Filmed by prolific Italian B-movie director Antonio Margheriti, the bizarre caveman-sci-fi hybrid Yor the Hunter From the Future actually started out as a four part TV series shown on Italian TV called ‘Il Mondo di Yor’ (The World of Yor), which itself was based on a comic book series of the same name. Margheriti, who shot the entire thing in Turkey, cut the four-hour series down to this 90-minute version that was distributed internationally and is now regularly cited as one of the worst films ever released.

Reb Brown plays the bronzen, muscled and poodle-haired Yor, a mysterious warrior who travels through an prehistoric world besieged by cavemen tribes and dinosaurs in search of his origins. Along the way he meets Ka-Laa (played by the gorgeous Corinne Cléry) and Pak (Luciano Pigozzi) two primitives who help Yor on his journey to discover the secret of the golden medallion he wears around his neck.

This poster for the US release of the short version features a brilliantly pompous and full-stop heavy tagline.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

French acting legend Alain Delon stars in this 1975 film featuring the character of Zorro, originally created by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley in 1919. Zorro has appeared in countless films, TV shows, radio plays, comics and more, and is an enduring favourite across the globe.

This particular film was directed by Italian Duccio Tessari, perhaps most famous as the screenwriter for  ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, which lead to this version being dubbed ‘The Spaghetti Zorro’. Apparently the film was heavily edited for its release outside of France and had around half an hour cut from it, including several explanatory scenes. The uncut DVD is available through Amazon.fr and features English subtitles.

This Japanese poster was for the film’s first release there in 1975. A friend helped me to translate the main text on the poster. At the top it reads:

アラン・ドロン主演50本記念作品 that roughly reads ‘Commemorating Alain Delon’s 50th film’

The other section is:

世界5000万部の超ベストセラーが生んだヒーローに
人気最高ドロンが挑んだ
剣と愛のロマン・スペクタクル巨編

The original book sold 50 million copies
Alain Delon is challenged to act the hero
A film featuring Swordplay and romantic love

Delon was, and still is, a hugely popular actor in Japan.

The bizarrely catchy theme tune from the film can be viewed here.

One of several copycat zombie films made following the success of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, this effort by Italian director Bruno Mattei (under the pseudonym Vincent Dawn) shamelessly features many of the same types of characters and situations seen in the earlier films (SWAT team, zombie kids, hostages), and even uses sections of Goblin‘s score for DotD.

It sounds like the production was something of a nightmare, with botched filming and script-altering that rendered much of the film’s plot incomprehensible. The film features several sections of documentary footage taken from other productions and the original script apparently had a much grander scope:

In the first draft, Claudio Fragasso had followed the idea of an entire Third World made up of an army of zombies against whom the armed forces of the industrialized nations would have had to fight. However, the script had to be altered considerably due to budget limitations.

This quad features artwork which Sim Branaghan, author of the great book British Film Posters: An Illustrated History, believes to have been adapted from the original Italian poster. Ted Baldwin, who was the regular illustrator used by distributor Mircale Films, is likely to have made several changes to adapt it to the quad format.

Here’s the original trailer.

Prolific Italian director Enzo G Castellari was behind a string of low-budget rip-offs homages of successful American productions during the 1980s. Having directed Great White in 1980 (pulled from release after a successful lawsuit by Universal Pictures), there’s no question that his 1983 post-apocalyptic film Bronx Warriors owes a lot to John Carpenter’s classic Escape From New York, with a generous dash of Walter Hill’s The Warriors (1979)

To be fair to Castellari he was a pioneer in the Poliziotteschi (Italian crime film) genre in the 1970s, with La Polizia Incrimina la Legge Assolve (AKA High Crimes – 1973) and Il Grande Racket (The Big Racket – 1976) being particular standouts. He was also behind the war films La battaglia d’Inghilterra (Eagles over London – 1969) and the original Inglorious Bastards (Quel maledetto treno blindato – 1978). By the 1980s the director was churning out a series of B-movies, including Bronx Warriors and The New Barbarians (1983) and would eventually move into directing TV movies during the 1990s and 2000s.

