Cult Canadian director David Cronenberg’s Videodrome was released with this unique poster design when it hit Japanese cinemas in 1985. Like much of the director’s output, Videodrome is definitely not for the faint of heart and contains some utterly unforgettable moments of Cronenberg’s patented body-horror mutations. James Woods stars as Max Renn the sleazy CEO of a minor cable TV station who is constantly on the lookout for cheap exploitation fare to broadcast. Renn is told about Videodrome, a new and mysterious signal apparently being broadcast out of Malaysia which purports to depict real ‘snuff’ movies of victims being tortured and killed.

Renn decides to start pirating the show and broadcasting it to his audience. This soon attracts widespread attention that puts him into contact with sadomasochistic psychiatrist Nicki Brand (Debby Harry) and Professor Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley). When he discovers that the signal is actually being broadcast out of Pittsburgh, Renn decides to investigate further and he plunges into a nightmarish conspiracy that goes deeper than he ever imagined. As the American tagline says ‘First it controls your mind. Then it destroys your body’. Fans of Cronenberg’s proclivity for unnatural cavities and the melding of flesh with inorganic substances are not left disappointed, and the gun on this poster hints towards the finale.

In addition to this Japanese poster I also have the American one sheet and the British quad.

David Cronenberg‘s ‘future shock’ classic features a memorable turn by Michael Ironside as the superbly-monikered Daryl Revok, the evil leader of a renegade group of ‘Scanners’; mutant humans born with extreme telepathic and telekinetic powers who are capable of controlling machines and infiltrating the minds of others, often with head-popping consequences. The film is responsible for one of the best animated gifs on the internet.

This Japanese B1 features great artwork but I’ve been unable to identify the artist, so if you have any ideas please get in touch. The main figure is based on the one illustrated by Joann on the excellent British quad.

The film’s original British trailer is on YouTube (“You pray it will end…and it will!”).

Chuck Norris versus David Carradine was always going to be a good match and this is definitely one of Chuck’s better films. His character, a Texas Ranger named J.J. McQuade, was the inspiration behind his successful TV series Walker, Texas Ranger that began 10 years after this was released. In this film, ex-Marine McQuade lives on his own with only a wolf for company and prefers to do things his way. When an army convoy is hijacked and his daughter put in hospital after witnessing the attack, the Texas Ranger reluctantly teams up with an FBI agent (Leon Isaac Kennedy) and ends up facing off against the arms dealer Wilkes (Carradine). The pair go head to head in a series of increasingly violent martial arts and gun battles. The film’s body count is detailed in a YouTube video.

This British quad poster was designed and painted by the British artist Brian Bysouth whilst he was working at the FEREF agency. The artwork is unique to this poster but it has elements that appear on both the Style A and the style B American one sheets. I also have another American one sheet for the film in the collection. In 2012 I interviewed the artist and that article can be found here. Other posters I’ve collected by Brian can be seen by clicking here.

The uncensored trailer can be watched on Youtube. Someone has made a clip called Lone Wolf McQuade in four minutes, which is handy if you never intend to watch the film in full.

Writer/director and B-movie legend Larry Cohen is responsible for this 1982 horror film that harks back to the popular ‘giant beast’ monster movies of the 1950s. Commonly known as ‘Q: The Winged Serpent’, or simply ‘Q’, the story is set in New York City and follows two police detectives (played by David Carradine and Richard Roundtree) investigating a series of brutal sacrificial slayings in which victims’ hearts and skins have been removed. They are also struggling to explain the mysterious deaths of people snatched from high up on rooftops by what is reported to be a flying lizard.

At the same time, a luckless hoodlum called Jimmy Quinn (played with gusto by Michael Moriarty) is on the run from murderous mobsters and discovers a giant egg hidden in the crown of the famous Chrysler Building, which apparently belongs to the deadly creature. It becomes apparent that the cult behind the sacrificial murders has managed to resurrect an Aztec god known as Quetzalcoatl, a flying lizard with huge talons and a taste for human flesh, and the detectives must battle to stop both the cult members and defeat the beast before New York City is lost.

This is the scarce international one sheet, printed in the USA for use in other English-speaking territories, and it differs greatly from the American one sheet that features artwork by Boris Vallejo. The detailed artwork on this poster is by the American artist Bob Gleason who is probably most famous for his work on the one sheet for John Carpenter’s Halloween. The artist, who lives in Portland, Oregon, has an official website that features galleries of the fine art paintings he currently works on, but makes no mention of his time painting film posters.

A joint collaboration between two British production companies, Palace Pictures and Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment, The Company of Wolves was helmed by the Irish director Neil Jordan and based on a short story by the late English author Angela Carter, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jordan. The film begins in the modern day with the  lead character Rosaleen (played by first-time actress Sarah Patterson) having moved with her parents to a large house in a forest. At night Rosaleen falls asleep and has a vivid dream in which she is a medieval peasant girl who lives with her grandma (played by Murder, She Wrote’s Angela Lansbury) in a woodland village. Sitting by the fire one evening her grandma begins to tell her a story and what follows is a series of surreal, fantasy tales, with multiple narratives and narrators, most of which feature wolves or werewolves, and all of which are ripe with hidden meanings and deeper significances (check out this page on IMDb to give you an idea).

