British director Gareth Edwards’ excellent Monsters was one of the best films released in 2010 and transcended a micro-budget to become one of the freshest entries in the sci-fi genre for several years. The film is set slightly in the future and several years after a NASA probe crashed back to earth infected with alien life. Half of Mexico had to be quarantined off as the creatures grew and took over the area, and the US military patrols the borders. Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) is a US photojournalist who is hired by his boss to escort his daughter Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) from the safe part of Mexico back to the States. The pair are forced to head through the quarantined zone despite the threat of the creatures who are moving across the country on their yearly ‘migration’.

The film was shot entirely on location by a tiny crew, using prosumer cameras and, aside from the two leads, the majority of the characters were played by non-actors. The dialogue was improvised around a loose scene outline and the results were edited whilst the crew was on the road. Gareth Edwards had previously worked as a special effects editor and spent four months designing and creating all of the effects himself, once again using off the shelf equipment and software. It’s a superb achievement and well worth a watch, but don’t go in expecting some kind of fast-paced, gory creature-feature as some cinema-goers were, back in 2010.

This striking US one sheet teaser was designed by Gravillis Inc. and features Whitney Able in a gas mask with a reflection of one of the creatures in the visor. Because the poster is so dark it’s hard to photograph without losing some of the details so check out the original digital file here.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

The Wrath of Khan was the follow up to 1979s Star Trek – The Motion Picture, which was the first feature film to hit cinemas following the ending of the original series 10 years previously. Even though the show was cancelled by the network (NBC) after only three seasons, it had garnered a significant cult following and had made a major impact on popular culture, helped greatly by broadcast syndication on channels across the US during the 1970s. Despite earning significant box-office takings, many critics and fans of the original series were disappointed with the first feature film and reviews tended to criticise it as overlong, bereft of any significant action and, worst of all, boring.

A sequel was inevitable, but Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the original series and executive producer of the first film, was removed from its production by Paramount after they claimed that Roddenberry had forced the first film over budget and had muddled the script with too many re-writes. His replacement was Harve Bennett, with Roddenberry given an ‘executive consultant’ role. Bennett studied the original series for inspiration having decided that the film should be more action-packed and regain some of the swashbuckling feel that had been lost in the first film. Deciding that the sequel needed a decent bad guy, Bennett settled on the character of Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically engineered super solider, who had featured in the first series episode Space Seed, which had long been a fan favourite. At the end of that episode Khan and some of his comrades had been banished to the inhospitable planet of Ceti Alpha V so his return in the film would not be against the series’ canon.

Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban agreed to reprise his role as Khan and the story sees him escaping exile and seeking revenge against Captain Kirk, whom he blames for the death of his wife. After commandeering the USS Reliant, Khan learns of the Genesis Device, a torpedo which is intended to reorganise matter to create a hospitable world but can also destroy planets if used in the wrong way. The crew of the Starship Enterprise sets out to stop Khan but their intervention will not be without sacrifice and the ending of the film sees Leonard Nimoy’s Spock seemingly dead after sacrificing himself to save his comrades. This story arc would continue for two more films, concluding with The Voyage Home in 1986. Among several memorable scenes is the moment when Khan taunts Kirk with a threat against his wife, leading to this infamous outburst. KHAAAAAAAAAN!

When Mondo, the incomparable limited-edition screen print outfit, announced they were opening a gallery in their hometown of Austin, anticipation quickly reached fever pitch, with fans desperate to see what artwork would be on the walls when the doors opened for the first time. The answer was kept secret until the evening of March the 10th, 2012 when the opening night was held and the theme of their first show was revealed to be that of classic sci-fi. Most of Mondo’s premier artists turned in some incredible pieces for the show, as can be seen on this recap blog post on their website and on this SlashFilm post.

One of the highlights of the show was fan-favourite artist Tyler Stout’s print for The Wrath of Khan. A brilliantly composed image featuring Ricardo Montalban‘s unforgettable, titular bad guy, the poster was printed in two flavours; a red and gold regular and a silver and gold variant. Whilst adding the regular version to the Film on Paper collection I wanted to interview the man himself about the creation of the poster and that article can be read here.