Bronx Warriors follows the plight of 17-year-old Ann (Stefania Girolami Goodwin), the heiress to a questionable arms company (The Manhattan Corporation) who runs away into the lawless wasteland of a post-apocalyptic Bronx and is attacked by a gang of roller skaters (!) called The Zombies. She’s rescued by The Riders, another gang who are led by Trash – played by Mark Gregory (actually Marco de Gregorio, a non-actor Castellari had met in the gym) – who take Ann under their protection. The corporation dispatches the ruthless psychopath Hammer (Vic Morrow in his penultimate role before his untimely death during the filming of Twilight Zone the Movie) to disrupt the gangs and return Ann safely.

The artwork on this quad is by the brilliant British artist Brian Bysouth, whose wonderfully detailed illustrations featured on hundreds of posters over three decades. His most famous designs and artwork include the withdrawn one sheet for A View to a Kill, Highlander, Big Trouble in Little China and The Living Daylights. Bysouth would work on the quad for the sequel to this film, Escape 2000 (AKA Fuga Dal Bronx), one year later.

In 2012 I interviewed Brian Bysouth and the resulting article can be read here.

The international trailer is on YouTube.

A striking design on this poster for the 1987 Czechoslovakian re-release of Sergio Leone’s masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West. The epic 1968 Western stars Charles Bronson as the mysterious Harmonica who arrives in a frontier town and is memorably attacked by a group of trench coat-wearing assassins. Meanwhile, the family of Jill McBain (the gorgeous Claudia Cardinale), who has arrived in the town looking for a fresh start, is brutally slaughtered by unknown perpetrators. The prime suspect Cheyenne (Jason Robards) befriends the widow and joins forces with Harmonica to go after Frank (Henry Fonda in an atypical role), the ruthless gang leader protecting the interests of a railroad company.

This re-release poster features a design by the celebrated Czech artist Zdenek Ziegler. Born in Prague in 1932, Ziegler studied at the Czech Technical University and graduated in 1961. He went on to design over 200 film posters during a 26-year period from 1963 to 1989. The website Terry Posters has a page with a biography of Ziegler and a gallery of his work (with some of them being available to purchase). Since 1990 Ziegler has been a teacher at Academy of Arts in Prague.

Some of his most celebrated designs include a 1970 poster for Hitchock’s Psycho and a great design for Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. His take on the poster for Ridley Scott’s Alien is also very unique.

Nicknamed The Godfather of Gore, the late Italian director Lucio Fulci is responsible for several memorable entries in the horror genre and The House by the Cemetery is one of what I consider to be the big four Fulci films (the others being Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond 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 House by the Cemetery is the third film in the unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy of Fulci films that began with 1980s City of the Living Dead and was followed by The Beyond. It stars British actress Catriona MacColl (credited on the poster as Katherine MacColl) who had collaborated with Fulci on the previous two entries. The story sees Dr Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco), a professor at a New York University, being sent on research trip to New Whitby, Boston, taking his wife (MacColl) and young son with him. Their base is a big old house situated, as the title suggests, in the grounds of an old graveyard. After moving in and meeting a few of the locals, it soon becomes clear to the family that they aren’t the only ones living in the house and slowly but surely the dark secret of the previous occupant is revealed.

As was typical with all of Fulci’s output during this period, the film features several scenes of brutal, graphic gore and there’s one death scene in particular that would fall foul of the BBFC, the folks responsible for passing the film for release in the UK. This page on IMDB details the various cuts the UK release of the film was given over the years; in 1984 the film was caught up in the infamous Video Nasties situation and the VHS was banned outright. When it was re-released on tape in 1988 there were almost five minutes cut from its running time and it wasn’t until 2009 that a fully uncut version was available.

This is the UK quad poster for the first release of the film in British cinemas in 1982. It features artwork that is based on the Italian poster that was painted by the great artist Enzo Sciotti who has painted countless fantastic horror, sci-fi and exploitation posters over the years. As anyone who has seen the film will know, the knife-wielding character that dominates the poster doesn’t actually feature in the film itself. It’s said that the decision was taken to depict a psychotic killer that resembled Jack Nicholson’s character in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining after that film had proven such an international success only a year previously.

It is my belief that this artwork has been adapted from Sciotti’s original by a British artist, quite possibly Ted Baldwin who is thought to be responsible for the art on the quad for Zombie Creeping Flesh. Note the clear differences between the Italian poster and the details seen on this quad, particularly the evil character, the orientation and size of the house, and the layout of the graveyard. Obviously the original poster is in a portrait format so the decision may well have been taken to redraw it to better fit the landscape format of the quad.