Featuring elements of the classic Little Red Riding Hood fairytale (and indeed the film features a blood red shawl worn by a young girl) the film is a parable of the loss of innocence and the beginning of adolescence and sexual awakening – as the Grandma says at one point ‘Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle.’ Overcoming a slight budget The Company of Wolves has a dream-like, eerie atmosphere helped in no-small part by excellent production and costume design. There is also a werewolf transformation scene that challenges the famous one seen in American Werewolf in London. Palace Pictures would re-team several more times with Neil Jordan, including for Mona Lisa (1986) and Oscar-winning The Crying Game (1992)

This one sheet was printed for use in the UK alongside the quad, which is markedly different in its design and can be viewed here. The artwork was painted by the celebrated British artist George Underwood, who is perhaps best known for his work on album covers for the likes of David Bowie (Hunky Dory, Space Oddity and more), T.Rex and The Fixx. Born in Bromley, Kent in 1947, Underwood went on to study at the nearby Beckenham Art School and then afterwards at Ravensbourne College of Art. After a brief flirtation with the music industry (Bowie being a lifelong friend of his), he decided to concentrate on his design and illustration, beginning his career by working on LP covers and book covers.

Later on, Underwood would start work as a freelance illustrator, which is when he would have painted this poster for Palace Pictures. In the 1970s he began painting in oils, creating wonderful surrealist portraits and his official website features galleries of these and his other work, including album covers. I’m unsure whether he worked on any other film posters but I intend to contact the artist to find out.

Writer/director and B-movie legend Larry Cohen is responsible for this 1982 horror film that harks back to the popular ‘giant beast’ monster movies of the 1950s. Commonly known as ‘Q: The Winged Serpent‘, or simply ‘Q’, the story is set in New York City and follows two police detectives (played by David Carradine and Richard Roundtree) investigating a series of brutal sacrificial slayings in which victims’ hearts and skins have been removed. They are also struggling to explain the mysterious deaths of people snatched from high up on rooftops by what is reported to be a flying lizard.

At the same time, a luckless hoodlum called Jimmy Quinn (played with gusto by Michael Moriarty) is on the run from murderous mobsters and discovers a giant egg hidden in the crown of the famous Chrysler Building, which apparently belongs to the deadly creature. It becomes apparent that the cult behind the sacrificial murders has managed to resurrect an Aztec god known as Quetzalcoatl, a flying lizard with huge talons and a taste for human flesh, and the detectives must battle to stop both the cult members and defeat the beast before New York City is lost.

This quad was designed and illustrated by the late, great British artist Tom Chantrell whose dynamic and colourful work featured on hundreds of posters over a forty year period. It features the Chrysler Building, a famous New York landmark that also appears on the international one sheet, painted by Bob Gleason. Note that the lady in peril is wearing quite a bit less on this quad than she is on the one sheet – Chantrell always had an eye for adding extra bits of titillation to his artwork.

Tom Chantrell sadly passed away in 2001 but last year his widow Shirley launched his official website, which showcases his work and features a great biography written by Sim Branaghan, author of the must-own book British Film Posters. Chantrell illustrated many classic poster designs, including several Hammer posters such as the brilliant quad for ‘One Million Years B.C.’, and he was also responsible for the iconic Star Wars quad, the artwork of which ended up being used around the globe.

I have a number of other designs by Chantrell on this site and you can read an exclusive interview with Shirley by clicking here.

There’s nothing quite like Barbarella! A French/Italian co-production, this kitsch sci-fi adventure is one of the downright silliest films ever committed to celluloid and was unquestionably the defining role for Jane Fonda, who plays the titular ‘astronavigator’. Based on the landmark ‘adult’ comic by Frenchman Jean-Claude Forest, the film was helmed by Roger Vadim, the French director, screenwriter (and occasional actor), who was also Fonda’s husband at the time of production. Vadim would spend most of his life dating or being married to several of the most beautiful women in film, including Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg and Catherine Deneuve.

You don’t watch Barbarella for the plot, especially since there’s not much of one to speak of, but the film is set in the 41st century and sees our heroine dispatched from an Earth without war and violence (only love) in search of the missing scientist Durand Durand (Milo O’Shea) who has apparently built a weapon called the Positronic Ray that threatens peace across the galaxy. After crash-landing on an icy planet, Barbarella is kidnapped by a pair of strange girls who subject her to an attack by evil dolls. She’s rescued by ‘The Catchman’ Mark Hand (Ugo Tognazzi) who she rewards with sex before he points her in the direction of Sogo City, the realm of The Great Tyrant (Anita Pallenberg).

The story and script may be nonsense but the film is never less than gorgeous to look at, with brilliant production and costume design throughout, whilst the music by Charles Fox is also memorable. The film also features several other cult actors, including Marcel Marceau, John Phillip Law and David Hemmings (Suspiria). 

This poster is for the 1977 re-release of the film which saw the film edited to achieve a PG rating and re-released with the subtitle of ‘Queen of the Galaxy’, which was done to capitalise on the success of Star Wars. The original 1968 one sheet had been painted by Robert McGinnis and for this release the distributors turned to Boris Vallejo, a Peruvian painter who emigrated to the US in 1964 and was acclaimed primarily as a fantasy and erotica artist. Vallejo started out painting paperback covers for the likes of Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian and this work would lead to him being commissioned by various studios to paint the posters for films including Knightriders, Q (the Winged Serpent) and two posters for the National Lampoon series.

Vallejo continues to paint alongside his wife Julie Bell, also a fantasy artist, and the pair’s official website can be viewed here and features extensive galleries of work. To see the other posters I’ve collected by Vallejo click here.

Note that this is the international one sheet because it was printed without the PG-rating box seen on the US version.

This is a special poster that was printed for the 1979 re-release of ace director John Carpenter‘s first film, Dark Star. The sci-fi comedy was made over a period of several years whilst Carpenter was a student at the famous USC School of Cinematic Arts in California, which counts hundreds of well known directors, producers and screenwriters amongst its alumni. Made in collaboration with his friend and fellow student Dan O’Bannon, the shoestring budget (reportedly just $60,000) meant that the pair were multitasking throughout the shoot, with Carpenter co-writing the screenplay, directing, producing and writing the score, whilst O’Bannon shared the screenwriting duties as well as acting and working on the special effects.