One of my top five films of all time, Blade Runner was released with easily one of the most iconic sci-fi one sheets ever printed. The design and artwork is by the late, great John Alvin, a man responsible for several of the most memorable film posters of the past 40 years. This is perhaps his most well known piece since it featured on posters across the globe, was reused for the 1992 Director’s cut release and has been on the cover of home video releases for many years.

In August 2014 a book entitled The Art of John Alvin was released after four years of preparation by his wife and studio partner Andrea. An absolute must-own for any fan of film posters and the art of cinema, the book features almost all of John’s most memorable posters which are each given their own section. As well as images of the printed poster, there are also early sketches, painted concepts and pictures of the original artwork itself, plus Andrea has provided fascinating commentary detailing the creation of each piece.

Blade Runner is given six pages and the section features a look at the original graphite sketches done by Alvin to show to Ridley Scott and the studio’s marketing department. Elements of these were then combined to create the painting we know today. Andrea notes that the posters for the film were originally conceived to focus on the relationship with the characters and the futuristic city, but by the time of release Harrison Ford was a global star so Alvin was asked to make him more prominent in the artwork.

John apparently always regretted not featuring Rutger Hauer’s android Roy Batty so when he was asked to revisit the design for a 25th anniversary print he reworked several elements, including the two portraits of Harrison Ford and Sean Young and added the face of Roy Batty looming large over them. The print was called ‘I’ve Seen Things’ by John and can be viewed here.

There are known reprints of this poster and this particular version is one of three known variants. LAMP has a guide to all three here. To summarise:

Variation 1 – NSS Version
This version has NOTHING in the bottom left corner; Litho in U.S.A. (AND) the NSS tag in the center; BLADE RUNNER 820007 in the bottom right

Variation 2 – Studio Version
This variation has “PRINTED IN U.S.A.” in the bottom left corner; NOTHING in the center; and “NSS 820007” in the bottom right.

Variation 3 – Odd NSS Version
In the bottom left corner has “PRINTED IN U.S.A.”; in the center ‘IN SMALLER PRINT’ has “LITHO IN U.S.A.” (AND) the NSS tag; In the bottom right has “BLADE RUNNER NSS 820007” in ‘UNEVEN’ print.

As is clear from my photos, the version I have is the ‘Odd NSS Version’. I bought this particular example about five years ago from a very reputable and established dealer who has been in business over 25 years. I have also seen this version sold by the major auction houses on a number of occasions and have seen it in the collections of several long-time collectors.

A dealer in London once told me he believes all NSS versions of this poster are reprints/restrikes. If this is the case then the poster has fooled both respected dealers and collectors alike.

Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune was always going to be a difficult novel to turn into a sub three-hour film, particularly because of the complex universe, intricate lore and multiple characters it features. The initial novel went onto spawn a Dune franchise, comprising of five more books written by Herbert as well as board games, video games and a series of prequels written after Herbert’s death.

The film that was eventually released in 1984 went through a long gestation, attracting multiple production teams and several directors over a thirteen year period from when the rights were first optioned. Wikipedia has a nice explanation of the various versions (see ‘Production’). In 1975 it looked like legendary director Alejandro Jodorowsky would realise his version of the film with an incredible selection of actors:

In 1975, Jodorowsky planned to film the story as a ten-hour feature, in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, David Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Alain Delon, Hervé Villechaize and Mick Jagger.

Even more exciting, in my opinion, was the roster of talent he had assembled behind the camera:

Jodorowsky set up a pre-production unit in Paris consisting of Chris Foss, a British artist who designed covers for science fiction periodicals, Jean Giraud (Moebius), a French illustrator who created and also wrote and drew for Metal Hurlant magazine, and H. R. Giger. Dan O’Bannon was to head the special effects department.

After a couple of years the project stalled and the financial backing dried up. Frank Herbert traveled to Europe to meet with Jodorowsky and discovered that his script would have resulted in a 14 hour movie.

This website has a great account of Jodorowsky’s version written by the man himself. Earlier this year it was announced that a film was being made that documents this failed version. More info and a trailer can be found here.

