Actor turned director Ivan Dixon helmed Trouble Man, a blaxploitation thriller from 1972, starring Robert Hooks and featuring an original soundtrack by Marvin Gaye. Mr T (Hooks) is a former hustler turned private eye who has allies on both sides of the law and operates out of a pool hall where he sharks during his spare time. One day he is approached by Chalky (Paul Winfield) and Pete (Ralph Waite), two former pimps who have been running illegal dice games around the local neighbourhood which they claim have been robbed several times by a gang of masked men, despite them having changed the location several times.

Mr T agrees to help the pair discover who’s behind the heists for a price, but what he assumes to be a routine assignment soon turns out to be nothing of the sort when Chalky and Pete double cross him and leave him caught between a gang led by the kingpin Big (Julius Harris) and the local police captain. T must fight to survive and clear his name whilst getting even with Chalky and Pete before its too late. Often compared favourably to perhaps the best known blaxploitation feature Shaft, the film has something of a cult reputation today which is helped by the memorable Marvin Gaye soundtrack.

This Japanese B2 features a photo of Mr T in front of mirrors that is similar to the American one sheet, although this poster is obviously more violently explicit.

The excellent original trailer is on YouTube.

This is the US one sheet for the first (and my favourite) Roger Moore-starring James Bond film, Live and Let Die, featuring artwork by the great Robert McGinnis. Along with the others in the series I probably saw the film on TV about fifteen times and can vividly recall many of the best scenes. Like British comedian and director Joe Cornish admitted when interviewing Roger Moore, his Bond films are responsible for many of my first ‘awakenings to the delights of the female form’ (being a young teenager at the time it would have been shown). The gorgeous Jane Seymour who plays ‘Solitaire’ is definitely responsible for putting at least a couple of hairs on my chest, as it were.

McGinnis is responsible for some of the best Bond posters, including Thunderball,  The Man With the Golden Gun and Diamonds are Forever as well as multiple other classic posters from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

You’ll notice that this particular poster has ‘East Hemi’ written at the bottom. This page on Learn About Movie Posters explains what the significance of that text is. An excerpt:

[Albert] Broccoli met with [Harry] Saltzman and tried to acquire the rights but Saltzman refused to sell. They instead decided to co-produce them. [….] After some success they decided to divide the production credits and entered into a contractual agreement for top billing and so was created the Hemi’s. [….] They divided the world into hemispheres. Harry took the East Hemisphere and Albert took the West Hemisphere. So Saltzman would get the European countries and Broccoli would get the Americas.

Great artwork by the late American artist John Berkey features on this teaser one sheet for the release of the 1976 remake of the 1933 classic, King Kong. Legendary Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis conceived of the idea of remaking and updating the original. He worked with the screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. (Batman the TV series, Flash Gordon) – a regular collaborator with the producer – and asked for the script to be more light-hearted than the original version. British director John Guillermin, who had seen great box-office success with The Towering Inferno a couple of years earlier, was given the director’s job. The two leads were a young Jeff Bridges and the stunning Jessica Lange in her debut role – De Laurentiis had spotted her modelling and asked her to audition. The rest of the cast is filled with respected character actors, including Charles Grodin, John Randolph and Ed Lauter.

The film follows the overall plot of the original fairly closely, although some of the details are updated to reflect its contemporary setting and the special effects are no longer stop-motion. An American oil company sets sail onboard a research vessel to find a mysterious, f0g-shrouded island that has long been rumoured to exist somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Jack Prescott (Bridges), a primate paleontologist stows away onboard and eventually reveals himself to exhibition leader Fred Wilson (Grodin) and the rest of the crew. As he’s about to be put into lock-up, Jack spots a life raft drifting in the middle of the ocean and the crew discover an unconscious woman. Dwan (Lange) is apparently the sole survivor from a yacht that exploded and killed the rest of the passengers. After she wakes she’s told of aim and destination of the ship that has rescued her.

After discovering the island, several of the crew venture inland and encounter a primitive tribe carrying out some kind of ritual near a giant wooden wall. After returning to their boat when the natives charge them, the crew pauses to rethink their plans. In the darkness of night, a canoe full of natives steal Dwan from the ship and take her to the wall where she is prepared as an offering to Kong. The beast takes her to his lair in the jungle where he spends a while ogling over her. Jack and some of the other crew manage to track her down but not before Kong offs several crew members and a giant snake. Eventually, Kong is subdued using chloroform and a giant pit and Fred Wilson decides to salvage the exhibition by transporting the ape back to America onboard an oil tanker. Needless to say, he doesn’t stay captive for very long when he reaches New York, and soon Kong is climbing the Twin Towers with Dwan in his hand.

