012 I was lucky enough to meet and interview Brian and the resultant article can be read by clicking here.
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.
Although considered by most Bond fans to be one of the weakest of the series, I know I’m not the only one to have a soft spot for Moonraker, Roger Moore‘s fifth outing as James Bond. Thanks to endless TV showings during the 1980s and early 1990s I’ve probably seen this more than any other in the series and, like Live and Let Die, it had a huge impression on my young mind.
Looking at it through the cynical fog of adulthood it’s easy to sneer at the camp script, supremely daft action sequences (motorised Gondola anyone?) and painfully obvious attempt to cash in on the success of Star Wars (a very common theme amongst films released in its wake). The film is probably the quintessential outing for Moore as Bond and only he could have pulled it off as well as he did, particularly when it comes to the hokey script and madcap action.
The film features several memorable sequences, including a stunning cable car fight over Rio de Janeiro, and a memorable bad guy in Richard Kiel‘s inimitable ‘Jaws’ who used to scare me senseless as a kid. Also notable is John Barry‘s soundtrack, which marked a departure from his previous Bond work by mainly using strings instead of the typical brass. The film also features one of the most (literally) eyebrow-raising character names in the form of Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) and one of the best/worst sign-offs of the entire series:
Sir Frederick Gray, Minister of Defence: My God, what’s Bond doing?
Q: I think he’s attempting re-entry, sir.
This particular poster is the American advance one sheet with artwork by Dan Goozee who is responsible for several other Bond posters, including the final Moonraker US one sheet and the international advance one sheet. Other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.
The original trailer for the film is on YouTube.
Despite the phenomenal ratings success that David Lynch and Mark Frost‘s Twin Peaks TV series had enjoyed during its first season, the viewing figures dropped sharply in the middle of the second and the show was put on hiatus by ABC. After a letter-writing campaign by fans, dubbed COOP (Citizens Opposed to the Offing of Peaks), the studio relented and agreed to show the remaining six episodes. The biggest problem the show faced was that halfway through the second series the killer of Laura Palmer had been revealed, which had been the main storyline focus up until that point, and the following episodes failed to hold viewer interest as much.
When ABC revealed they were not planning to make a third series the show’s cancellation was confirmed. Only a month after this happened, Lynch announced that he was planning to make a Twin Peaks film in conjunction with French company CIBY-2000, which ended up being both a prequel and an epilogue to the original show. Working without Mark Frost, Lynch was able to assemble most of the original cast, with the exception of Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn and Richard Beymer. Kyle MacLachlan had been reluctant to return as FBI Agent Dale Cooper and is only featured briefly in the film, which lead Lynch and his co-screenwriter to change the focus of the film, with another murder case and the life of Laura Palmer being key facets of the plot.
Chris Isaak plays FBI Agent Chester Desmond who, along with his new partner Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland), are sent to investigate the murder of Teresa Banks in the town of Deer Meadow. After finding an important clue, Desmond mysteriously disappears and the film then cuts to one year later in the town of Twin Peaks, picking up the story of homecoming queen Laura Palmer whose eventual murder has a direct link to that of Teresa Banks.
Despite the cult following of the TV series, the film was both a critical and commercial flop and was greeted with boos and jeers at the Cannes Film Festival, with Quentin Tarantino confessing “After I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at Cannes, David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him.” It also saw poor box-office takings in the USA after the ratings drop of the second series and the unforgiving plot for people unfamiliar with the Twin Peaks universe.
This UK one sheet has a unique design that features the same portrait of Laura Palmer as seen on the US one sheet (albeit cropped) as well as an image of Kyle MacLachlan, despite his relative absence from the film. In addition, this is the only poster for the film to feature an image of the demonic Killer Bob (Frank Silva).
The original trailer is on YouTube.
A classic piece of Graham Humphreys artwork for the British release of the forgettable 1988 sci-fi clunker Deep Space, It’s something of a miracle that the film even saw the inside of a cinema and there’s no question that it would be straight to video if it were to be released today. The film was directed, written and produced by the prolific schlockmeister Fred Olen Ray (check out the profile pic), who was also responsible for the likes of Scalps, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (released the same year) and recent TV movies including Super Ninja Bikini Babes.
A homage rip-off of films like Alien, Terminator and even elements of the original Evil Dead, the story sees a top secret military satellite containing a biological weapon crashing to earth and unleashing the deadly cargo on a Los Angles suburb. To the rescue comes a pair of unlikely cops (Charles Napier and Ron Glass) who have to try to stop the monster. The cribbing from other better films is so blatant that there’s even a scene directly mirroring the death of Harry Dean Stanton in Alien, plus a moment where a lead character chainsaws the alien’s head, covering his face in blood ala Ash from Evil Dead.
This British quad, which is unquestionably better than the film it’s selling, was designed and painted by Humphreys for the British distributor Entertainment in Video and was briefly discussed during the interview I conducted with the artist in 2011:
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The quad for Kindred, which is also from 1987, is pretty outrageous.
