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.

Following the shocking death of British director Tony Scott in 2012 there was plenty of discussion amongst fans as to the film that defined his career, which included such films as the none-more-80s Top Gun and several excellent Denzel Washington-starring thrillers such as Crimson Tide. There was only one film that I reached for from my blu-ray collection when I wanted to pay tribute to Scott and that was True Romance, the 1993 crime thriller starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette and a whole host of acclaimed actors. Featuring a fantastic script by Quentin Tarantino, the film is arguably the apex of Tony Scott’s directing career and clearly benefits from his skill at injecting energy and verve into every scene. The film is also likely to be the defining role in the careers of both Slater and Arquette who were perfectly cast as Clarence and Alabama, the young lovers thrown together at the start of the film and who set off on a rollercoaster ride that leads them from Detroit to Los Angeles with murderous gangsters on their tail.

Clarence is a film-obsessed, lonely video store clerk who is at a cinema watching a triple-bill of Sonny Chiba films when he is approached by Alabama. The pair strike up a friendship and before the night is over are head over heels in love. The only issue is that Alabama is a hooker, hired by Clarence’s work colleagues as a birthday present, and her pimp Drexl (a memorable Gary Oldman) is a violent drug dealer who none too keen to let her leave his employ. After a violent confrontation which sees Drexl dead and Clarence escaping with a suitcase full of cocaine. The pair first head to see Clarence’s father (Dennis Hopper) and then travel across the country to Los Angeles to see Clarence’s friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport) who has a potential lead for selling the drugs. Hot on their heels are a bunch of mobsters, as well as a pair of police detectives.

This is one of two styles of Japanese B2 posters and I’ve called this one the shotgun scream style as it features Arquette clutching a shotgun in one of the more intense scenes of the film. The other style features photographs of the rest of the cast and can be seen here.

Following the shocking death of British director Tony Scott in 2012 there was plenty of discussion amongst fans as to the film that defined his career, which included such titles as the none-more-80s Top Gun and several excellent Denzel Washington-starring thrillers such as Crimson Tide. There was only one film that I reached for from my blu-ray collection when I wanted to pay tribute to Scott and that was True Romance, the 1993 crime thriller starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette and a whole host of acclaimed actors. Featuring a fantastic script by Quentin Tarantino, the film is arguably the apex of Tony Scott’s directing career and clearly benefits from his skill at injecting energy and verve into every scene. The film is also likely to be the defining role in the careers of both Slater and Arquette who were perfectly cast as Clarence and Alabama, the young lovers thrown together at the start of the film and who set off on a rollercoaster ride that leads them from Detroit to Los Angeles with murderous gangsters on their tail.

Clarence is a film-obsessed, lonely video store clerk who is at a cinema watching a triple-bill of Sonny Chiba films when he is approached by Alabama. The pair strike up a friendship and before the night is over are head over heels in love. The only issue is that Alabama is a hooker, hired by Clarence’s work colleagues as a birthday present, and her pimp Drexl (a memorable Gary Oldman) is a violent drug dealer who none too keen to let her leave his employ. After a violent confrontation which sees Drexl dead and Clarence escaping with a suitcase full of cocaine. The pair first head to see Clarence’s father (Dennis Hopper) and then travel across the country to Los Angeles to see Clarence’s friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport) who has a potential lead for selling the drugs. Hot on their heels are a bunch of mobsters, as well as a pair of police detectives.

This is one of two styles of Japanese B2 posters and I’ve called this one the cast style. The other features a photo of Arquette clutching a shotgun in one of the more intense scenes of the film. Note that one of the cast members shown at the top of the poster is not actually seen in the film and if you’ve watched it you’ll know which one!

The directorial debut of Martha Coolidge and the first time Nicolas Coppola was credited as Nicolas Cage, Valley Girl is a cult favourite in the US and was both a critical and box office success at the time of release. Loosely based on the Romeo and Juliet story (minus the tragic death) the film focuses on Julie (Deborah Foreman) a girl from the suburban, mall-filled San Fernando Valley who meets Randy (Cage) a punk from Hollywood and falls in love, much to the dismay of her shallow friends.

Valley Girl is actually a stereotype leveled at a certain class of American women who are described as colloquial speaking and materialistic. The San Fernando Valley is credited as the birthplace of this phenomenon thanks to its large number of commuter towns and middle-class suburban families. Valspeak is their unique derivation of Californian English, which was first brought to public consciousness through Frank Zappa’s collaboration with his daughter Moon Unit on the single Valley Girl. A bizarre video of Moon Unit performing the song on the TV show Solid Gold can be seen on YouTube.

