The Outlaw Josey Wales is widely considered to be one of the best Westerns of all time, and certainly one of Clint Eastwood‘s finest efforts. Inspired by the 1972 novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales by Forrest Carter, the film was originally to be helmed by Philip Kaufman who had written the script and been through pre-production before being fired from the set a few days into filming, with Eastwood himself taking the director’s chair for the remainder of the production. Set towards the end of the American Civil War, Josey Wales (Eastwood) is a peaceful Missouri farmer who is driven to revenge after his family is brutally murdered by a sadistic Union officer and his farm razed to the ground.

Wales joins a group of pro-Confederate rebels to fight and when the war ends his group is ordered to surrender peacefully, which Wales refuses to be part of. Following the massacre of most of his group, Wales attacks and kills several men and the Union captain places a bounty on his head as he flees. On his journey, Wales reluctantly picks up a diverse bunch of companions, including two Native American Indians, and he tries his best to evade the union troops and bounty hunters on their trail and start a new life for himself. This was the first film that paired Sondra Locke with Eastwood and was the beginning of their romance that lasted for fourteen years.

This Japanese B2 is the ‘style A’ poster for the film’s release there and there are three B2s in total, including the style C, which uses the same artwork as the US one sheet. This artwork is an adapted version of the alternative artwork as seen on the US 40×60 and half-sheet posters. All original American posters were designed by Eastwood’s long-time film marketing collaborator, the great Bill Gold, and this painting was by an American artist call Roy Andersen. According to this biography Andersen passed away last year but throughout his career he was known for his work depicting Native Americans and Old West images, including cowboys and related scenes. Artnet has an extensive gallery of his works here.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of The Terminal Man, a 1972 sci-fi film from Mike Hodges, the director of Get Carter and Flash Gordon, and based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name. George Segal stars as a computer scientist who, after suffering a series of seizures and violent episodes, agrees to have a microcomputer inserted into his brain. Unfortunately the operation has some unwanted side effects and triggers his brain into craving more violent stimuli, sending him over the edge.

The film wasn’t particularly well received at the box office and was never given a UK cinema release. It was only released on DVD in 2009 as a part of the on demand Warner Archive program.

There’s a strange bit of trivia on the Wikipedia page for the film:  Terrence Malick, the director of Badlands, reportedly has written to Hodges expressing how much he loved watching The Terminal Man.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Convoy was legendary American director Sam Peckinpah‘s penultimate film and his most commercially successful, despite it being critically mauled. It was made at the height of the craze for CB Radio/trucking films, which included the likes of Smokey and the Bandit and the TV series Movin’ On. The film’s title comes from the hit country and western novelty song of the same name by C.W. McCall and Chip Davis that was released in 1975. The song appears during the opening and intermittently during the film, with the latter version being reworked especially for the production.

It’s fair to say that the film is light on plot but Kris Kristofferson stars as long-distance trucker Martin ‘Rubber Duck’ Penwald who ends up leading the titular line of trucks across several states. Following an diner-based altercation with three police officers, including Duck’s long-term nemesis Sheriff “Dirty Lyle” Wallace (a great performance by Ernest Borgnine), a group of truckers head for the Arizona state line to escape prosecution. Lyle ups the stakes and pursues them into New Mexico whilst the convoy continues to grow. The authorities are determined to stop the truckers and Lyle uses the life of a fellow trucker to lure Duck into a trap from which it seems there’ll be no escape.

As had become standard for Peckinpah productions, the film finished over schedule and massively over budget, causing the director to be taken off post-production of the film. Studio staff worked with an editor to trim down a first cut that was over three hours long. It doesn’t particularly feel like a Peckinpah film (compared to the likes of The Wild Bunch, say) but there are certainly some well done scenes and the choices of location are excellent. Some of the editing choices aren’t great, however, with the slow-motion diner brawl being particularly excruciating to watch today. By this point in his career the director’s addiction to alcohol and drugs had become so profound that it would be another five years before he would work again.

This Japanese B2, one of two posters printed for the release in the country, features an image of the titular line of trucks, along with four head shots of what the distributors clearly decided were the key cast members.