You’re left in no doubt as to what kind of film it’s going to be!
It was one of those VHS covers that stood out as soon as you went in the rental shop. This was for Entertainment?
This was through a design company and they’d been instructed to use me because of the work I’d done on Evil Dead. They gave me the layout and design and just told me to illustrate it. I remember at the time I’d showed somebody my portfolio and they’d said “well it’s interesting, but there are lots of screaming faces with dribbly bits!”
Talking of dribbly bits there’s Deep Space, which is 1988.
Yeah, the big scary vagina with teeth. I think that was for the same client as Kindred, hence the similar design.
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To see the other posters I’ve collected by Graham click here. The full film can be found on YouTube if you want to subject yourself to it.
An excellent tag-line that recalls some of the best of the 1980s features on this advance one sheet for the American release of Attack the Block, a British action/sci-fi/comedy that also recalls some of the classic ‘gang of kids against an outside threat’ films of the same decade. Set on bonfire night on a south London council estate, the film starts with the mugging of a local nurse called Sam (Jodie Whittaker) by a gang of youths led by Moses (John Boyega in his first film role), which is interrupted by what seems to be a meteorite crashing into a nearby parked car. When they investigate the damage a bizarre creature jumps out and claws at one of the group before running into a nearby park. Sam runs away whilst the group pursue the creature before attacking and killing it.
After dragging the corpse back to their tower block, they take it up to the flat of local drug dealer Ron (Nick Frost) and stash it in his walk-in drug freezer, believing it has to be worth something, or at least make the gang famous. Shortly afterwards, a new shower of meteors falls over the surrounding area and the gang decides to head out to tackle the invaders. What they don’t anticipate is that the latest creatures to fall to earth are much bigger and more vicious than the first one, and the group end up fighting for their lives. Before long they meet up with Sam again and must deal with the police who are on the look out for the gang, plus the local drug kingpin and the creatures who seem to have an interest in the members of the group who attacked and killed the first creature.
The film cleverly plays with the idea of the much maligned and feared (by the middle class) ‘hoodies’ and makes them the heroes of the story. The dialogue is excellent and frequently laugh out loud, although you’d expect nothing less from Joe Cornish. The creature effects are also noteworthy and cleverly blend skilled movement choreography and full-body prosthetics with CGI to make them pretty unique movie monsters. If you’re a fan of Edgar Wright’s films I highly recommend watching Attack the Block, assuming you’ve not done so already.
This poster was created by the prolific design studio Empire Design who have been working on posters and other film marketing material for 18 years, including for the James Bond films since Casino Royale (2006). To see the other posters that were designed by Empire in the Film on Paper collection click here.
Not only is this probably the best poster artwork for the film that started the biggest sci-fi franchise of all, it’s also considered by many to be the greatest work by the late, great British artist Tom Chantrell. Declaring it so is not an easy decision to make since Chantrell illustrated thousands of posters during his long career and there are many classic designs to choose from, including several Hammer posters and a brilliant design for ‘One Million Years B.C.’. I have a number of other posters by him on this site for you to peruse.
In 2013 I interviewed Chantrell’s widow Shirley about their life together and she recalled how Tom would often ask her to pose so he could capture the correct stance for female characters appearing on his posters. Shirley recalls how the project came about for Tom:
Tom was given an invite to the premier showing and we all went along as a family. As soon as he’d seen the film he had the synopsis, the 10” x 8” press stills and then he started to think about how he was going to tackle the project. From beginning to end it took one month, which is a lot of work for one poster. He’d never taken that long before and I don’t think he did again.
Shirley once again posed for Tom and this time she was his Princess Leia. She not only still has the reference photos taken that day but also still has the same dress she wore.
This poster perfectly captures the excitement and adventure of the seminal sci-fi blockbuster and, although originally intended just to be used for the UK market, the art was liked so much by Lucasfilm that the decision was made to use it for a style C one sheet as well as for other posters around the world. George Lucas himself would later purchase the original artwork for his archives and I like to imagine it’s hanging on a wall in Skywalker Ranch.
This particular style of the poster is the first printing of the poster for the initial 1977 release in cinemas and this can be distinguished from the later printing known as the ‘Oscars version’, so called because it was printed once the film had won a handful of Academy Awards a few months after the original UK release. The ongoing success and phenomenon of the film meant that many more copies of the second version were printed as it was shown around the UK. The Oscars version is also in the Film on Paper collection and can be viewed here.
During the time I spent with Shirley we browsed through several boxes of the plentiful material she has kept from the days that Tom was working on film posters. I was amazed to see that he had retained the original invoice that he had sent to 20th Century Fox (Star Wars’ UK distributors) and some letters from Fox relating to the invoice, which confirmed that he had been paid the sum of £1000 for his original work on the art. These can be viewed by accessing picture thumbnails 28 and 29.