The film follows the exploits of the spaceship Dark Star, an exploratory vessel traveling through space looking for unstable planets to blow up with giant bombs, clearing the way for space colonisation. The small crew has to deal with malfunctioning equipment (including the fact that their last supply of toilet paper was destroyed), a mischievous mascot alien, and a sentient bomb that must be persuaded not to destroy the ship by giving it a rudimentary lesson in phenomenology. As depicted on this poster the crew are also keeping the dead body of their captain in freezer storage and are able to speak directly with his conscious. The film is often credited as the first sci-fi to explore the mundanity of working in space.

After playing successfully in a series of short film festivals, the film was seen by the producer Jack H. Harris who was known for launching the careers of fledgling filmmakers, including John Landis whose first feature Schlock was shepherded onto the screen by the producer. Carpenter and O’Bannon were given budget to expand the short into a feature, and several new sequences were added before its eventual release in 1974. The film opened on a significant number of screens considering its origins but left audiences confused, particularly since it came out of nowhere with a brief marketing campaign that made the film seem like a dark and serious sci-fi. Despite being a box-office flop, the film would later gain a great cult following once it was released onto VHS in the 1980s.

Dan O’Bannon went on to work on the special effects for George Lucas’ Star Wars, as well as further exploring the idea of ‘workers in space’ in his script for Ridley Scott’s Alien. Carpenter would next direct the taught thriller Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which saw international success and firmly established him as a director, paving the way for his milestone horror film, Halloween (1978).

This re-release poster, which is in stark contrast to the original release US one sheet, is smaller than one sheet size and it’s probably better described as a commercial poster. These are licensed posters that would printed to be sold at cinemas, specialist stores or as a tie-in promotion. In the bottom left there is text mentioning One Stop Posters (Monterey Park) and they were a notable supplier of commercial posters back in the 1970s and 80s. The design is credited to someone called David Weisman and the illustration to Lucky Duck and I’ve struggled to find out any information about either of them. If you have any more details please get in touch.

A colourful illustration by the artist known as Seito on this Japanese poster for the release of The Silent Flute (released in many countries as Cross of Iron), a strange cult oddity from the end of the 1970s. Originally conceived by Bruce Lee, James Coburn, and Stirling Silliphant at the end of the 1960s, the film was intended to be an introduction to Eastern philosophy and martial arts, but the project floundered following Lee’s untimely death. Silliphant and screenwriter Stanley Mann completed the screenplay in the mid-1970s and the rights were acquired by legendary actor David Carradine, at that time famous as the star of the TV series Kung Fu.

Carradine appears in the film in four roles that were originally intended for Bruce Lee but the lead character of Cord, a poodle-haired warrior, was played by the Canadian ‘actor’ Jeff Cooper, who somehow manages to get upstaged by his own abdominal muscles. To say he’s the weak link in the film would be an understatement and it’s literally impossible to take him seriously as the supposedly determined and proud hero who sets out on quest to find a wizard called Thetan and discover what is so important about the mysterious book he is said to protect. Almost all of Cord’s lines are uttered with a shit-eating grin and he has one of the most unintentionally hilarious laughs I’ve ever heard.

It doesn’t help that the script is at times impenetrable cod-philosophical twaddle, which was clearly meant to be profound but must have left most audiences expecting some martial arts action scratching their heads in confusion. One can only speculate that some of the ‘teachings’ were hangovers from the original script versions overseen by Bruce Lee, and you can’t help but wonder if he’d been partaking in a little bit too much Mary Jane at the time. Carradine is at least entertaining enough in his various roles, although he sports some questionable attire, terrible monkey make-up and a spectacularly bad moustache. Not even the appearance of Christopher Lee as Thetan can save the film since he seems to be wearing a costume better suited for a character from the Moomins. He was clearly in it for the bottom line.

Whilst the film isn’t much cop, this Japanese poster is rather excellent and the artwork is unique to the Japanese campaign. Seito is one of my favourite Japanese artists who was responsible for several fantastic illustrated posters during the 1970s and 1980s. Little is known about the man himself, even in his native country. 

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

An iconic image on this one sheet for the release of Oliver Stone‘s Academy Award-winning Vietnam war classic, Platoon, one of a three films that the director made on the subject (the others being Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth). The script, which was written by Stone, is based on his own experiences as an infantryman who served in tours of duty during the Vietnam war. He had signed up in 1967 after dropping out of Yale University and specifically requested to see combat in the war that had seen the first ground troops sent to the country two years earlier. Stone served in two different divisions for over a year and was wounded twice,  receiving several medals, including a Purple Heart.

The film follows Charlie Sheen‘s army grunt Chris Taylor (a proxy for Stone) who is serving as part of Bravo Company, 25th Infantry Division near the Cambodian Border. Taylor is fresh into the field and is treated with disdain by the more experienced soldiers (an incredible ensemble of acting talent, including Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Keith David and Forest Whitaker) who have all been in country for months, and he is quickly made aware that his presence is inconsequential. After a few skirmishes in which some members of the division are killed, Taylor is eventually accepted into the group and discovers the grinding boredom and rampant drug use amongst his fellow soldiers. Tensions between two sergeants, the ill-tempered, battle-scarred Barnes (Berenger) and the pleasant, more reasonable Elias (Dafoe) reach breaking point following an incident involving innocent villagers. Upon returning to base, the issue of a court-martial for illegal killing is raised and when the division is sent out on their next patrol, things reach boiling point, leaving Taylor fighting to survive against the enemy as well as members of his own team.

Unique artwork by Tongdee on this Thai poster for John Carpenter‘s excellent sci-fi film They Live, in which a drifter (played by former wrestler Roddy Piper) finds a set of special sunglasses which reveal that aliens have taken over the earth and are subduing the general population through subliminal messages and signals. The film is famous for being the inspiration behind graphic designer Shephard Fairey‘s famous OBEY street art and clothing label, which is based on the hidden alien slogans only visible when the sunglasses are worn.