Kevin Smith is a huge fan of the film and first began discussing it in Smodcast #152, in which he hilariously explained how Valley Girl had a profound effect on the way his understanding of love and relationships was formed. In the special Smoviola #1 Smith interviewed Martha Coolidge, Deborah Foreman and cinematographer Frederick Elmes to discover the story of how the film came to be.

The artwork on this poster is by the American illustrator Birney Lettick who worked on magazine covers, adverts and portraits as well as a number of movie posters. Lettick was a master at capturing star likenesses and the portrait of cage is spot-on. The artist sadly passed away in 1986. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

Notice that the Italian title for the film translates, rather bizarrely, as The Girl from San Diego.

The trailer for the film can be seen on YouTube.

Update – 25/03/2012
As Jeff points out in the comments the woman featured on the poster isn’t actually Deborah Foreman but is one of the background actresses. It’s not clear why this is the case.

This is the Japanese B2 for Shaft in Africa, the final entry in the trilogy of films featuring Blaxploitation hero Shaft (Richard Roundtree). This time the eponymous detective is kidnapped from his New York apartment and coerced into assuming the identity of a native-speaking itinerant worker in an African country. His ‘employer’ wants Shaft to smash a human trafficking ring, run by the dastardly Amafi (Frank Finlay), that’s bringing African workers into Europe to exploit them.

Much more of an adventure film than the previous two entries, which were pretty much entirely set in urban areas, this film was actually shot on location in Ethiopia and has less of a blaxploitation feel and more of a James Bond-style action style. Gordon Parks, the director of the previous entries, was replaced by the British director John Guillermin who would helm the box-office smash The Towering Inferno the following year.

The photo montage is unique to Japan and the US poster features excellent artwork by John Solie. The fact that the designer chose to tint Shaft blue in the image of him kissing a white woman is more than a little strange and one can only guess at the motivations behind that decision.

You can view the trailer on YouTube.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of Two Minute Warning, a 1976 thriller set during an American Football championship match in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Featuring an all-star cast, the film sees a psychotic sniper take position inside the stadium with plans to take random shots into the crowd as part of a diversionary tactic for a gang of thieves at a nearby museum. Charlton Heston plays a police sergeant who must work with a SWAT captain played by John Cassavetes to find and apprehend the sniper. The story also focuses on people in the crowd, which includes an argumentative couple played by David Janssen and Gena Rowlands and an elderly pickpocket played by Walter Pidgeon. After several failed attempts to capture the sniper, all hell breaks loose in the stadium and disaster beckons unless he can be stopped.

This Japanese poster features a montage of images from the film above an illustration of the stadium and a stylised film title inside it. I’m unsure who’s responsible for the artwork so if you have any ideas please get in touch.

Norris versus Carradine was always going to be a good match and this is definitely one of Chuck’s better films. His character, a Texas Ranger named J.J. McQuade, was the inspiration behind his successful TV series Walker, Texas Ranger that began 10 years after this film. This US one sheet features great action artwork by C.W. Taylor.

The uncensored trailer can be watched on Youtube.

Someone has made a clip called Lone Wolf McQuade in four minutes, handy if you never intend to watch the film in full. Also, here’s the film’s body count.

A truly international production, Red Sun was filmed in Spain by the British director Terence Young and starring American action legend Charles Bronson,the Japanese actor Toshirô Mifune (best known for Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai), French superstar Alain Delon and the gorgeous Swiss actress Ursula Andress. Terence Young had previously achieved great commercial success directing Sean Connery in three of his outings as James Bond. Bronson had previously starred in The Magnificent Seven, an American remake of Seven Samurai.

The film sees two ruthless robbers, Link (Bronson) and Gauche (Delon) attack a train bound for Washington carrying the Japanese ambassador. During the raid Gauche steals a very valuable sword and then betrays Link, trying to kill him before escaping with the loot. Link must team up with the only surviving Samurai escort of the ambassador (Mifune) and track down Gauche before it’s too late.

This Japanese B2 features photographic portraits of the main actors and is markedly different to the US poster.

Unique artwork on this poster for the Japanese release of the much-loved Coen Brothers classic, The Big Lebowski. To say the film has become something of a cultural phenomenon since its release 13 years ago would be an understatement. There’s the annual Lebowski-Fest, which started in 2002 in Louisville, Kentucky and has since been held in several other cities. Jeff Bridges iconic ‘The Dude’ character is even the focus behind a form of religion called Dudeism.