The rights were sold to Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis who spent several years trying to get his version of the project off the ground. At one point it looked like Ridley Scott would direct but he eventually left to work on Blade Runner after realising how long Dune would take to bring to screen.

In 1981 De Laurentiis approached director David Lynch after his daughter had seen The Elephant Man and recommended it to her father. Lynch went on to write six drafts of the screenplay before filming commenced in March, 1983. The first cut of the film ran over four hours and, although Lynch was aiming for a preferred length of three hours, the backers (including Universal Pictures) insisted on a two hour film. This meant many scenes were completely excised, new scenes were shot to simplify others and a voice over was added.

All of this resulted in a film that is widely considered as something of a mess, with poor critical reception and box office takings meaning plans for possible sequels were shelved indefinitely. Today, Lynch doesn’t like to talk about the film in interviews and has turned down offers from Universal to reassemble a longer ‘director’s cut’.

This Japanese poster features unique artwork but is clearly based on some of the images featured on the US advance one sheet that can be seen here. I’m unsure of the artist so please get in touch if you have any ideas.

I believe this to be the US re-release one sheet for Joe Dante’s 1987 sci-fi comedy in which Dennis Quaid plays a test pilot who is shrunk to miniature size and accidentally injected into the body of Martin Short. The film is definitely one of the high points in the myriad of high-concept films of the 1980s and I rate it as one of Joe Dante’s best films.

It’s definitely not from the time of the first release and the text ‘Inner’s out again… for the millions who are going to love it’ leads me to believe the film may have been given a wider release, perhaps a few months after it first opened. If anyone knows this for sure please get in touch.

The artwork is by one of my favourite American artists, Dan Goozee, and the other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

To see the other posters I have collected for Innerspace click here. The original trailer is on YouTube.

John Alvin artwork features on this advance US one sheet for Joe Dante’s 1987 sci-fi comedy in which Dennis Quaid plays a test pilot who is shrunk to miniature size and accidentally injected into the body of Martin Short. The film is definitely one of the high points in the myriad of high-concept films of the 1980s and I rate it as one of Joe Dante’s best films.

This design was also used for the ‘final’ one sheet and I feel is up there as one of Alvin’s most memorable designs of the period.

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

To see the other posters I have for Innerspace click here. The original trailer is on YouTube.

Great artwork on this international one sheet (used in English-speaking territories outside the USA) for Joe Dante’s 1987 sci-fi comedy in which Dennis Quaid plays a test pilot who is shrunk to miniature size and accidentally injected into the body of Martin Short. The film is definitely one of the high points in the myriad of high-concept films of the 1980s and I rate it as one of Joe Dante’s best films.

The design, which is probably my favourite out of the various Innerspace posters, is by an artist called Morgan, about whom I know very little. It’s possible ‘Morgan’ could be the artist Morgan Weistling as I know that he started his career illustrating movie posters before moving into fine art. I intend to contact him to confirm and will update this page if it does turn out to be one of his pieces.

If you have any more information on this please get in touch.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

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

One of my favourite non-James Bond roles for Sean Connery, this 1981 Sci-Fi thriller still stands up 30 years after its release. The film was an acknowledged influence on Duncan Jones‘ superb 2009 film Moon, which I can heartily recommend. It also has one of the best posters of the past few years.

I was lucky enough to see a double-bill of the two films together presented by Jones (at the Prince Charles Cinema in London) where he talked about his love for Outland and the influence it had on his directorial debut. Without spoiling things, the design of a particular space craft in Moon is a great homage to one in Outland.

I’ve had some trouble identifying who the artist’s initials ‘DFS’ belong to and would appreciate any help with confirming this.

Here’s the trailer for the film.

An iconic design on this poster for the US release of Paul Verhoeven‘s sci-fi masterpiece, Robocop. Set in a dystopian future Detroit where organised crime is rampant and the city is close to financial ruin, the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products enters into an agreement with the city to run the police force and plans to introduce a robotic enforcer to work alongside the human officers. When tests with a weaponised droid called ED-209 go awry and an OCP junior executive is killed, the chairman agrees to back the plans of Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), another OCP executive with designs for a cyborg (half-man, half-machine) cop.

