A bizarre design features on this Japanese B2 for the release of the fifth entry in the much-loved horror franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5. The film’s subtitle ‘the Dream Child’ hints at the plot for the film, which sees Freddy attempting to return from hell by using the mind of an unborn baby. The child belongs to Alice (Lisa Wilcox) who was the main character in the previous film and the father is her boyfriend Dan (Danny Hassel) who also returns from Part 4. The Dream Child was only the second film directed by Stephen Hopkins, the Jamaican-born English-Australian director best known for helming Predator 2 and the 1998 reboot of Lost in Space.

Set a year after the previous film, the story sees Alice and her friends graduating from high school with Freddy Krueger seemingly vanquished for good. Alice begins to have strange dreams in which she finds herself in the asylum where Freddy’s mother, a nun named Amanda, was attacked and raped by the inmates. Later she has another dream in which she witnesses Amanda giving birth to a strange, deformed baby. The creature scuttles off and ends up in the church where Alice vanquished Freddy in Part 4 whereupon it grows into an adult Krueger. He immediately begins to taunt Alice, claiming he has found a way to return for good. When she wakes from the dream she immediately summons Dan to her but he falls asleep at the wheel of his motorbike and Freddy attacks and, during a gruesome sequence, melds him together with the bike before crashing him into a truck. Soon afterwards she learns that she is pregnant with Dan’s child and immediately begins to fear for its safety.

Alice and her friends must once again battle together with the spirit of Amanda Krueger to stop Freddy before he is able to return and take over the mind of Alice’s unborn son (Jacob). To be honest, the film gets very confusing and it’s hard to follow what’s happening most of the time, never mind how an unborn baby suddenly becomes a ten-year-old child in some of the sequences. The usual dream deaths are pretty dark and there are some gruesome moments for horror hounds, but the story barely hangs together, with choppy editing and hammy acting not helping at all. Although not a box-office disaster, the film failed to make anywhere near the box-office of Part 3 and 4 and audiences were certainly cooling towards the franchise by this point.

The smiling boy depicted on this poster doesn’t appear in the film and my guess is that he was chosen for a photoshoot by the poster’s designer. I’m not sure who was responsible for the artwork of the cartoon Freddy characters so if anyone has an idea please get in touch.

This is the style A Japanese B2 poster for the release of the 1979 musical oddity Roller Boogie, featuring artwork by Yasuo Nemoto. One of those films that’s something of a time capsule, the film was put into production by Irwin Yablans the independent producer who had struck gold a year earlier with John Carpenter’s Halloween. Yablans is credited with the film’s story and the intention was to capitalise on the then craze for rollerskating that was sweeping the States.

 Mark L. Lester (known for Commando and Class of 1984) was hired to direct and Linda Blair (The Exorcist) was given the starring role opposite an award-winning amateur skating champion called Jim Bray who was originally attached as a stuntman but was later given acting lessons when the production struggled to find a leading actor.

Blair plays Terry Barkley a Beverly Hills rich girl who is largely ignored by her parents who are determined to see her attend a prestigious school in New York and carry on as a flautist. One day whilst visiting Venice Beach she meets a hotshot skater named Bobby James (Bray) who dreams of making it to the Olympics. The pair strike up a friendship and eventually Terry asks Bobby if she can teach him how to skate and create a routine for them both so they can compete in a Roller Boogie contest at a skating rink called Jammer’s. Unfortunately a nefarious property developer plans to buy Jammer’s and raze it to the ground, so the pair team up with other skaters to put a stop to the plans whilst practicing their routines ready for the big night.

The film was largely panned on its release but found success with teen audiences and has since gone on to have something of a cult following. Plans for a mooted sequel were scrapped when disco music and roller skating lost their popularity.

The artwork is credited to someone called Yasuo Nemoto but I’ve been unable to find out anything about them online. If anyone has any further details about Nemoto please get in touch. I also have the style B Japanese B2 in the collection and it can be viewed here.

Unique artwork features on this Japanese B2 for the release of the fifth entry in the much-loved horror franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5. The film’s subtitle ‘the Dream Child’ hints at the plot for the film, which sees Freddy attempting to return from hell by using the mind of an unborn baby. The child belongs to Alice (Lisa Wilcox) who was the main character in the previous film and the father is her boyfriend Dan (Danny Hassel) who also returns from Part 4. The Dream Child was only the second film directed by Stephen Hopkins, the Jamaican-born English-Australian director best known for helming Predator 2 and the 1998 reboot of Lost in Space.

