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.

I keep this poster in my collection to remind me how bad poster design can get.

Floating head(s)
Inane press quotes from outlets you’ve never heard of
Bad typography
Terrible layout

Released as Damnation Alley in the USA, this dystopian sci-fi adventure (set after the nuclear destruction of World War 3) pretty much disappeared at the box office, but later gained something of a cult status. It’s interesting to note that the studio, 20th Century Fox, were making two sci-fi films in 1977 and saw this as their big hope for a box-office blockbuster. The studio suits didn’t have much faith in the other project, a little film called Star Wars…

The film features a couple of infamous scenes with mutated creatures, including ‘giant’ scorpions (terribly composited using the blue screen process) and killer cockroaches. It also featured an interesting vehicle known as The Landmaster.

In some cinemas the film was shown with something called Sound 360. From IMDb:

20th Century-Fox developed a rival to Universal’s gimmicky ‘Sensurround’ sound process (popularized in the theatrical release of Earthquake (1974)) that was only used for the theatrical release of “Damnation Alley” called Sound 360. This process was basically a variation of Magnetic-Optical Stereo sound. This technical advancement/gimmick in sound did not last past “Damnation Alley” although it was planned for Walter Hill‘s The Driver (1978) and Damien: Omen II (1978). If you look at the one sheet of “Damnation Alley” the “Sound 360” declaration and logo are prominent at the bottom.

This one sheet by one of my favourite Japanese artists, Seito, is practically identical to one of the American one sheets that can be seen on IMPAwards (credited to artist Paul Lehr).

The film was recently released on blu-ray (in the correct aspect ratio) and a trailer for that can be watched here.