The film also features the infamous line “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum.”, which can be viewed here. There’s also the legendary fight between Nada (Piper) and Armitage (Keith David) that lasts over five minutes and was apparently proposed and choreographed by the two actors themselves.

Here’s the great original trailer.

Tongdee Panumas (he signs his posters with just his first name) was an incredibly prolific Thai film poster artist during the 70s, 80s and 90s but I’ve been unable to find out much about him, other than that he was born in 1947. If anyone has any more information please get in touch. A knowledgeable collector of Thai posters told me that the artists would rarely if ever see the film they were creating the poster for and would instead paint images based on still photos or posters from other countries. This led to some wild designs and even some artwork with characters and elements that didn’t even appear in the actual film!

To see the other John Carpenter posters I have collected click here.

Unique artwork features on this German A1 poster for the release of Lucio Fulci‘s classic horror The Beyond (1981). Nicknamed The Godfather of Gore, the late Italian director is responsible for several memorable entries in the horror genre and The Beyond is one of what are often considered to be the big four Fulci films (the others being Zombie Flesh Eaters, The House By the Cemetery and City of the Living Dead), which were all made within two years of each other. The director tried his hand at various genres, including westerns and comedies, but it was horror where he found the greatest success and for which he is best remembered.

The Beyond is the second film in the unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy of Fulci films that began with 1980s City of the Living Dead and ended with The House By the Cemetery. British actress Catriona MacColl, star of the other two films, plays New Yorker Liza Merril who has inherited a run-down Louisiana hotel and decides to spend her savings on renovating the place. What she doesn’t realise is that it was built over one of ‘Seven Doors of Death’, which are direct pathways to hell, and when people involved in helping her repair the hotel begin to die horribly she is helped by a local doctor (David Warbeck) and a mysterious local blind woman called Emily (Cinzia Monreale). It soon becomes clear that the pathway is letting supernatural evil out and creating bloodthirsty zombies of the dead and Liza must fight for her very survival.

As with many of Fulci’s films, the story plays second fiddle to the striking visuals and gory set-pieces as the body count ramps up. It’s never less than memorable and is often cited by Fulci fans as their favourite of his films. The Beyond also features a great score by regular Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi. The film was butchered heavily for its original US release (as ‘7 Doors of Death’) and was missing most of the gore scenes and a different soundtrack. The UK release was originally heavily cut, despite being granted an ‘X’ certificate. It was finally passed fully uncut in 2001.

A reader of the site got in touch to confirm that the poster was painted by Lutz Peltzer, a prolific German artist who worked on over 800 posters during his career. The German site Archiv für Filmposter features a biography and plenty of images of his work. It details that he was born in 1925 in Mannheim and passed away in 2003.

Upon its release in 1988, Dead Ringers was arguably Canadian director David Cronenberg‘s most mainstream release to date (as close as he’d come at least) and it was his first psychological thriller following a slew of horrors, including Scanners (1981) and The Fly (1986). Based on the novel ‘Twins’ by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, the film was also influenced by the real life case of Stewart and Cyril Marcus and focuses on twin gynaecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle (both played by Jeremy Irons) who practice in a Toronto clinic dealing with fertility problems. For years they have operated a system where the more confident Elliot seduces women who visit the clinic and then passes them onto the shy Beverly when he’s bored of them, with the women usually not noticing the deception.

One day troubled actress Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold) visits the clinic and Elliot does his usual seduction trick. Beverly then becomes infatuated with her, leading to a destabilising of the relationship between the brothers and, after Beverly begins taking the prescription drugs that Claire is addicted to, things take a turn for the worse. Soon paranoid delusions of ‘mutant women’ lead Beverly to purchasing a series of bizarre tools from a metallurgical artist. When he later attacks a patient at the clinic the twins are suspended from practice and set in motion a chain of events with a deadly conclusion.

Although more drama focused, the film still gave Cronenberg plenty of scope for his usual body horror tricks and although it’s not as bloody as previous efforts the film is no less disturbing. Irons impresses with his performance and the actor would win a few awards during the year of release.

The poster was designed by Spiros Angelikas who was a prolific designer and artist of film posters during the 1970s and 1980s. He owned a design agency called Spiros Associates. Some of his most famous work includes the poster he designed for Friday the 13th, with artist Alex Ebel, and for his collaborations with the legendary artist Richard Amsel. They worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Nijinsky together and there’s a great article on the late artist’s website about their efforts. He also worked on several of the posters for the original Star Trek films, including the gorgeous Bob Peak original. There’s an interesting article by Angelikas’ son Harry on the Trek Core website which has photographs of concepts for the posters by Spiros that never made it to the print stage.

For this poster, not only did Spiros design the layout and type but he also put together the photo montage used for the central image of the melded faces.

This is the international one sheet for the release of David Lynch‘s mystery thriller Lost Highway. Co-written with American author Barry Gifford, whose novel Lynch adapted for his 1990 film Wild at Heart, the film is a classic Lynchian mind-bender that resolutely defies explanation. The story begins with Bill Pullman as Fred Madison, a Jazz saxophonist who is living with his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) in Los Angeles. One day the intercom to his flat buzzes and when he answers it an unknown man says “Dick Laurent is dead.” The man is nowhere to be seen when Fred looks out of his window, but a few days later a mysterious tape appears on the Madison’s doorstep. The video features shaky footage outside their flat and over the next few days more tapes appear that eventually move inside and show the pair sleeping, much to their horror.