Shortly after, veteran officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is brutally attacked and effectively killed on his first patrol at a new precinct and Morton sees him as the perfect candidate for his Robocop program. OCP quickly goes about transforming his ravaged body into the future of law enforcement, but when he reawakens Murphy initially struggles with his transformation and loss of his family. Soon he sets about avenging his ‘death’ at the hands of crime boss Clarence Bodicker (an unforgettable performance from Kurtwood Smith) and attacks the corruption that is destroying Detroit, which leads all the way to the boardroom of OCP.

This one sheet was designed by the Los Angeles based marketing company B.D. Fox Independent, who have been working on film posters for over 35 years, creating some truly iconic images, including Halloween and The Fly. The brilliant, photo-realistic artwork was painted by the American artist Mike Bryan. In March 2014 the original painting was sold at auction (reaching almost $48k) and it was accompanied by a letter by the artist and that can be read here.

Unique artwork by Omer Muz features on this Turkish one sheet for Paul Verhoeven‘s sci-fi masterpiece, Robocop. Set in a dystopian future Detroit where organised crime is rampant and the city is close to financial ruin, the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products enters into an agreement with the city to run the police force and plans to introduce a robotic enforcer to work alongside the human officers. When tests with a weaponised droid called ED-209 go awry and an OCP junior executive is killed, the chairman agrees to back the plans of Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), another OCP executive with designs for a cyborg (half-man, half-machine) cop.

Shortly after, veteran officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is brutally attacked and effectively killed on his first patrol at a new precinct and Morton sees him as the perfect candidate for his Robocop program. OCP quickly goes about transforming his ravaged body into the future of law enforcement, but when he reawakens Murphy initially struggles with his transformation and loss of his family. Soon he sets about avenging his ‘death’ at the hands of crime boss Clarence Bodicker (an unforgettable performance from Kurtwood Smith) and attacks the corruption that is destroying Detroit, which leads all the way to the boardroom of OCP.

Omer Muz is a prolific Turkish artist whose signature appears on many posters from the country but I’ve been unable to find out much about him. If anyone has any details please get in touch.

Artwork by the brilliant Robert McGinnis on this US one sheet for the 1980 re-release of Woody Allen‘s 1973 sci-fi comedy Sleeper. Allen stars as Miles Monroe, a musician and health store owner who is cryogenically frozen by accident in 1973 and then revived 200 years later to discover that 22nd-century America is now an oppressive police state ruled by a dictator. Monroe falls in with a group of rebels who are trying to infiltrate the government’s top secret Aires Project, and it’s not long before he is on the run from the authorities with a kidnapped socialite Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton) in tow.

One of the director’s earliest and best, in my opinion, the film is a frequently hilarious slapstick adventure that differs greatly from many of his later, more serious and introspective films. Incredibly, Allen was able to complete editing almost 35 hours of footage down to the release running time of two hours; a feat he managed with two days to spare. The film was released with the title ‘Woody and the Robots’ in French-speaking Canada and this led the director to ensure he had a clause in all future contracts that prevented his film titles being changed by third parties.

Robert McGinnis is an American artist and illustrator who is perhaps best known for his work on several James Bond posters, as well the iconic one sheet for the first release of Breakfast at Tiffanys. These and many others can be seen on this website. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

The brilliantly bonkers trailer can be seen on YouTube.

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

John Solie has been working as an illustrator for over 40 years and film posters are just one aspect of his output, which also includes book and magazine covers, sculptures, portraits and work for NASA. He continues to paint today in Tucson, Arizona.

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

Here’s the great original trailer.

This is the Japanese B2 poster for the release of The Terminal Man, a 1972 sci-fi film from Mike Hodges, the director of Get Carter and Flash Gordon, and based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name. George Segal stars as a computer scientist who, after suffering a series of seizures and violent episodes, agrees to have a microcomputer inserted into his brain. Unfortunately the operation has some unwanted side effects and triggers his brain into craving more violent stimuli, sending him over the edge.

