Director George A. Romero was hired to direct this horror anthology and was paired with legendary horror author Stephen King who was on screen-writing duties (hence the top tagline). The film is an homage to boys’ comics of the 1950s, including Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, and features five short stories that are bookended by scenes featuring a young boy (played Joe King, son of Stephen) who is berated by his abusive father for reading those ‘crap’ comics and who later takes deadly revenge on his father. As with any anthology some of the stories are stronger than others and arguably the best is the one called ‘The Crate’ that sees an ancient creature unleashed from its titular prison, whilst ‘Something to Tide You Over’ a seriously creepy tale of revenge starring Ted Danson and a villainous Leslie Nielsen.

Romero once again collaborated with the special effects guru Tom Savini whose work on Creepshow definitely stands up as amongst the finest of his career. His cockroach-wrangling during the final story ‘They’re Creeping Up On You’ deserves special mention. The director assembled a very impressive cast that includes the likes of Ed Harris, Hal Holbrook and genre-favourite Adrienne Barbeau. Stephen King himself even makes an (overblown, hammy) appearance as an unlucky yokel who gets more than he bargained for after discovering a strange meteorite.

The artwork is unique to this British quad but is based on artwork (source) by the American artist Bernie Wrightson that was painted for the title page of the tie-in comic book adaptation. The artwork has recently (July 2013) been confirmed as having been painted by the British poster art stalwart Tom Chantrell. Confirmation was made after the job books of Alan Wheatley, the design agency account handler for the distributor Alpha Films Ltd, were checked and Chantrell’s name was assigned to it. The poster’s artist identity had previously been unknown, although Chantrell’s name had been put forward despite the lack of his usual signature.

Note that there is a printed code upside down on the top left edge of the poster (see last picture). I’m not sure why this was added but it’s possibly to do with it being part of a poster dealer’s inventory – someone cataloguing posters may stamp them with a number to keep track of them – but why stamp it on the front? I know of at least one other copy of the poster with the number on the top so it’s a bit of a mystery.

The character of The Creep depicted on the poster also features on both the excellent advance one sheet and the final version, as well as the Japanese B2.

This is the US 30×40 for John Carpenter’s excellent supernatural horror The Fog, the next cinema release following the directors’ 1978 horror masterpiece Halloween. The film is set in the fictional Californian fishing town of Antonio Bay which is about to celebrate its centennial. What the current residents don’t know is that the town holds a terrible secret; the six original founders deliberately wrecked the Elizabeth Dane, a ship containing a wealthy man named Blake and his five companions who were all suffering from leprosy and wanted to establish a colony nearby. After plundering the wreck and stealing the gold onboard, the conspirators went on to establish Antonio Bay and deliberately covered up their actions.

As the celebrations are being prepared, a mysterious fog bank rolls off the sea which enshrouds the town and surrounding area. Off the coast, a local trawler is also enveloped and the crew subjected to an attack by mysterious glowing-eyed apparitions. Around the same time a young hitchhiker named Elizabeth Solley (Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis) is picked up on the outskirts of the town by local resident Nick Castle (genre stalwart Tom Atkins). As the pair are driving through the fog into town Nick’s vehicle mysteriously cuts out and all the windows shatter without warning. Local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (played by gorgeous ‘scream queen’ Adrienne Barbeau), who broadcasts from a lighthouse on a cliff above the town, is handed a piece of driftwood with ‘Dane’ inscribed on it. She takes it back to her studio only for the wood to trigger a strange sequence of events that culminates with a mysterious voice intoning that ‘six must die’. Over the next few hours the town is subjected to a series of terrifying attacks as Blake and his crew return from their watery graves to claim six souls in revenge for their treatment at the hands of the town’s founders.

The lighthouse featured in the film is actually the Point Reyes lighthouse which is situated to the north of San Francisco in California. In 2010 I visited the lighthouse and it’s an incredibly spooky place, even in bright sunshine. There is a constantly sounding foghorn which is used to warn ships away from a series of underwater rocks just off the coast. I spotted a series of whales moving past the point whilst I was there too. It’s well worth the trip if you’re ever in that area of the world.

I also have the Japanese B2 poster that can be viewed here and the scarce horizontal Japanese B1 poster.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for John Carpenter’s excellent supernatural horror The Fog, the next cinema release following the directors’ 1978 horror masterpiece Halloween. The film is set in the fictional Californian fishing town of Antonio Bay which is about to celebrate its centennial. What the current residents don’t know is that the town holds a terrible secret; the six original founders deliberately wrecked the Elizabeth Dane, a ship containing a wealthy man named Blake and his five companions who were all suffering from leprosy and wanted to establish a colony nearby. After plundering the wreck and stealing the gold onboard, the conspirators went on to establish Antonio Bay and deliberately covered up their actions.