At a party Fred meets a mysterious man (played by Robert Blake in his final film role) who, in a memorably creepy sequence, tells Fred that he’s at his flat at that moment and proves it by getting him to call his home phone, which the stranger then answers. The next morning another tape appears and Fred is horrified to see it’s footage of him covered in blood with a dismembered Renee next to him. He is arrested, charged with murder and sentenced to death. Whilst on death row Fred sees strange visions and starts to suffer from painful headaches before he inexplicably morphs into another person, a car mechanic called Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) much to the confusion of the prison staff. Because Pete has committed no crime, he is released into the care of his parents and, after a period of adjustment, he gets back to his job. The rest of the film sees Pete dealing with the menacing gangster Mr Eddy (a memorable performance by Robert Loggia) and a mysterious blonde called Alice Wakefield (Arquette) who takes him down a dark path which has the mystery man waiting at the end of it.

Lynch and Gifford have always refused to fully explain the story but that hasn’t stopped fans of the film from trying to decode its many mysteries. Check out this IMDb page for some of the theories but the film definitely encourages you to draw your own conclusions after the credits roll. Lost Highway features a number of notable performances, particularly from Pullman and Arquette, as well as multiple cameos from the likes of Richard Pryor, Jack Nance and Marilyn Manson. Filled with memorable Lynchian imagery, including one of the most shocking accidental deaths in cinema history (Michael Massee‘s head meets glass table), it also has a brilliant soundtrack complemented by some of Lynch’s very best sound design.

This poster is very similar to the red style US one sheet but has the yellow blocky type that can be seen on the UK quad. I’m not sure who is responsible for the design of this one sheet or the quad so please get in touch if you have any ideas.

Featuring great art by Arnaldo Putzu, this is the UK quad for the 1980 action film The Sea Wolves, which is based on real events that occurred during the Second World War. As mentioned on the poster, the story is based on the exploits of ex-members of the Calcutta Light Horse, a cavalry regiment of the British Indian Army that was formed in 1872 and was disbanded a couple of years after the end of WWII. The plot sees British intelligence discovering that a Nazi radio ship is broadcasting the coordinates of allied ships from a harbour in Portuguese Goa, which was neutral during the war, so an all out assault cannot be launched by the Navy because of this.

British Intelligence officers Col. Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Capt. Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) lead the operation and covertly enlist retired officer Col. Bill Grice (David Niven) of the Calcutta Light Horse & some of his former soldiers. The gang sneak into Goa and arrange a diversion on the evening of a planned raid, before making their way to the radio ship carrying enough explosives to sink it and put a stop any more transmissions. The film reunited much of the creative team behind an earlier OAPs on a mission film, 1978’s The Wild Geese, including director Andrew V. McLaglen, screenwriter Reginald Rose, producer Euan Lloyd and several of the stars.

Arnaldo Putzu was born in Rome in 1927 and began painting from a very early age and in 1948 he got involved with the world of film publicity under the guidance of the famous artist Enrico De Seta. Eventually Putzu would gain enough confidence in his abilities to set up his own agency and it was this move that saw him getting involved in work for the British studio Rank. Eric Pulford was so impressed with his work that he brought him over to London to work at Downtons in 1967.

The artist worked on many quads whilst over here and also gained notoriety for lending his talents to the popular children’s magazine Look-in, for which he painted almost every cover during its publication lifetime. His best-known quad is undoubtedly the one he painted for the Michael Caine gangster classic Get Carter in 1971. My friend, and author of the must-own British Film Posters, Sim Branaghan met Putzu during the making of his book and describes it as a very memorable experience in the interview I published in 2012. Putzu sadly passed away the same year, aged 85, and Sim wrote an excellent obituary for The Guardian newspaper, which can be read here.

The poster was designed by the British designer and artist Vic Fair who is one the most important people ever to work on British film marketing. He is responsible for several iconic posters, including The Man Who Fell To Earth, posters for Hammer horrors like Vampire Circus, and the withdrawn advance one sheet for A View to a Kill. I interviewed Vic for this site and that article can be viewed by clicking here.

This is the original Thai poster for the release of Oliver Stone‘s Academy Award-winning Vietnam war classic, Platoon, one of a three films that the director made on the subject (the others being Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth). The script, which was written by Stone, is based on his own experiences as an infantryman who served in tours of duty during the Vietnam war. He had signed up in 1967 after dropping out of Yale University and specifically requested to see combat in the war that had seen the first ground troops sent to the country two years earlier. Stone served in two different divisions for over a year and was wounded twice,  receiving several medals, including a Purple Heart.

The film follows Charlie Sheen‘s army grunt Chris Taylor (a proxy for Stone) who is serving as part of Bravo Company, 25th Infantry Division near the Cambodian Border. Taylor is fresh into the field and is treated with disdain by the more experienced soldiers (an incredible ensemble of acting talent, including Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Keith David and Forest Whitaker) who have all been in country for months, and he is quickly made aware that his presence is inconsequential. After a few skirmishes in which some members of the division are killed, Taylor is eventually accepted into the group and discovers the grinding boredom and rampant drug use amongst his fellow soldiers. Tensions between two sergeants, the ill-tempered, battle-scarred Barnes (Berenger) and the pleasant, more reasonable Elias (Dafoe) reach breaking point following an incident involving innocent villagers. Upon returning to base, the issue of a court-martial for illegal killing is raised and when the division is sent out on their next patrol, things reach boiling point, leaving Taylor fighting to survive against the enemy as well as members of his own team.

This is the Polish poster for the release of British director David Lean‘s final film behind the camera, 1984’s A Passage to India. Lean hadn’t helmed a feature film since 1970’s Ryan’s Daughter, the poor reception of which had put him off directing for a few years, and an abandoned attempt to make a pair of films based on the Mutiny of the Bounty also took up several years of Lean’s life. The film is an adaptation of English author E. M. Forster’s novel of the same name and also a stage production of the book by Indian-born American playwright Santha Rama Rau.