Enzo Sciotti‘s official site has galleries of his work, some of which is for sale. Wrong Side of the Art has a selection of some of his work, and Eatbrie.com also features several of his designs. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

Italian director Franco Prosperi is best known as the co-creator of the infamous Mondo Cane ‘shockumentary’, which consisted of a series of travelogue-style vignettes looking at strange cultural practices from around the world with the intention of shocking Western audiences. Made in 1962, the film had an emphasis on taboo subjects including sex, death, ritual killings and cannibalism, and it was such a success that it spawned a slew of sequels and copycat films, and created it’s own mondo genre of exploitation films. Despite being presented as genuine documentary footage, many of the scenes in mondo movies were clearly staged by the producers.

One recurring aspect of the genre was animal deaths and cruelty, and Prosperi continued this theme when he directed Wild Beasts, a 1984 horror set in an unnamed European city (actually Frankfurt in Germany). The film sees PHP inadvertently being released into the water supply for the local zoo and the crazed animals wreaking havoc on the city. Some of the carnage sees an elephant trampling a car (and the heads of the occupants), a guide-dog turning on his blind owner and rats devouring a series of unlucky victims. Working with animal handlers Prosperi used editing to achieve most of the attack scenes but unfortunately the film does feature moments of actual animal cruelty, including the live torching of the aforementioned rats. Because of these scenes I don’t believe the film was ever given a cinema release in the UK, although it appears to now be available here via import DVD.

This is the poster for the Japanese release of the film and it features brilliantly exaggerated scenes of carnage, overselling the sequences from the film. The artist appears to be someone called Kazumi Akutsu according to the signature featured on the side of the speeding train, although it could be that I have one of the letters wrong in the surname. I’ve been unable to find out anything about the artist so please get in touch if you have any ideas. I’d strongly advise you not to perform a google image search for the name with safe search off!

The original Italian trailer is on YouTube.

A striking design on this poster printed for the Japanese release of For a Few Dollars More, the second in legendary director Sergio Leone‘s unofficial ‘Dollars trilogy’, all three of which starred Clint Eastwood and helped put him and the sub-genre of the so-called Spaghetti Western firmly on the cinematic map. Although not conceived by Leone to be a series, The ‘Man with No Name’ concept was coined by the studio United Artists as an angle to sell the films, particularly since Eastwood plays the three different characters with similar mannerisms and dressed in the same attire. Despite the ‘n0 name’ label, Eastwood’s characters have a different nickname in each of the films.

In For a Few Dollars More he plays Manco (Spanish for ‘one-armed man’), a bounty hunter who is on the trail of the ruthless outlaw El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté) and his gang. Whilst on the hunt Manco meets Col. Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, who would also appear in the next film in the trilogy) another bounty hunter who is also after the same man, and the two agree to team up and eventually split the reward. As the bullets begin to fly it soon becomes clear that the bounty hunters have different motivations for wanting to kill El Indio.

This Japanese poster is actually for the 1972 re-release, although it’s almost identical to the one printed for the original 1967 Japanese release, which can be seen here. The only really notable difference is the alternate studio logo in the bottom right corner and a different number on the Eirin stamp.

An entry into the Italian zombie horror genre, Burial Ground (AKA The Nights of Terror) is unquestionably in the shadow of Lucio Fulci’s superior Zombie Flesh Eaters, released only a year before in Italy. The film features several shameless cribs from Fulci’s film, including a scene where an actress is pulled slowly into a broken window, face first. The film features little in the way of a plot with the bare minimum in the way of exposition before the zombie carnage begins. It opens with the spectacularly bearded Professor Ayres unwittingly unleashing a horde of shuffling zombies whilst exploring a crypt in the cemetery behind his mansion. A group of his friends (some colleagues?) arrive shortly after, having been invited to view his discoveries, and there follows a rambling sequence of events in which the guests spout inane dialogue, potter around the mansion and get naked (only breasts, of course) before the first zombie shuffles into their view.