I have a hard time choosing between this and Fargo as my favourite Coen Brothers film, although Raising Arizona and Barton Fink are also strong contenders.

The image on this poster is a shot from the brilliant dream sequence, after The Dude has his drink spiked by Jackie Treehorn. It’s clear that the designer was experimenting with 3D text effects in Photoshop (v4.0, as it would have been at the time).

I recently spotted this rather excellent GIF.

One of my top three Coen brothers films (along with ‘Fargo’ and ‘The Big Lebowski’) and probably my favourite ever Nic Cage performance, the other contender being ‘Wild at Heart’. Raising Arizona is a brilliant comedy caper featuring some of the Coen’s most memorable characters, including Holly Hunter‘s Ed, the exasperated police officer bride of Cage’s bumbling criminal H.I. McDunnough.

After the pair fail to conceive naturally they make the fateful decision to steal Nathan Jr., one of the quintuplets born to wealthy store owner Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) and his wife. The pair must then contend with a series of increasingly frantic encounters after Arizona Sr. enlists the help of the enigmatic bounty hunter Leonard Smalls (memorably played by Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb).  John Goodman and William Forsythe are superb as a pair of prison escapees whose friendship with H.I. leads to their involvement in the shenanigans.

This Japanese poster features the illustration of Nathan Jr. as seen on the UK quad (with some adjustments) and the illustration of Ed and H.I. is from the American one sheet.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Considered by many to be Italian horror maestro Dario Argento‘s best, Suspiria is an absolutely stunning supernatural horror film and has influenced countless imitations ever since its release in 1977. The visual style is superb and the film features an incredible colour palette throughout; something that would become an Argento trademark. The memorable soundtrack is by the Italian rock band Goblin who are frequent collaborators with the director.

The film sees American student Suzy Banyon (Jessica Harper) travel to the German city of Freiburg to attend a prestigious dance academy there. After a student is brutally murdered, Suzy begins to suspect all is not as it seems at the school and it’s not long before she’s forced to confront the sinister forces responsible.

The film is the first in Argento’s ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy of films. It would be followed by 1980’s Inferno and end 27 years later with the disappointing Mother of Tears.

This Japanese poster features Stefania Casini, who plays Sara, bathed in green light during one of the more terrifying sequences in the film. Jessica Harper can be seen at the bottom of the poster. The bloody ballet figure features on the superior Italian poster (image taken from eatbrie.com).

The bonkers US trailer for the film can be seen on YouTube.

Based on the biography of the same name by Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers recounts the story of Joseph Valachi a mafia member turned government informant in the 1960s. Director Terence Young, famous for directing the first two James Bond films (and Thunderball), was reunited with Charles Bronson whom he’d collaborated on for his previous two films (Red Sun and Cold Sweat). The film begins in the 60s in a Federal Penitentiary with an ageing Valachi (Bronson) serving time for heroin smuggling. In prison he meets the boss of the crime family he worked for Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura) who is convinced that Valachi is an informant and gives him the ‘kiss of death’. When Valachi later kills a prisoner whom he mistakenly thinks has been sent to assassinate him, he agrees to be an informant for the government. The rest of the film deals with incidences from his life, all the way back to the 1930s when he was starting out as a young criminal.

The design on this Japanese B2 is unique to the poster.

A classic image of Clint Eastwood brandishing his giant magnum pistol as detective Harold ‘Dirty Harry’ Callahan in The Enforcer, the third instalment of the series that was instrumental, along with his roles in a series of westerns, in cementing the actors position as a movie megastar. Set three years after the events in Magnum Force, the story sees Harry taken off detective duties following his decision to end a liquor store robbery by driving his car through the front window before shooting the protagonists. Whilst working for personnel and interviewing prospective recruits to enter the detective division he learns that three new detectives will be women, including Kate Moore (Tyne Daly), much to his bemusement (he is a 1970s, misogynist dinosaur let’s not forget)

When a terrorist group calling themselves the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force (PRSF) start a rampage of robbery and bombings, one of which sees his old partner killed in action, Harry is allowed back into the field and is reluctantly paired with Detective Moore to try and put a stop to the group’s actions. After stealing several arms caches, the PRSF then boldly kidnaps San Francisco’s mayor and demands a $2 million ransom, but the detectives are quickly onto their location and the scene is set for a final, explosive showdown.

This image of the smashed car window was photographed especially for the marketing campaign and ended up being used for posters around the world, including the American half sheet, the British quad and this Japanese B2. There is also a style A B2 that can be viewed here.