Set in India during the 1920s when there was a growing Indian independence movement in the British Raj, the film sees young British woman Adela Quested (Judy Davis) travel to India to visit her fiancee Ronny Heaslop (Nigel Havers) who is serving as a magistrate in the town of Chandrapore. Accompanying her on the trip is Ronny’s mother Mrs Moore (Peggy Ashcroft). The pair spend time in the company of British colonials but when Mrs Moore meets a local doctor named Aziz Ahmed (Victor Banerjee) they see the opportunity to experience ‘the real India.’ Aziz agrees to take them on an expedition to the remote Marabar Caves (actually based on the real life Barabar Caves) but when Adela is attacked and almost raped, Aziz is accused of the crime and relations between the natives and the British quickly break down.

This poster was painted for the first release of the film in Poland in 1988 and was created by the Polish artist Wiktor Sadowski who was born in Olendry in 1956 and later graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Sadowski has painted hundreds of film posters during his career and has won several prestigious awards, including a gold medal at Poster Biennale of Poland in 1984 and a gold medal from the New York Society of Illustrators in 1994. There are multiple galleries of his work online, including this one on the Polish Poster Gallery website and this one on Polishposter.com that both clearly show the quality of his artwork.

An iconic image on this one sheet for the release of Oliver Stone‘s Academy Award-winning Vietnam war classic, Platoon, one of a three films that the director made on the subject (the others being Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth). The script, which was written by Stone, is based on his own experiences as an infantryman who served in tours of duty during the Vietnam war. He had signed up in 1967 after dropping out of Yale University and specifically requested to see combat in the war that had seen the first ground troops sent to the country two years earlier. Stone served in two different divisions for over a year and was wounded twice,  receiving several medals, including a Purple Heart.

The film follows Charlie Sheen‘s army grunt Chris Taylor (a proxy for Stone) who is serving as part of Bravo Company, 25th Infantry Division near the Cambodian Border. Taylor is fresh into the field and is treated with disdain by the more experienced soldiers (an incredible ensemble of acting talent, including Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Keith David and Forest Whitaker) who have all been in country for months, and he is quickly made aware that his presence is inconsequential. After a few skirmishes in which some members of the division are killed, Taylor is eventually accepted into the group and discovers the grinding boredom and rampant drug use amongst his fellow soldiers. Tensions between two sergeants, the ill-tempered, battle-scarred Barnes (Berenger) and the pleasant, more reasonable Elias (Dafoe) reach breaking point following an incident involving innocent villagers. Upon returning to base, the issue of a court-martial for illegal killing is raised and when the division is sent out on their next patrol, things reach boiling point, leaving Taylor fighting to survive against the enemy as well as members of his own team.

This one sheet features a shot from a pivotal scene in the film where Elias is left behind during an evacuation to escape from advancing Vietcong troops. The shot was used on most posters for the film’s release across the board, but not on the US one sheet. This poster is in fact a one sheet printed for use in English-speaking international countries (note the lack of MPAA rating). It most commonly appears without the white border and measuring 25″ x 39″ but this is the full-size 27″ x 41″ bordered version.

I had always assumed the image was a photograph but I only recently discovered it’s the work of the American artist Mike Bryan who also painted the fantastic and iconic Robocop one sheet. Heritage auction house sold the original paintings for both posters in March 2014 and included with each was a note from Bryan himself. The platoon one can be read here.

This is the art-style Japanese B2 for the 1980 action film The Sea Wolves, which is based on real events that occurred during the Second World War. The story is based on the exploits of ex-members of the Calcutta Light Horse, a cavalry regiment of the British Indian Army that was formed in 1872 and was disbanded a couple of years after the end of WWII. The plot sees British intelligence discovering that a Nazi radio ship is broadcasting the coordinates of allied ships from a harbour in Portuguese Goa, which was neutral during the war, so an all out assault cannot be launched by the Navy because of this.

British Intelligence officers Col. Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Capt. Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) lead the operation and covertly enlist retired officer Col. Bill Grice (David Niven) of the Calcutta Light Horse & some of his former soldiers. The gang sneak into Goa and arrange a diversion on the evening of a planned raid, before making their way to the radio ship carrying enough explosives to sink it and put a stop any more transmissions. The film reunited much of the creative team behind an earlier OAPs on a mission film, 1978’s The Wild Geese, including director Andrew V. McLaglen, screenwriter Reginald Rose, producer Euan Lloyd and several of the stars.

This Japanese poster features artwork painted by Seito that is unique to the Japanese campaign. Seito is one of my favourite Japanese artists who was responsible for several fantastic illustrated posters during the 1970s and 1980s. Little is known about the man himself, even in his native country.

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

Unique artwork features on this poster for the Hungarian release of David Cronenberg‘s sci-fi classic, The Fly. Loosely based on a 1957 short story of the same name by George Langelaan, which was first adapted for the big screen in 1958, the screenplay was written by Cronenberg himself and based on an initial draft by Charles Edward Pogue. The director rewrote most of the characters and dialogue and added themes of identity, sexuality and body horror with which he’d become synonymous.

Cronenberg cast Jeff Goldblum as the gifted but eccentric scientist Seth Brundle who has secretly been working on teleportation of objects from one place to another instantly. He works for Bartok Science Industries but has been working on a pair of ‘telepods’ at his home laboratory. When he’s introduced to the journalist Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) at a ‘meet the press’ event he decides to risk taking her to see his work, which he demonstrates by teleporting inanimate objects. Impressed, Veronica agrees to keep quiet in return for exclusive rights to the story.

Soon afterwards the pair start a romantic relationship as Brundle continues to work on the pods. He decides that he wants to have the pods teleport living tissue and eventually manages to do so successfully with a baboon he’s borrowed from his company. Flushed with success Brundle begins drinking and starts to get paranoid that Veronica has rekindled her relationship with her editor and former lover Stathis Borans John Getz. He decides to try teleporting himself but unbeknownst to him a housefly gets inside the pod with him.