The zombie make-up and gore effects are, for the most part, absolutely atrocious with some of the zombies not even resembling humans in terms of facial features and others looking like some Italian bloke painted grey with a few bits of bacon stuck to his face. There are some undeniably creepy moments and the sets are well utilised but the film is nearly ruined by the appalling music, half of which sounds like it was taken directly from a 1950s ‘space sounds’ record, with bizarre bleeps, bloops and other sci-fi noises happening every time anything remotely exciting happens on screen. One of the most bizarre elements of the film was the decision to cast a 26-year-old dwarf named Peter Bark as Michael, the 11-year-old son of Evelyn (Mariangela Giordano) who has some sort of oedipal relationship with him, made even weirder by the actor’s real age and facial appearance. It has to go down as one of the strangest casting decisions ever made.

The artwork on this one sheet for the 1986 American release, five years after the original Italian debut, is by an American artist called C. Winston Taylor, about whom very little can be found online. The Lost Video Archive blog has a post on the artist that features images of some of his other posters and video covers. In the 1990s the artist was hired to paint the covers for a Quantum Leap comic book series and a gallery of those images can be viewed on this site, which also features three images of the artist himself. Comicbookdb.com features a small profile of Taylor with the following mini-biography:

C. Winston Taylor always knew from a young age that he would communicate through his drawings. Fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, where he earned two Bronze Stars, helped solidify this vision. After graduating with honors from the Art Center College of Design, in Los Angeles, he quickly became a well-respected illustrator. His work has received numerous awards and he served as the president of The Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles. 

The other posters I’ve collected with artwork by him can be seen by clicking here.

What would have been just another entry in the burgeoning cannibal and zombie sub-genres of horror made popular in the wake of the release of the low-budget but hugely profitable Zombie (1979), Cannibal Apocalypse took the standard formula and attempted to do something different. Prolific Italian director Antonio Margheriti, a veteran of several horror and westerns, including Horror Castle (1963) and Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1973), decided to capitalise on the recent popularity of Apocalypse Now (1979) and begin his screenplay in the jungles of the Vietnam war. The film’s key twist on the typical zombie formula is that the cannibalistic killers are not dead but infected with a virus that turns them into flesh-eaters.

Featuring genre stalwart John Saxon, who has apparently since tried to distance himself from the film, the story begins with Saxon’s American sergeant Norman Hopper attempting to rescue two fellow soldiers, Bukowski (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) and Tom (Tony King), who have been taken captive by the Vietcong and are being kept in a pit. When he attempts to pull them to safety, the soldiers attack and bite Hopper, much to his confusion. Nevertheless the pair are rescued and returned to America. Several years later, Hopper is back in the States and suffering from flashbacks to the horrors of Vietnam when he receives a call to ask for his help in tracking down Bukowski who has escaped from a mental asylum and is on a murderous rampage. After cornering him in a department store, with help from the police and a biker gang, Hopper manages to persuade Bukowski back into custody, but not before he is informed that he is also infected with the same, (oddly) slow-progressing cannibal virus that the two soldiers caught back in the jungle. Before long, Hopper finds himself succumbing to cannibalistic desires and the real carnage begins.

This is the B2 poster for the Japanese cinema release in 1980. The zombie and cannibal genres were particularly popular in the country at that time and many films were given a cinematic release in Japan that went straight to video (or would be released several years later) in countries like the UK. In the case of Cannibal Apocalypse, the film was given a limited release in the US as Cannibal Massacre in 1981 with an ‘X’ rating, withdrawn and then re-released in 1983 in a heavily edited form, retitled as Invasion of the Fleshhunters. As far as I’m aware the film was never given a cinema showing in the UK and the eventual VHS release fell foul of the ridiculous video nasties situation and was banned from shelves. It took over 20 years before the film was made legally available again to British fans.

I’m unsure who is responsible for this unique artwork so please get in touch if you have any ideas.

The full film is available to watch on YouTube, should you wish to get your fill of cannibal fun.