De Laurentiis had hired both Carlo Rambaldi (most famous for E.T.) and Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) to work on the special effects for the creature, and the result was Baker himself wearing an ape suit in the majority of shots. A giant mechanical version of Kong was built but wasn’t ready in time for many of the shots and had severe issues when it did finally appear. Only about 15 seconds of the mechanical version survive in the last cut of the film. Baker was apparently displeased with the final version of the suit and it’s arguably what dates the film most when viewed today. There’s also some terrible rear-projection scenes, which were shoddy even in 1976. In some ways it might have been better to film using stop-motion animation, which was still being employed by the likes of Ray Harryhausen, even in the latter half of the 1970s, but the production must have decided that audiences were tired of that style of creature effects. Critics weren’t kind to the film at the time of its release but it still performed well at the box-office, thanks in part to the significant amount of tie-in marketing campaigns that De Laurentiis set in motion.

This teaser one sheet artwork was actually one of several painted by John Berkey for the film, and depicts Kong at the top of the World Trade Centre, clutching a destroyed helicopter as a jet buzzes him. This painting was actually updated later and replaced the helicopter with a jet, as well as adding a shadow beneath Kong. It can be seen on one of four Japanese B2 posters that featured Berkey’s artwork. Other posters for the film, painted by Berkey can be seen via this emovieposter archive link. The artist is perhaps best known for his science-fiction artwork which graced hundreds of novels from the 1960s into the 2000s. This page features links through to many of the covers. His estate has a website on which it sells both original artwork and prints of his art, primarily focused on his space-based paintings. It’s well worth a look to see the quality of his artwork.

Born in 1932, Berkey lived in Minnesota and spent most of his career as a freelance artist. He worked on a few film posters over the years, including one for Star Wars that appeared inside the vinyl soundtrack, as well as the poster for The Towering Inferno and one for another De Laurentiis creature-feature, Orca. The emovieposter archive features lots of his posters. The artist sadly passed away in 2008 from heart failure but he leaves behind an incredible legacy of artwork.

To see the other posters I’ve collected by Berkey click here.

Shaft’s Big Score is the second in the trilogy of films featuring Blaxploitation hero Shaft (Richard Roundtree) which sees the private-eye caught up in a war between two rival mobs after the death of one of his friends. The murder leaves the two gangs chasing a missing $200,000 and battling to take over a neighbourhood with Shaft battling to stop them. The film was directed by Gordon Parks who was also responsible for the first film and would later direct another blaxploitation caper, The Super Cops (1974). Although singer Isaac Hayes had provided the score for the first Shaft film, he wasn’t available for this sequel and Parks decided to work on the score himself since he was also a composer.

The all-action artwork on this 30×40 poster is by the American artist John Solie who has been working as an illustrator for over 40 years. Film posters are just one aspect of his output, which also includes book and magazine covers, sculptures, portraits and work for NASA. He continues to paint today in Tucson, Arizona. Another gallery of his work can be viewed on Wrong Side of the Art.

Here are the posters by John Solie I have collected to date.

You can view the trailer on YouTube.

This is the Japanese B2, featuring artwork by the great Robert McGinnis, for the first (and my favourite) Roger Moore-starring James Bond film, Live and Let Die. Along with the others in the series I probably saw the film on TV about fifteen times and can vividly recall many of the best scenes. Like British comedian and director Joe Cornish admitted when interviewing Roger Moore, his Bond films are responsible for many of my first ‘awakenings to the delights of the female form’ (being a young teenager at the time it would have been shown). The gorgeous Jane Seymour who plays ‘Solitaire’ is definitely responsible for putting at least a couple of hairs on my chest, as it were.

Robert McGinnis is responsible for some of the best James Bond posters, including Thunderball,  The Man With the Golden Gun and Diamonds are Forever as well as multiple other classic posters from the 60s, 70s and 80s. He was born in Cincinatti, Ohio in 1926 and was given an apprenticeship at Walt Disney studios before studying fine art at Ohio State University. After serving in the Merchant Marines during World War II, he started work in the advertising industry and later moved into painting book jackets for several notable authors, as well as editorial artwork for the likes of Good Housekeeping, TIME and The Saturday Evening Post. McGinnis’ first film poster was the now iconic one sheet for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, painted in 1962, and he went on to paint over 40 others during his career, including one for The Incredibles in 2004.

The artwork on this B2 poster isn’t identical to the US one sheet (the art of which was used worldwide) and it’s not clear whether the original art was painted over or whether it was repainted entirely. Some examples on the Japanese poster include the ‘Devil’ missing the doll from her hand and the alligator being given a yellow eye.

To see the other posters I’ve collected that were painted by McGinnis click here and to see the other James Bond posters in the Film on Paper collection click here.

Shaft’s Big Score is the second in a trilogy of films featuring blaxploitation hero Shaft (Richard Roundtree). This Japanese poster features a still from one of the big action sequences in the film. I’m a fan of the typography used for the title.

You can view the trailer on YouTube.