He emerges in the other pod seemingly fine and initially feels he’s come out of the pod an ‘improved’ human with higher strength and stamina. However over the following weeks Brundle’s mood becomes highly erratic and he begins a bodily transformation that starts out with unwanted hairs and fingernails falling out but begins to progress into something much more destructive as he realises his pod had been contaminated. The transformation into ‘Brundlefly’ sees the scientist scrambling for a cure before it’s too late, desperately imploring a pregnant Veronica to help him.

Goldblum’s performance was rightly celebrated and it remains one of his most memorable roles to date. The special effects depicting Brundle’s deterioration were executed by Chris Walas‘ company and ended up rightfully winning an Academy Award. The film is as impressive as it was 30 years ago and is definitely one of Cronenberg’s best.

The artwork on this poster depicting a malevolent creature with fly eyes was painted by an unknown artist and also features the telepod that appeared on the US one sheet (though minus the fly’s leg). If anyone has any ideas who was responsible for it please send me an email.

Here’s the film’s original trailer.

Featuring great art by Arnaldo Putzu, this is the UK one sheet for the 1980 action film The Sea Wolves, which is based on real events that occurred during the Second World War. As mentioned on the poster, the story is based on the exploits of ex-members of the Calcutta Light Horse, a cavalry regiment of the British Indian Army that was formed in 1872 and was disbanded a couple of years after the end of WWII. The plot sees British intelligence discovering that a Nazi radio ship is broadcasting the coordinates of allied ships from a harbour in Portuguese Goa, which was neutral during the war, so an all out assault cannot be launched by the Navy because of this.

British Intelligence officers Col. Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Capt. Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) lead the operation and covertly enlist retired officer Col. Bill Grice (David Niven) of the Calcutta Light Horse & some of his former soldiers. The gang sneak into Goa and arrange a diversion on the evening of a planned raid, before making their way to the radio ship carrying enough explosives to sink it and put a stop any more transmissions. The film reunited much of the creative team behind an earlier OAPs on a mission film, 1978’s The Wild Geese, including director Andrew V. McLaglen, screenwriter Reginald Rose, producer Euan Lloyd and several of the stars.

Arnaldo Putzu was born in Rome in 1927 and began painting from a very early age and in 1948 he got involved with the world of film publicity under the guidance of the famous artist Enrico De Seta. Eventually Putzu would gain enough confidence in his abilities to set up his own agency and it was this move that saw him getting involved in work for the British studio Rank. Eric Pulford was so impressed with his work that he brought him over to London to work at Downtons in 1967.

The artist worked on many posters whilst living over here and also gained notoriety for lending his talents to the popular children’s magazine Look-in for which he painted almost every cover during its publication lifetime. His best known poster is undoubtedly the one he painted for the Michael Caine gangster classic Get Carter in 1971. My friend and author of the must-own British Film Posters book, Sim Branaghan, met Putzu during the making of his book and describes it as a very memorable experience in the interview I published in 2012. Putzu sadly passed away the same year, aged 85, and Sim wrote an excellent obituary for The Guardian newspaper, which can be read here.

The poster was designed by the British designer and artist Vic Fair who is one the most important people ever to work on British film marketing. He is responsible for several iconic posters, including The Man Who Fell To Earth, posters for Hammer horrors like Vampire Circus, and the withdrawn advance one sheet for A View to a Kill. I interviewed Vic for this site and that article can be viewed by clicking here.

I also have the quad poster for the film which can be seen here.

Unique artwork features on this Thai poster for the release of Lucio Fulci‘s classic horror The Beyond (1981). Nicknamed The Godfather of Gore, the late Italian director is responsible for several memorable entries in the horror genre and The Beyond is one of what are often considered to be the big four Fulci films (the others being Zombie Flesh Eaters, The House By the Cemetery and City of the Living Dead), which were all made within two years of each other. The director tried his hand at various genres, including westerns and comedies, but it was horror where he found the greatest success and for which he is best remembered.

The Beyond is the second film in the unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy of Fulci films that began with 1980s City of the Living Dead and ended with The House By the Cemetery. British actress Catriona MacColl, star of the other two films, plays New Yorker Liza Merril who has inherited a run-down Louisiana hotel and decides to spend her savings on renovating the place. What she doesn’t realise is that it was built over one of ‘Seven Doors of Death’, which are direct pathways to hell, and when people involved in helping her repair the hotel begin to die horribly she is helped by a local doctor (David Warbeck) and a mysterious local blind woman called Emily (Cinzia Monreale). It soon becomes clear that the pathway is letting supernatural evil out and creating bloodthirsty zombies of the dead and Liza must fight for her very survival.

As with many of Fulci’s films, the story plays second fiddle to the striking visuals and gory set-pieces as the body count ramps up. It’s never less than memorable and is often cited by Fulci fans as their favourite of his films. The Beyond also features a great score by regular Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi. The film was butchered heavily for its original US release (as ‘7 Doors of Death’) and was missing most of the gore scenes and a different soundtrack. The UK release was originally heavily cut, despite being granted an ‘X’ certificate. It was finally passed fully uncut in 2001.

This montage featuring some of the more memorable moments of gory violence from the film was painted by a Thai artist called Noppadol about whom I’ve been unable to discover very little, other than a few of the other film poster titles he worked on (including Saturn 3 and Evil Dead). If anyone knows any more details please get in touch.

Although folded and not in amazing condition this is a very scarce poster and one that’s getting increasingly hard to find. I’ll continue to try and locate one without the fold lines but suspect it won’t be easy. The blue ink marks on the bottom of the poster relate to showings at specific times in specific cinemas and were stamped on after the original printing.

