This is the American one sheet for Weird Science, the bonkers 1980s comedy from the late, great director John Hughes. Producer Joel Silver bought the rights to a 1950s EC Comics magazine of the same name and Hughes wrote the screenplay himself. Anthony Michael Hall, a regular colaborator with the director (he appeared in Breakfast Club the same year as Weird Science) stars alongside Ilan Mitchell-Smith as Gary and Wyatt, a pair of high-school nerds who are struggling to be accepted by their peers.

One evening the pair decide to try and create their perfect woman, inspired by a viewing of the classic Frankenstein film and using their computer coding skills. Following a series of improbable incidents, including a lightning strike and the pair’s successful hacking into a government mainframe computer (classic 80s nonsense), the gorgeous Lisa (an unforgettable appearance by Kelly LeBrock) steps out of their bathroom and asks “So, what would you little maniacs like to do first?” The rest of the film sees Lisa using various supernatural skills, including memory manipulation and reality warping to help the boys lose their inhibitions and gain the friendship of their school peers. The film features several madcap sequences, including the moment a bunch of psychotic bikers led by Vernon Wells (of Mad Max 2 fame) crash a house party, and Bill Paxton appears in a memorable turn as Wyatt’s brother Chet.

This one sheet was art directed by the American designer and artist Tom Jung who is perhaps most famous for his work on the posters for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back but has been working on film advertising for over 50 years, as well as storyboarding for a number of films. The artwork (Lisa’s body appears to have been painted, and the title too) was apparently done by an artist and designer called Duane Meltzer who worked at Universal Studios at the time of the film’s release. According to the about page on his official website he also worked as a creative at Twentieth Century Fox studios before forming POV Entertainment Design in 1988. He has continued to work on key art for films, as well as home entertainment packaging and more since then.

A largely forgotten entry into the blaxploitation genre, Book of Numbers was written, directed and produced by its star Raymond St. Jacques, who is perhaps best known for his role as Coffin Ed Johnson in the film Cotton Comes to Harlem, as well as the street preacher in John Carpenter’s They Live.

The film sees two African-American waiters set up a numbers racket in a small town in Arkansas, raising the ire of the white gangsters in other towns nearby. Despite being something of a critical success it appears the film was a financial flop and put paid to  further films that Raymond St. Jacques had planned with his recently established production company.

The great artwork on this US 30×40 features a signature but I’ve had a hard time identifying who it belongs to. Take a look at the signature picture and let me know if you can identify it.

A true cult horror – you only have to look at the list of references in pop culture on its Wikipedia page to get an idea of how much impact the film has had – this poster features a memorable tagline and a teaser of the creatures of the title. The story may be schlocky; toxic mutants living in the sewers of New York are attacking its inhabitants and it’s up to ragtag group of people (cop, fashion reporter, soup-kitchen owner!) to save the day, but the film works with its low budget to create some memorable gore-filled scenes and features fun acting from the likes of John Heard and Daniel Stern. It also has an excellent none-more-80s synth soundtrack.

Chud has since been appropriated to describe ugly, stupid people thanks mainly to its use in Kevin Smith’s Clerks II. It’s also used as the domain name of an excellent cult film website (Cinematic Happenings Under Development).

Here’s the original trailer.

Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End is one of those films that leaves a lasting impression on anyone who sees it, but it was sadly considered to be a ‘lost’ film for many years and was practically impossible to see after its initial cinema opening in a handful of countries. The film was briefly available on VHS in the UK but was never released on DVD. In 2011 the BFI restored and re-released it at the cinema and also issued a blu-ray version complete with several extras, which is utterly superb and well worth picking up.

The film focuses on Mike (John Moulder-Brown) a teenager who leaves school and gets his first job working at a local swimming baths. There he meets Susan (Jane Asher) an older woman with whom he quickly becomes infatuated. Without spoiling things too much, the film builds to a fairly shocking climax which has been known to polarize viewers. Jane Asher looks absolutely stunning and really plays the seductive, care-free Susan perfectly – it’s not hard to understand the reasons behind Mike’s infatuation!

Skolimowski was a contemporary of Roman Polanski and was mentored by the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda. He completed several films in Poland throughout the 1960s before moving to the UK where he made Deep End and a couple of other features. He then left to Los Angeles where he took up painting and occasionally acted in films, notably in White Knights and more recently in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises. His 17 year hiatus from directing ended in 2008 with the release of Four Nights with Anna and he made the spartan thriller Essential Killing with Vincent Gallo in 2010.

This poster by an unknown graphic designer is the quad that was printed when the film was given a wider UK release. The premiere showing had actually been at the Academy Cinema One on London’s Oxford Street and the poster for this was done by the legendary designer Peter Strausfeld (his Seven Samurai poster is on this site here).

The original trailer is on YouTube.

A true cult horror – you only have to look at the list of references in pop culture on its Wikipedia page to get an idea of how much impact the film has had – this UK quad poster for C.H.U.D. features a memorable, lengthy tagline and a teaser of the creatures of the title. The story is nicely schlocky; toxic mutants living in the sewers of New York City are attacking its inhabitants and it’s up to ragtag group of people (cop, fashion reporter, soup-kitchen owner!) to save the day, but the film works with its low budget to create some memorable gore-filled scenes and features fun acting from the likes of John Heard and Daniel Stern. It also has an excellent none-more-80s synth soundtrack.

Chud has since been appropriated to describe ugly, stupid people thanks mainly to its use in Kevin Smith’s Clerks II. It’s also used as the domain name of an excellent cult film website (Cinematic Happenings Under Development).

This UK quad is very similar to the US one sheet but features a different tagline and more muted colours around the creature (his eyes glow more on the one sheet, for example). Here’s the original trailer.

This is the US one sheet for the release of Werner Herzog‘s 2011 documentary, Into the Abyss. The film is one of the legendary German director’s best films from the past decade and focuses on the situation of a prisoner in a maximum security prison in Texas who is awaiting execution. The subject is one that Herzog had wanted to focus on for a number of years and he had originally intended to look at life inside a maximum security prison in Germany. Originally the director planned to interview a number of death row inmates but ended up focusing on just one, Michael Perry, and looking into the reason for his incarceration and (at that time) imminent execution.

Using the director’s trademark interview style, where he asks questions off-camera typically to a single person, the film looks at the crime that Perry and an accomplice are said to have perpetrated and the effect it has had on the victims’ families. Herzog shies away from trying to decipher whether Perry is guilty or innocent (the man himself claims innocence) of the murder of three people in Conroe, Texas in 2001. The film is gripping throughout and some of the most memorable scenes are when the siblings of the murdered people are interviewed. One person in particular has suffered such imaginable loss it is almost breathtaking.

This poster was designed by P+A (Percival and Associates) an established and prolific design company whose output can be viewed on IMPAwards. Their official website is not currently up and running. Mojo design were also involved but the company now appears to be defunct (Into the Abyss was one of their last posters) – their output can also be viewed on IMPAwards.