This is the Japanese poster for the release of the little-seen 1976 mondo documentary about sharks that was filmed by the Italian director Bruno Vailati (who’s probably best known for the 1961 version of The Thief of Baghdad) and released in a handful of countries that included France (I don’t believe it reached the UK). There are no prizes for guessing which Hollywood blockbuster, released only a year earlier, was the reason this documentary was put together. The IMDb page for the film is bare and features not a single review of the film. I had to dig around a bit before I found out any details of what the documentary features via this review of the VHS release on Amazon.com:

“This is the English language version of the 1976 Italian documentary “Uomini e squali” (‘Sharks and Men’), from director Bruno Vailati, narrated by Joseph Campanella, with a score by Daniele Patucchi (“Death Played the Flute”, “Frankenstein 80”) and featuring an on-screen appearance by Ray Cannon, author of “The Sea of Cortez.” Traveling all over the world (the Red Sea, the Yucatan, Tahiti and Australia), we’re treated to footage of all different species of sharks (bull, hammerhead, Great White), as well as other forms of sea life, like elephant seals, tuna and killer whales.

For those sensitive to such issues, there is a fair amount of casual cruelty in this film, including an “improvised Caesarean” of a pregnant shark (though, mercifully, her brood is cut loose and then freed to the sea) and gruesome shots of sharks being butchered. Still, an informative if somewhat outdated documentary with lots of great underwater photography (even if a few of the shots have been tampered with in post-production, e.g. net lines matted in during the opening tuna-fishing segment).”

This French trailer for the film (it was released in France as ‘Les Dents de la Mort’, or The Teeth of Death) features a section at the end where a diver is bitten in the leg by a Great White in what is clearly a mondo-style faked sequence. This was obviously used by the artist of this poster as the basis for this image of an unlucky diver with a missing leg (there’s nothing like a bit of oversell!). A friend of the site identified the artist as Susumu Masukawa about whom I’ve been unable to discover many details. If anyone has any more information about the artist please get in touch.

An excellent portrait of Clint Eastwood graces this A1 poster for the German re-release of For a Few Dollars More in 1978. The film was the second in legendary director Sergio Leone‘s unofficial ‘Dollars trilogy’, all three of which starred Clint Eastwood and helped put him and the sub-genre of the so-called Spaghetti Western firmly on the cinematic map. Although not conceived by Leone to be a series, The ‘Man with No Name’ concept was coined by the studio United Artists as an angle to sell the films, particularly since Eastwood plays the three different characters with similar mannerisms and dressed in the same attire. Despite the ‘n0 name’ label, Eastwood’s characters have a different nickname in each of the films.

In For a Few Dollars More he plays Manco (Spanish for ‘one-armed man’), a bounty hunter who is on the trail of the ruthless outlaw El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté) and his gang. Whilst on the hunt Manco meets Col. Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef, who would also appear in the next film in the trilogy) another bounty hunter who is also after the same man, and the two agree to team up and eventually split the reward. As the bullets begin to fly it soon becomes clear that the bounty hunters have different motivations for wanting to kill El Indio.

When I interviewed the artist Renato Casaro for this site earlier this year he talked about his friendship and collaborations with Leone and the following is an excerpt:

———————

You also got to know Sergio Leone?
Yes, I visited the set of ‘Il mio nome è Nessuno’ [My Name is Nobody, 1973] that Leone was co-directing because Terence Hill was starring in it and I was asked to work on the publicity. I later worked on the posters for Once Upon A Time in the West and his other Western films, not only for the Italian market, but also for other countries, including Germany and France. Some of the more established Italian artists worked on his posters in the 1960s because they were still working on the ‘big’ films at that time, as I mentioned.

What happened when it came to painting the re-release posters?
Sandro Symeoni had painted the original Italian poster for A Fistful of Dollars and at that time Clint Eastwood wasn’t the big name star he was a few years later so his face wasn’t painted accurately and the poster just depicts an action scene. When the film was re-released in Germany at the end of the 1970s, Leone asked me to make sure I focused the poster on Eastwood and make it a recognisable portrait of him.

———————

You can read the rest of the interview by clicking here. To see the other posters I’ve collected that were designed and painted by Renato Casaro click here. His official website can be found here.

Considered by many to be Sergio Leone’s masterpiece – certainly not an easy choice to make when there are films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West to choose from – ‘…America’ was to be the Italian director’s last film. Infamously, it had almost 90 minutes removed for its US cinematic release (in 1984), apparently after receiving terrible notice from American critics at the Cannes Film Festival – the re-cut version was also given a slating when it appeared.