A unique design features on this German poster for the release of David Lynch’s cult mystery, Blue Velvet (1986). The film was long in gestation and Lynch has since said the story began to crystallise into a series of ideas as early as 1973. The critical and commercial failure of Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1984) had left the director bruised and deflated, so he was keen to return to an original story in the vein of his 1977 debut Eraserhead. Dino De Laurentiis, the producer behind Dune, agreed to finance and produce Blue Velvet for a relatively low-budget of $6m.

Lynch assembled an eclectic cast ready for production, including Isabella Rossellini, who was known for her modelling and TV adverts, Dennis Hopper and Kyle MacLachlan who had also appeared in Dune and would later gain worldwide fame as FBI Agent Cooper in Lynch’s TV series, Twin Peaks.

MacLachlan plays mild-mannered Jeffrey Beaumont who returns to his small hometown in North Carolina to visit his father who has suffered a stroke. Soon after arriving he takes a shortcut through a vacant lot and discovers a severed human ear on the ground. After taking the ear to the local police detective he becomes reaquainted with detective’s daughter Sandy (Lynch regular Laura Dern) and the pair decide to carry out their own investigation into the mystery.

They soon realise that the enigmatic nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Rossellini) has something to do with the missing ear and Jeffrey decides to start following her but makes the mistake of getting caught in her apartment. Vallens threatens him with a knife but soon afterwards the sociopathic Frank Booth (an incredible performance from Hopper) arrives and Jeffrey hides in the closet from where he is forced to watch Booth’s bizarre sexual proclivities. Jeffrey soon discovers that Booth has kidnapped Vallens’ son and he agrees to help her as he descends further into the sinister underworld hidden beneath a seemingly pleasant town. The film received mixed critical notices at the time but has since gone onto achieve cult status and is often cited as one of the best American films of all time. It’s also one of the director’s more accessible films, certainly in comparison to the likes of Inland Empire.

This German poster was created by a French designer who goes by the name Benjamin Baltimore (I’m assuming that’s not his actual name). I’m not quite sure why the German distributor used a French designer and the majority of the work in Baltimore’s portfolio is for French posters – Blue Velvet’s French poster is completely different in style. Blue Velvet is the rare film that has a unique poster for practically every country it was released in and emovieposter.com’s archive is a good way of viewing them all – see here. According to this article he’s responsible for over 600 film posters and has worked for a number of legendary directors during his career.

This is the Japanese poster for the release of the 1975 British film, Paper Tiger. The film was directed by Ken Annakin, who’s best know for helming the 1965 war film Battle of the Bulge and some live-action Disney films during the 1970s. The cast featured two acting legends in David Niven (The Pink Panther, The Guns of Navarone) and Toshirô Mifune (multiple Akira Kurosawa classics, including The Seven Samurai). Niven stars as ‘Major’ Walter Bradbury, a seemingly well-educated, ex-military man who has been invited to Malaysia to tutor the son of the Japanese ambassador (Mifune) called Koichi (Ando in his only film role).

Bradbury begins teaching the boy and regales him with tales of derring-do from his time serving during World War II, with the pair becoming fast friends. Unfortunately a group of political terrorists swipe the pair and intend to use them as a bargaining chip in the release of a group of prisoners who have been held for months by the government. The pair must try to stay alive and alert the ambassador to their location. The truth about Bradbury’s life becomes clear but he is given the chance to live up to his fabricated legend. The film takes a while to get going but the use of outdoor locations keeps things interesting and it goes out with a bit of a bang. Niven is eminently watchable although it’s not hard to see why Ando never acted again. Frustratingly, Mifune is given little do and spends a lot of the film standing next to a desk.

The trailer can be viewed here.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1983 live-action Disney film that’s based on the Ray Bradbury horror novel of the same name. It was helmed by the late British director Jack Clayton (best known for the 1961 horror The Innocents) The film is notorious for its production woes and extensive reshoots that were done without the input of Clayton or Bradbury, who also wrote the screenplay. After production had wrapped, Disney were concerned about its length and commercial appeal and spent a year (and millions of dollars) replacing entire scenes and extensive special effects sequences with material shot by another director. The film’s Wikipedia page details the problems and also notes that the film was a commercial flop.

The plot is described thusly on IMDb:

In a small anywhere town in any state in America, two young boys- quiet Will Halloway and somewhat rebellious Jim Nightshade-enjoy the ever-shortening days of autumn. When the boys hear about a strange traveling carnival from a lightning rod salesman, they decide to see what it is all about-but Will is fearful, as most carnivals end their tours after Labor Day. When the ominous Mr. Dark, the Illustrated Man, rides into town on a dark midnight, setting up his massive carnival in a matter of seconds, the boys are both thrilled and terrified. It seems to be just another carnival at first, but it is not before long that the forces of darkness themselves are manifesting from the haunting melodies of the carousel-which can change your age depending on which way you ride it-and the glaring Mirror Maze. With his collection of freaks and oddities, such as the Fat Man, Mr. Electro, and the blind Dust Witch, Dark intends to take control of the town and seize more innocent souls to damn.

The artwork on this quad, which also featured on the American and French posters, is by the American illustrator David Grove who worked on several film posters, including the brilliant international one sheet for Pale Rider and the striking poster for Steven Seagal’s Nico. Grove had an incredible skill at using gouache and acrylic paints to create striking, stylised images of his subjects, which are full of energy and feature brilliant use of colour washes, shading and clever brush strokes.

Grove sadly passed away in October 2012 and the website of Artist Partners London (where he apparently worked for a while in the 1960s) features a gallery and information on him, including an obituary that was originally printed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Greg Newbold’s Life Needs Art blog features a great piece on Grove, which includes several images of his other film posters.