As the celebrations are being prepared, a mysterious fog bank rolls off the sea which enshrouds the town and surrounding area. Off the coast, a local trawler is also enveloped and the crew subjected to an attack by mysterious glowing-eyed apparitions. Around the same time a young hitchhiker named Elizabeth Solley (Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis) is picked up on the outskirts of the town by local resident Nick Castle (genre stalwart Tom Atkins). As the pair are driving through the fog into town Nick’s vehicle mysteriously cuts out and all the windows shatter without warning. Local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (played by gorgeous ‘scream queen’ Adrienne Barbeau), who broadcasts from a lighthouse on a cliff above the town, is handed a piece of driftwood with ‘Dane’ inscribed on it. She takes it back to her studio only for the wood to trigger a strange sequence of events that culminates with a mysterious voice intoning that ‘six must die’. Over the next few hours the town is subjected to a series of terrifying attacks as Blake and his crew return from their watery graves to claim six souls in revenge for their treatment at the hands of the town’s founders.

The lighthouse featured in the film is actually the Point Reyes lighthouse which is situated to the north of San Francisco in California. In 2010 I visited the lighthouse and it’s an incredibly spooky place, even in bright sunshine. There is a constantly sounding foghorn which is used to warn ships away from a series of underwater rocks just off the coast. I spotted a series of whales moving past the point whilst I was there too. It’s well worth the trip if you’re ever in that area of the world.

I also have the Japanese B1 poster that can be viewed here.

A classic design by the great Bill Gold on this one sheet for Magnum Force, the second entry in the Dirty Harry franchise starring acting legend Clint Eastwood. The follow up to the 1971 original, this entry saw ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan face off against a group of vigilante cops who have taken the law into their own hands and are bumping off criminals who manage to escape conviction. The film was helmed by Ted Post who had previously directed Eastwood in the TV series Rawhide and in his hit Western Hang ‘Em High (1968).

Bill Gold has had a working relationship with Eastwood that has lasted over four decades. He worked on the iconic one sheet for Dirty Harry and went on to design the American poster for every Eastwood film since, which includes the brilliant one for Clint’s last Western, Unforgiven (1992). Gold has also designed posters for some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, including the likes of Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange, with artwork by Philip Castle) and Alfred Hitchcock (Dial M For Murder).

Born in New York City in 1921, Gold studied illustration and design at the Pratt Institute before starting his professional design career in 1941 in the publicity department for Warner Brothers. One of his earliest designs was for the classic Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca and within a few years he went on to become the head of the studio’s poster department. In 1962 he started Bill Gold Advertising in New York and then spent the next four decades creating hundreds of memorable poster designs and collaborating with some of the best illustrators in the business, including the brilliant Bob Peak.

Gold started to design less posters towards the end of the 1990s, with only a handful of posters for Eastwood films being credited to him. His last poster was for the 2011 film J. Edgar (directed by Eastwood), which Gold agreed to work on after an unsuccessful period of retirement following the poster he worked on for Mystic River in 2003. He continues to live in Upstate New York and in 2011 a book was released to coincide with his 90th birthday called Bill Gold Posterworks, which features 450 pages worth of his incredible designs and details his creative process. Unfortunately, it has an eye-watering price tag that has prevented me picking a copy up but I hope that one day a more affordable version will be released.

To see the other posters I’ve collected that were designed by Gold click here.

This is a scarce horizontal format Japanese B1 poster for John Carpenter’s excellent supernatural horror The Fog, the next cinema release following the directors’ 1978 horror masterpiece Halloween. The film is set in the fictional Californian fishing town of Antonio Bay which is about to celebrate its centennial. What the current residents don’t know is that the town holds a terrible secret; the six original founders deliberately wrecked the Elizabeth Dane, a ship containing a wealthy man named Blake and his five companions who were all suffering from leprosy and wanted to establish a colony nearby. After plundering the wreck and stealing the gold onboard, the conspirators went on to establish Antonio Bay and deliberately covered up their actions.

As the celebrations are being prepared, a mysterious fog bank rolls off the sea which enshrouds the town and surrounding area. Off the coast, a local trawler is also enveloped and the crew subjected to an attack by mysterious glowing-eyed apparitions. Around the same time a young hitchhiker named Elizabeth Solley (Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis) is picked up on the outskirts of the town by local resident Nick Castle (genre stalwart Tom Atkins). As the pair are driving through the fog into town Nick’s vehicle mysteriously cuts out and all the windows shatter without warning. Local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (played by gorgeous ‘scream queen’ Adrienne Barbeau), who broadcasts from a lighthouse on a cliff above the town, is handed a piece of driftwood with ‘Dane’ inscribed on it. She takes it back to her studio only for the wood to trigger a strange sequence of events that culminates with a mysterious voice intoning that ‘six must die’. Over the next few hours the town is subjected to a series of terrifying attacks as Blake and his crew return from their watery graves to claim six souls in revenge for their treatment at the hands of the town’s founders.

The lighthouse featured in the film is actually the Point Reyes lighthouse which is situated to the north of San Francisco in California. In 2010 I visited the lighthouse and it’s an incredibly spooky place, even in bright sunshine. There is a constantly sounding foghorn which is used to warn ships away from a series of underwater rocks just off the coast. I spotted a series of whales moving past the point whilst I was there too. It’s well worth the trip if you’re ever in that area of the world.

This poster depicts a moment from the end of the film where Blake and his ghostly crew enter the town’s church in a final showdown with the local priest, Nick and Elizabeth. I also have the Japanese B2 poster that can be viewed here.