Eventually the full 229 minute version was made available on home video in America. In 2012 it was announced that the film was to be restored to an even longer cut with over 40 minutes of newly discovered material that was thought lost. An extended cut of the film was released on blu-ray in 2014.

I recently visited the same street in Brooklyn that leads down to the Manhattan Bridge and is featured in the film and on this poster. I took this picture, which gives you an idea of how the street looks today.

This is the German poster (style A) that was designed and painted by one of my favourite artists, Renato Casaro, an Italian with a prolific movie poster output that lasted over 35 years. He began his career in 1953, aged 19, at the famous Studio Favalli in Rome and would go on to design and paint posters for many of the biggest directors in the world. His skill at accurately portraying actors and his brilliant use of colour and composition saw him much in demand from studios and actors alike.

His artwork has featured on posters used in multiple countries, including Japan, Germany, USA as well as in his native Italy. Check out the incredible amount of work on his official website here, which also features a biography of the artist. The other posters I have collected by Casaro can be seen by clicking here.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

A striking, garishly-coloured design on this international one sheet (printed in the US for English-speaking territories) for the little-seen Italian film Winged Devils (originally titled Forza G). Helmed by screenwriter (of films like For a Few Dollars More) turned director Duccio Tessari, the film follows the exploits of a young pilot who wants to join the Italian air force’s acrobatic stunt team and must prove himself worthy to join the ranks of the ace pilots. As can be inferred from this poster, the story also concentrates on his life on the ground, although McGinnis’ skill at painting leggy beauties probably oversells that part of the plot. The film wasn’t, as far as I can tell, released in American or British cinemas and it appears to have never been released on home video anywhere. There are no reviews for the film on IMDb, which is very unusual.

Robert McGinnis was responsible for some of the most iconic 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.

To see the other posters I’ve collected that were painted by McGinnis 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.

Codename Wildgeese is a 1984 entry in the ‘Macaroni Combat‘ genre of Italian-made action/war films that was helmed by the prolific director Antonio Margheriti (most often credited as Anthony M. Dawson) and is usually associated with the 1978 British film The Wild Geese. Both films are ensemble-cast action films in which Western mercenaries are sent into ‘wild’, lawless, dictator-ruled countries to carry out a mission and escape alive. Both films feature aging cast members who probably should have known better and I don’t doubt that Margheriti and his enterprising distributors chose the Wildgeese element of the title to capitalise on the success of the earlier film.

The late Lewis Collins, known for his leading man roles in action-fare such as TVs The Profressionals and the 1982 British action film Who Dares Wins, appears as the leader of a mercenary group which is employed covertly by the DEA (in the shape of Ernest Borgnine) and sent into the opium-producing area in Asia known as the Golden Triangle to attempt to stem the supply of illegal opium to the west. His team, which includes pilot China (Lee Van Cleef), make their way into the Triangle and engage an enemy base in a quarry before pushing onto the factories and a fiery showdown.

The film is largely a damp squib with very little in the way of memorable action sequences or an engaging script. The effects and gunplay are largely poor and the editing and soundtrack are notably bad. It’s certainly not a patch on The Wild Geese, which in itself was no masterpiece.

A reader of the site, Andrew Lamb, got in touch to confirm that the quad is an adaptation of artwork that was painted by the Italian artist Enzo Sciotti and originally intended for, I believe, the German poster. Andrew commented the following (the original can be seen at the bottom of the page):

It was later adapted for the UK quad using a photo duplicate of the original artwork, with paint applied around the edges to fill the quad size, then new titles applied over the top. This was done by Tom Chantrell. My guess is that he was commissioned to paint the artwork and liked Sciotti’s art so much that it was suggested by him and agreed upon to be used instead. I’m not 100% certain of this, however I own the original artwork layout for the UK quad and it came from a lot of Tom Chantrell’s work. So that’s my hunch.

A striking piece of art by the late Italian comic artist Andrea Pazienza on this UK quad poster for the release of the late Italian director Federico Fellini‘s City of Women. Often cited as being semi-autobiographical, the dream-like film sees Fellini’s frequent collaborator (and arguably alter-ego) Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita, 8 and a half) playing Snàporaz a businessman traveling on a train who becomes infatuated by a woman (Bernice Stegers) in the same carriage. When the train stops at a remote station he lets his lust get the better of him and follows her into a forrest. Eventually she leads him to a hotel in which a raucous feminist conference is taking place and Snàporaz moves from room to room in search of the woman. Each room contains a different event or discussion dealing with the different ways that women and men interact, with satirical displays of machismo and passionate arguments taking place. 