The film wasn’t particularly well received at the box office and was never given a UK cinema release. It was only released on DVD in 2009 as a part of the on demand Warner Archive program.

There’s a strange bit of trivia on the Wikipedia page for the film:  Terrence Malick, the director of Badlands, reportedly has written to Hodges expressing how much he loved watching The Terminal Man.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Great artwork by the legendary fantasy artist William Stout for Ralph Bakshi‘s post-apocalyptic fantasy sci-fi animation Wizards. The film was Bakshi’s first fantasy story and was something of a departure from the urban settings seen is his earlier works, including Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic. His intention was to create a family film that had the same kind of impact of his previous adult features. It’s essentially a good versus evil story set two million years after a nuclear war where fairies, elves and dwarves have returned to reclaim parts of the earth, whilst the rest of the human survivors are mutants roaming the wasteland.

The film sees two wizards called Avatar and Blackwolf, one kind and gentle and the other a grumpy mutant, born to a fairy (stay with me) who end up battling each other to prevent Blackwolf from using his band of mutants to destroy all goodness left on the earth. The film is described on the DVD audio commentary as being ‘an allegorical comment on the moral neutrality of technology and the potentially destructive powers of propaganda’. Blackwolf uses old projections of (genuine) Nazi propaganda marches to inspire his evil troops and frighten his enemies.

The film is notable for its rough animation style and its use of rotoscoping, a technique of painting over live-action footage, to create several of the major sequences, which was employed after Fox (the studio financing the film) refused an increase to the budget. Bakshi would later use the same technique for his 1978 version of the The Lord of the Rings.

This was William Stout’s first film poster and he went on to illustrate over 120 more, a few of which can be seen on his official website. Stout is known for being an incredibly versatile artist and he has worked in multiple fields throughout his long career, including motion picture design, comic art, book illustration, CD covers and paleontological illustration. He worked as conceptual artist and production designer on an impressive range of films, including both of the original Conan adventures, First Blood and The Return of the Living Dead; Stout designed the brilliant Tar-Man. Check out his impressive bio for more details and there are plenty of galleries on the same site.

The creature depicted is Necron 99, a robot assassin who is eventually controlled by Avatar and renamed as Peace.

The official trailer is on YouTube.

Ridley Scott‘s seminal sci-fi classic needs no introduction and is on many people’s ‘top 10 films of all-time’ list, including my own.

This British quad is based on the French poster credited to Jouineau Bourduge which is the combined surnames of two French poster designers/artists (both with the first name Guy) who were responsible for many classic posters from 1960s through to the 1980s. MoviePostersGallery.com has a gallery of posters by him, as does cinemaffiche.com. I’ve been unable to find anything in the way of a biography online so please get in touch if you have more information.

I’ve always found it interesting that Deckard (Harrison Ford) is given a very stylistic representation on the poster whilst the other two characters are displayed using photographs. It’s also slightly bizarre that the studio decided to promote a tie-in to win a Volkswagen Polo – talk about a mismatch of content and product!

One interesting thing to note is that the book tie-in shown in the bottom right corner features artwork by Drew Struzan. The design was proposed for the American one sheet but the production team ultimately went with John Alvin’s illustration instead. Drew would later be asked to design the poster for the release of the final cut in 2007.

The other Blade Runner posters I have collected can be seen here.

David Cronenberg‘s 1999 sci-fi thriller eXistenZ is not one of the director’s best, in my opinion, but it does contain typically excellent future-thinking concepts and his trademark body horror. The film is set in the near future and is focused on the idea of virtual reality gaming, far in advance of the ridiculous headgear and black plastic stands that briefly appeared in gaming arcades towards the end of the 1980s.

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a revered game designer called Allegra Geller who is forced to flee an exhibition of her latest product when an assassin attempts to kill her using a bizarre organic gun that fires human teeth. Ted Pikul (Jude Law) works for the games company and is instructed to accompany Allegra as she escapes with her damaged product. The software is stored on a living organic pod and a connection between players is made by plugging into the system via a ‘bioport’ at the bottom of the spine (hello creepy body invasion!). Allegra and Ted must start a new game in order to determine how badly damaged the pod is and it’s not long before the line between reality and the game world blurs completely. Who is responsible for the failed assassination attempt and who can Allegra trust to save the game, and ultimately her life?