Set a year after the previous film, the story sees Alice and her friends graduating from high school with Freddy Krueger seemingly vanquished for good. Alice begins to have strange dreams in which she finds herself in the asylum where Freddy’s mother, a nun named Amanda, was attacked and raped by the inmates. Later she has another dream in which she witnesses Amanda giving birth to a strange, deformed baby. The creature scuttles off and ends up in the church where Alice vanquished Freddy in Part 4 whereupon it grows into an adult Krueger. He immediately begins to taunt Alice, claiming he has found a way to return for good. When she wakes from the dream she immediately summons Dan to her but he falls asleep at the wheel of his motorbike and Freddy attacks and, during a gruesome sequence, melds him together with the bike before crashing him into a truck. Soon afterwards she learns that she is pregnant with Dan’s child and immediately begins to fear for its safety.

Alice and her friends must once again battle together with the spirit of Amanda Krueger to stop Freddy before he is able to return and take over the mind of Alice’s unborn son (Jacob). To be honest, the film gets very confusing and it’s hard to follow what’s happening most of the time, never mind how an unborn baby suddenly becomes a ten-year-old child in some of the sequences. The usual dream deaths are pretty dark and there are some gruesome moments for horror hounds, but the story barely hangs together, with choppy editing and hammy acting not helping at all. Although not a box-office disaster, the film failed to take anywhere near the box-office of Part 3 and 4 and audiences were certainly cooling towards the franchise by this point.

This artwork is a modified take on the photographic image of Freddy with the pram seen on the German A1 poster. I’m not sure who was responsible for the painting so if anyone has any ideas please get in touch. The small illustrated figure in the bottom right is actually from the alternate style Japanese B2 poster which I also have in the collection here.

Alligator, the 1980 giant beast in the sewers b-movie, was directed by Lewis Teague (Cujo, The Jewel of the Nile) and had its screenplay written by John Sayles, who was also behind the Roger Corman-produced hit Piranha (1978). The story sees a baby alligator bought by a young girl in Florida, and subsequently named Ramón, flushed down the sewers in Los Angeles by her animal-phobic father. The film then jumps to twelve years later and the reptile has grown to the size of a bus after eating the corpses of dead pets that have been injected with a secret growth formula and dumped into the sewers. After human body parts begin showing up with alarming regularity the world-weary detective David Madison (genre stalwart Robert Forster) is sent into the sewers to investigate what’s behind the murders, along with reptile expert Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker – as pictured on this poster), the girl that originally flushed Ramón into the sewers.

The film features an infamous scene where Ramón escapes from the sewers and rampages through a high-society wedding murdering anyone who crosses his path. This scene can be viewed on YouTube.

This is one of two Japanese posters for the film that I’m aware of, and I’ve called this the ‘black style’.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

This British quad for the sci-fi clunker Metalstorm was designed by Eddie Paul at the FEREF design agency and the artwork was painted by British artist Brian Bysouth. In 2012 I met and interviewed the artist and the resulting article can be read here.

Wonderfully detailed artwork by American artist John Solie for this 1973 dystopian sci-fi in which a police detective (Charlton Heston) finds his life is in danger after investigating the secrets behind a revolutionary new foodstuff called Soylent Green. You’d be hard pressed to find a film fan worth their salt who doesn’t know the secret ingredient.

John Solie has been working as an illustrator for over 40 years and 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.

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

Here’s the great original trailer.

1974 was a good year for fans of conspiracy theory thrillers as it saw the release of Francis Ford Coppola‘s masterful The Conversation as well as this lesser known, but no less great, flick directed by Alan J Pakula (All the Presidents Men). It stars a poodle-haired Warren Beatty as a reporter investigating a sinister organisation behind a political assassination and remains one of the definitive cat and mouse thrillers of all time.

I’d argue that this poster features one of the best taglines of all time, certainly of the 1970s; it chillingly suggests that the misconduct of corporations featured in the film is business as usual.

I’m not certain who designed the poster so please get in touch if you have an idea.

The film features this memorable line of dialogue: “They say a martini is like a woman’s breast: one ain’t enough and three is too many.”

Here’s the superb original trailer.