Eventually, growing impatient, Snàporaz manages to persuade an older woman to take him to the train station but she stops on the way and forces herself on him in a greenhouse. After escaping from her clutches he ends up getting a lift from a group of women in convertibles who drive him around all night until he runs away and ends up at the house of the pompous Dr. Xavier Katzone (a play on the Italian word for ‘big dick’) who is hosting a lavish party to celebrate his 10,000th conquest. A number of events occur and Snàporaz ends up sliding down a tunnel under a bed into an even more surreal world where he is forced to recall his previous sexual encounters and eventually ends up being judged by a kind of court for his masculinity. Although he is freed for his crimes, he ends up confronting the punishment and ends up in a boxing ring above a huge crowd of women.

During a making-of documentary on the recent blu-ray release Fellini collaborators explain that the film was definitely written by Fellini as a way of working out his own feelings around his infidelity and the relationship between the two sexes. Filled with typically Felliniesque surrealist sequences, the film is visually interesting throughout and is frequently funny. Mastroianni is clearly enjoying himself and despite some sluggish moments the film mostly works. Rather bizarrely, Ettore Manni, the actor playing Katzone, died during filming by shooting himself in the genitals and dying from blood loss. A large section of the end of the film had to be altered by Fellini because of the accident.

Sadly, Andrea Pazienza also died prematurely at the age of 32 from a heroin overdose. Born in 1956, he studied Art at the University of Bologna and went on to create comic strips for Italian magazines, with often surreal, satirical stories featuring several characters of his own creation. Arguably his most famous creation was Zanardi, a high-school student from Bologna, who appeared in several comic strips during the 1980s and was very popular with Italian comic fans. During this period he also worked on illustrations for advertising and editorial content, as well as a designs for theatrical productions and a handful of movie posters. This illustration also appeared on the Italian teaser poster but the UK quad is, I believe, the only other international poster to feature it.

Lurid artwork by the late, great Tom Chantrell on this UK quad for the release of Italian director Umberto Lenzi‘s 1980 entry into the then burgeoning cannibal subgenre of horror, Eaten Alive! (here just Eaten Alive). This is not to be confused with Tobe Hooper’s 1976 film of the same name about a redneck killer with a pet alligator. Eaten Alive wasn’t Lenzi’s first foray into the subgenre and the director is regularly credited with kickstarting it all with his film Deep River Savages (AKA Sacrifice!) in 1972. This film was released the same year as Cannibal Holocaust, directed by fellow countryman Ruggero Deodato, which is today considered to be the pinnacle of the genre and remains notorious to this day. Not to be outdone, Lenzi filmed one of the subgenre’s most unapologetically nasty entries, Cannibal Ferox, only a year after this film was released, but by that point the subgenre was beginning to fade and only a few more obscurities were made during the 1980s.

Unlike Ferox and Holocaust, Eaten Alive is more of a jungle adventure film and isn’t told in the pseudo-documentary, mondo style of the other films. Not only did Lenzi utilise stars from other cannibal films, including the American pornstar-turned-actor Robert Kerman (who appeared in Holocaust and Ferox) but he also borrowed footage from other films such as his own Deep River Savages and The Mountain of the Cannibal God. Like other entries it also depicts scenes of real animal torture and killings which have always proved controversial and are deeply uncomfortable to sit through today (at least for this viewer). Eaten Alive sees an American woman called Sheila (Swedish actress Janet Agren) who travels to remote New Guinea in search of her missing sister Diana (Paola Senatore) accompanied by Vietnam veteran Mark (Kerman). They discover that Diana has joined a cult deep in the jungle which is being led by a Jim Jones-style guru called Jonas (cannibal flick regular Ivan Rassimov) who rules over his subjects and the local natives using physical and sexual abuse. Sheila, Mark and Diana attempt to escape from the cult’s clutches and there follows several scenes featuring all manner of barbarities.