The ideas that Cronenberg explores are unquestionably interesting but the low budget nature of the film doesn’t always support them very well, particularly when it comes to the sets and environments, which are mostly all drab and uninteresting. Jude Law and Christopher Eccleston both have painfully bad American accents and some of the actors playing minor parts are terrible. You could argue that this is intentional and part of the ‘game world’ but I’m not sure they can be forgiven. The ending is also pretty cliched and frustrating. Some hail the film as a masterpiece but I’m hard-pressed to understand why.

This Japanese poster features a unique image and is significantly more interesting than the drab and misleading US one sheet (lick the light!) or the ugly UK quad. The flesh coloured shapes around the edge are organic and include human hands and other body parts. The little pink lizard in the credit area is featured in the film as a stop-motion creature.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

An absolutely superb design by British artist Vic Fair for Nic Roeg’s seminal sci-fi film The Man Who Fell to Earth. The typography alone is a thing of beauty, particularly that of the main title – I’m not sure who designed it but it’s an undoubted classic. The rock band Iron Maiden later used it for their own band logo.

This is perhaps the best known of Vic Fair’s designs, though he is responsible for many other great posters from the sixties, seventies and eighties, including several for Hammer Horror, Lisztomania and quads for the infamous ‘Confessions…’ series of films. I plan to post another of his best designs in the next few weeks.

This poster is featured in Sim Branaghan’s superb ‘British Film Posters: An Illustrated History’ and he notes:

Probably the best known of Fair’s posters, and the only one regularly credited to him, since he liked it so much at the time he actually signed it.

I personally think this is David Bowie’s finest starring role and no one else could have portrayed the oddity that is Thomas Newton quite as well as him. It’s not my favourite of Nic Roeg’s films though (that would be Don’t Look Now).

The brilliantly nuts original US trailer can be seen on YouTube.

Great artwork by Ken Barr for this 1972 sci-fi film from Mike Hodges, the director of Get Carter and Flash Gordon, based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name. The Terminal Man wasn’t particularly well received and was never given a UK cinema release. It was only released on DVD in 2009 as a part of the on demand Warner Archive program.

There’s a strange bit of trivia on the Wikipedia page for the film: 

Terrence Malick, the director of Badlands, reportedly has written to Hodges expressing how much he loved watching The Terminal Man.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Unique artwork for John Carpenter‘s 1988 sci-fi in which a drifter, played by wrestler Roddy Piper, finds a set of special sunglasses that reveal that aliens have taken over the earth and are subduing the general population through secret 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.

Note that the smashed human skull featured on this Japanese B2 has the word OBEY scrawled on the side. I also like the random ‘Intelligent Space Man’ text next to the skull.

Here’s the great original trailer.

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

Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi masterpiece Metropolis was given a cinema re-release in 2010 after missing scenes, long thought lost, were discovered in an Argentinian museum and reintegrated back into the film. 26 years earlier, music producer Giorgio Moroder produced and released an alternative version of the film which was restored and had various scenes that were missing from the first US release reinserted back in.

Controversially, Moroder also replaced the original orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz with contemporary rock and pop music from the likes of Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tyler, Adam Ant and Freddie Mercury. Despite the heated debate that this re-release provoked it did have the benefit of bringing the film back into the public consciousness and led to further restorations over the following years. The discovery of the lost footage in 2008 was a complete revelation and brought the film very close to its original release version, which many feared was lost forever.

Queen’s music video for their song ‘Radio Ga Ga’ was released at the same time and featured footage for the film.

As well as the original restored film, the Moroder version was released on blu-ray in 2011.

The original trailer for this version is on YouTube.

Another non-poster addition to the site, this is the original UK marketing campaign book and synopsis document for the sci-fi classic Tron. The campaign book was sent out to cinema managers, newspaper and magazine staff, and other entities who would have been involved in the marketing of the film back in 1982.