Sadly, Tom Chantrell passed away in 2001 and my friend, and author of the must own British Film Posters: An Illustrated History, Sim Branaghan wrote his obituary for the Guardian. He may no longer be with us but Tom Chantrell’s classic artworks have stood the test of time and continue to impress decades later.
This is the British quad poster for the release of the 1973 crime drama The Stone Killer. The film was one of a number that starred action legend Charles Bronson and was directed by Michael Winner. Their most successful collaboration (in box-office terms), Death Wish, was released a year later. The film features a cop who bends the rules to crack a case and was made in the wake of the hugely successful Clint Eastwood film, Dirty Harry (1971). That film also focused on a detective willing to play dirty, as this poster’s tagline shouts.
Bronson plays detective Lou Torrey who has recently been transferred to a Los Angeles beat. After the murder of a former hitman, he uncovers a plot involving the local mafia. The don, Al Vescari (Martin Balsam) has instigated a number of murders in revenge for killings that took place in 1931. This spree saw Sicilian capos executed across the US (a real-life crime dubbed the Night of the Sicilian Vespers). Vescari has decided to use Vietnam vets to carry out the killings and Torrey must race against time to stop the hitmen before the revenge plot is complete.
The stark imagery on this quad also featured on the US one sheet (see here) and the title block and main tagline have also been recycled by the British designer.
This is the UK quad for the original release of ace British writer/director Clive Barker‘s 1990 film Nightbreed. Based on Barker’s own 1988 novel Cabal, which was the sixth and final entry in his celebrated series ‘Books of Blood‘, the film was notoriously a flop upon its original release. The director has been candid in the years following its release and maintains that studio interference and a lack of understanding of how to market the film ultimately hampered its release. Having scored a hit with Hellraiser (1986) on a budget of just under $1m, 20th Century Fox gave Barker over 10 times that for Nightbreed, but with it they took away the freedom he had on the previous film. Ultimately the studio made extensive cuts to the film just before release without Barker’s input and marketed it as a slasher film, which was far from accurate.
The story focuses on a man named Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer) who has been having vivid dreams about a city called Midian where monsters are accepted and live peacefully with each other. We learn that his girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby) has encouraged him to see a psychologist named Dr. Phillip Decker (the cult Canadian director David Cronenberg). Decker tells Boone that he’s been suffering from a type of psychosis, is responsible for multiple murders and that he should turn himself into the police. In reality, it’s Decker who is a serial killer and he’s attempting to use Boone as a shill to cover his crimes. After being hit by a truck on his way home, Boone wakes in hospital where he meets a man named Narcisse who talks about accessing Midian before mutilating himself with a pair of blades.
Boone follows Narcisse’s instructions and makes his way to an old cemetery in the middle of nowhere (the film is set in Canada). Once there he is confronted by a pair of monsters, Peloquin (Oliver Parker) and Kinski (Nicholas Vince), who block his request to enter Midian. Peloquin attempts to eat Boone, biting his shoulder before the latter breaks free and escapes the cemetery. Outside he is confronted by Decker and a squad of police officers and when Decker falsely shouts that Boone has a gun, he is gunned down by the squad. After Lori visits the morgue to identify Boone’s body, the bite given by Peloquin causes him to reanimate. He returns to Midian where he meets a whole host of monsters who call the city home. This time he is accepted into the city after being touched by the blood of their deity Baphomet. Meanwhile, Lori wants to understand why Boone traveled to Midian. She is eventually allowed into the city and discovers that it is a refuge for monsters after centuries of them being hunted to near extinction by humans. Unfortunately Decker has tracked her down and he plans to destroy the city and the monsters within.
One of the things that the studio struggled with is that the monsters are ultimately depicted as being the ‘good guys’ and this was obviously something of a departure from standard horror film tropes. The film has incredible production design and make-up effects, particularly the look of the various monsters in Midian. Despite critical and commercial failure in 1990, Nightbreed quickly garnered a cult following and for many years fans had been calling for the release of the longer cut that Barker had promised existed. An unofficial ‘Cabal cut’ was compiled using VHS-quality material a few years ago but in 2015 the original film elements were found and a special director’s cut released by the American video label Scream Factory, much to the delight of horror fans around the world.
This British quad differs greatly from the disappointing American one sheet and includes several photographs of the Nightbreed and is dominated by an image of David Cronenberg. The minor spoiler (for those that were yet to view the film) that he is the masked killer obviously didn’t bother the distributors! The tagline also makes a deal of the fact that Cronenberg and Barker were working together, perhaps understandably.
This is the original UK press kit for the release of John Carpenter’s sci-fi classic Escape From New York. 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.
As the name suggests, a press kit was supplied by the film’s distributors to members of the press for the purpose of promoting the release. It offers an outline of the story along with details of the cast and filmmakers involved. This kit also included four 8×10″ stills from the film, with each one having a short cast list and synopsis taped to the back. Some press kits are significantly larger and more detailed than this one so I suspect there may have been other parts to it, but I’m not certain.
The rest of the John Carpenter posters I’ve collected can be seen by clicking here.