Today Eaten Alive is considered one of the lesser cannibal films, certainly compared to Holocaust and Ferox, but it’s not without merit for gorehounds looking for a slice of sleazy entertainment. It’s arguably worth a watch as a curio of a film that would never be made today, not least because of the animal cruelty and breathtaking levels of misogyny on display.

Tom Chantrell was a celebrated British artist whose dynamic and colourful work featured on hundreds of posters over a forty year period. His official website features a great biography written by Sim Branaghan, author of the must-own 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 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 him on this site. The chunky title treatment is one of the artist’s specialties and features on several of his posters, which can be seen on his official site.

A dynamic photographic montage features on this Japanese B2 for the obscure 1968 action thriller, The Fuller Report. One of a number of films in the Eurospy genre, which were European co-productions (this is Italian and French) of espionage thrillers intended to capitalise on the huge success of the Bond films that began with Dr No in 1962. It’s estimated that there were over 50 films in the genre, with productions from all over Europe, including the UK. Some of the more famous films include those starring Dean Martin as the spy Matt Helm (four films including ‘The Silencers’) and France’s OSS 117 (8 films plus two homage spoofs in 2006 and 2009).

This film stars the American actor Ken Clark (perhaps best known as the character Stewpot in South Pacific) as Dick Worth, a skilled race driver who gets involved in an espionage plot. It’s IMDb page describes the plot thusly:

Ken Clark is a race car driver and a good one. Somehow, he becomes entangled in espionage involving a Russian Ballerina and a secret document called the Fuller Report. Not being any kind of a secret agent, Dick Worth [Clark] has to rely on his quick thinking, catlike reflexes and most of all, his luck to see him through. After all, the powers involved play only one way … for keeps!

The film takes in Stockholm, Zurich and London. Given the paucity of reviews on IMDb it appears to have disappeared from public availability and there are no obvious DVD or blu-ray releases of the film. However, it does seem to be available to stream on the American Amazon Instant service, should you want to see it.

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.

Nicknamed The Godfather of Gore, the late Italian director Lucio Fulci is responsible for several memorable entries in the horror genre and City of the Living Dead is one of what I consider to be the ‘big four’ Fulci films (the others being Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery), 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.

City of the Living Dead is the first film in the unofficial ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy of Fulci films and was followed by The Beyond in 1981. It stars British actress Catriona MacColl (credited on the poster as Katherine MacColl) who then collaborated with Fulci on the next two entries. The plot sees Father Thomas, a priest in the small New England town of Dunwich, hang himself in a misty cemetery. For reasons that aren’t made clear, this causes the gates of hell to open and the dead to return from the grave. Meanwhile in New York City, Mary Woodhouse (MacColl) is taking part in a séance where she sees the priest’s actions and apparently dies from fright.

A reporter named Peter Bell (Christopher George) hears about the situation and tries to gain entry to the building before being turned away. He later visits Mary’s grave, discovers she has been buried alive and frees her with a pick-axe. The pair then decide to travel to Dunwich where they meet up with a local psychiatrist called Gerry (Carlo De Mejo) and attempt to locate the tomb of Father Thomas to try and close the gates of hell. However, the evil is spreading through the town and ghouls have begun to rise from the ground.

As was typical with all of Fulci’s output during this period, the film features several scenes of brutal, graphic gore and the Thai artist has decided to go for broke, depicting the more memorable moments on this poster. There’s one death scene in particular, featuring a giant drill, that would fall foul of the BBFC, the folks responsible for passing the film for release in the UK. Upon its original cinema release the drill scene was cut from the film, as was the case with the initial VHS release. The film was then caught up in the infamous Video Nasties situation in the early 1980s and, although not on the infamous list (unlike The House by the Cemetery), the VHS had to be resubmitted and had almost two and a half minutes excised from it. An uncut version finally saw UK release in 2001.

This Thai poster features artwork that is largely unique to it which was painted by the Thai artist known as Noppadol, about whom I’ve been able to discover very little. The montage does feature a reproduction of the artwork found on the Italian locandina poster that was painted by the Italian artist Enzo Sciotti. It’s worth noting that there is an alternative Thai poster (version B) with the US release title of Gates of Hell (see here) that features some elements of this poster and which was also painted by Noppadol.

Although folded and not in great condition this is a 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.