There are some truly great historic gems contained within the book and I’m sure it’ll bring back memories for many folks who were around at the time of the original release. Of particular note is the ‘tie-ins’ section that features several promotional products launched alongside the film. The central page (pictured to the left) is a suggestion of how an editor might layout an advertising campaign and features all manner of strange imagined adverts that have absolutely no link to a film like Tron whatsoever!

Also check out the merchandise section; it looks like Tron had some great swag launched along with it. The poster section shows the printed material that would have been available to cinema managers to display. I have the original UK quad for Tron, which can be viewed here.

I’ve also scanned the original synopsis brochure for the film.

A unique design on this Japanese poster for the classic sci-fi thriller The Andromeda Strain, which was based on Michael Crichton’s book of the same name. Despite clearly being a product of the early 1970s the film still stands up today and the events depicted are no less terrifying than they were 41 years ago; the threat of an unknown and deadly disease hangs over us all.

The story focuses on the mysterious deaths of the inhabitants of a small town in Arizona after a satellite crashes back to earth nearby. It’s suspected that the satellite was carrying an unknown extraterrestrial organism and a specialist team of scientists is despatched to investigate. They recover the satellite and also discover there are two survivors in the town; a delirious elderly man and a baby.  The team then heads to the specially constructed ‘Wildfire’ underground bunker where they must race against time (and the threat of nuclear destruction) to neutralise the alien threat with the help of the two survivors.

The visual effects were designed by Douglas Trumbull who has worked his magic on multiple classic films over the years, including 2001, Blade Runner and recently on The Tree of Life. Using techniques he’d honed on 2001, Trumbull was able to create realistic looking (for the time) screen displays without the need for an actual computer. The production design by Boris Leven is also fantastic with the bunker interior being particularly notable.

The US one sheet features the same shot of James Olson in the hermetically sealed suit with the uninfected baby.

The original trailer is available on YouTube.

Another non-poster entry, this is the original Japanese program for James Cameron‘s sci-fi masterpiece Aliens. It would have been available to purchase in the cinema when the film was screening back in 1986.

There are some great stills in there as well as a handful of concept illustrations (check the Smart Gun sketch and alien queen image). It’s also great to see the head shots of the actors as well as some of the crew in the last few pages.

Aliens will always be firmly in my top five films of all time. To see the other items I’ve collected for the film click here.

The sex-spoof Flesh Gordon was released within a few months of Star Wars in Japan and that probably accounts for the name change to a title so similar there can be no doubting the canny local distributors were hoping to cash in on some of the success of George Lucas’ sci-fi classic. Based on the original Buster Crabbe-starring Flash Gordon film serials of the 1930s, which were themselves based on a comic strip created by Alex Raymond, the film parodies many of the names and situations seen in the originals.

In this version Emperor Wang the Perverted, the leader of the planet Porno, points his mighty ‘Sex Ray’ towards Earth, turning everyone into sex-crazed lunatics. Only one man can save the planet; football player Flesh Gordon. Along with his girlfriend Dale Ardor and the (brilliantly named) mad Professor Flexi-Jerkoff, they set off towards the source of the Sex Ray determined to put a stop to Wang.

Entertaining and unremittingly trashy, the film does an excellent job of being just reverential enough to the original source material whilst adding it’s own brand of madcap humour interspersed with sex scenes. The effects are particularly decent for such a low-budget film and that’s because several of the effects specialists who worked on it were either established experts or men who would later go on to become leading artists in the field, including Mike Minor, Greg Jein, and Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London).

For the large monster seen towards the end of the film the production utilised the talents of Jim Danforth and Dave Allen who are both now recognised as two of the leading figures in the world of stop-motion animation. The monster was given the name ‘Nesuahyrrah’, which is ‘Harryhausen’ spelled backwards, the surname of likely the greatest stop-motion animator of all time, Ray Harryhausen.

The poster artwork is by one of my favourite Japanese artists, Seito, and is unique to this B2. To see the other posters I’ve collected by the artist click here.

The original trailer is on YouTube.