Katsuhiro Otomo‘s landmark anime, based on his own manga of the same name, was chosen by the artist Tyler Stout to be the first in a series of ‘Mondo Mystery Movies’; one-time-only screenings of a mystery film organised by the crew at the incomparable Mondo Tees. After the screening those in attendance are able to purchase a screen print by a mystery artist who is only revealed at the end of the film.

The 9th MMM has just happened and those lucky enough to secure a ticket were treated to a showing of George Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead in a mall surrounded by 200 zombies with the man himself in attendance. Here’s a recap of the event on Collider.com.

Because the poster is exclusive to the showing and never sold on Mondo’s website it’s pretty much impossible for collectors who were unable to attend the screening to get hold of it, unless they’re willing to scour sites like eBay and accept the significant mark-ups in price that come with a second-hand purchase.

I had pretty much given up hope of ever getting hold of Akira, but after purchasing another print from Tyler’s website I opened the tube to find that he’d also included a regular version of Akira in there. Apparently he’d treated a few lucky folks to the copies of the print he’d been given by Mondo after the event, which gives you some idea of the kind of guy Tyler is.

I recently emailed him to ask him a few questions about the print so that I could add them to this site and the resulting interview can be found on this blog page, along with a few exclusive images from the creation of the poster.

There was also a variant of the poster (80 printed) with metallic inks and a different colour scheme that can be seen on Expresso Beans.

Akira had a huge impact on me when it was shown on the UK’s Channel 4 sometime in the early 1990s. I’d never seen anything quite like it and it opened my eyes to the world of anime films that were slowly being released in the UK, including the likes of Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and the great work of Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli.

The film was recently released on blu-ray and the lossless Japanese soundtrack is astonishingly good. There’s still talk of a live-action remake which fills me, and countless other fans of the anime, with great dread. I really hope it doesn’t happen!

Here’s the blu-ray trailer.

As well as the film posters I also have a handful of other film-related, paper-based memorabilia that I’ve picked up over the years. I thought I may as well share some of this material in the same way that I’ve been sharing the posters. Some of these items can be scanned rather than photographed.

First up is this original program and cinema ticket for one of my favourite films, John Carpenter’s The Thing. The program would have been available in the cinemas whilst the film was showing. I scanned each page separately and then used Photoshop to recombine the pages since most of them worked as double spreads.

My belief is that the stub is a standard cinema ticket, not a special printing for the premiere. I’ve included a scan of the back where you’ll notice an ink stamp that would have covered the removed portion too.

A Japanese friend translated the text below the title for me and it says:

Directed by John Carpenter/ Starring Kurt Russell
<Colour film>
Universal Pictures / Distributed by CIC ￥1000

The Japanese title is 遊星からの物体X – which translates as ‘X The Thing’.

Note that some of the pages feature strange anomalies due to the dots of the printing being picked up by the scanner. This most obviously shows up as a kind of moire effect on some of the images.

Whilst researching I also found this brilliant cover on the Japanese Laserdisc release of The Thing.

The Japanese B2 poster for The Thing can be seen here.

In August 2011 I was lucky enough to visit the island of Cuba for a ten day trip, which was a fantastic experience. It really does feel like a country stuck in a time warp, circa 1965, particularly once you leave the capital and head into the countryside. It’s a stunningly beautiful island with very hospitable people but the relative poverty of the country is clear to see. It’s often said that the government is likely to relax the current freeze on foreign (particularly Western) investment once ‘Comandante’ Fidel Castro passes away, although with his brother Raul currently in charge very little has changed. This article on the BBC gives you an insight into the current situation.

The Cuban people’s love for film and cinema-going is legendary and our guidebook claimed that at the end of the 1950s there were over 300 cinemas in the capital Havana alone. Today, these great old buildings continue to thrive and whilst there I witnessed the queues of people lining up to see the latest releases. I took this picture of the Yara cinema in the Vedado area of Havana.

Whilst in Havana I visited a bookshop that was selling original Cuban propaganda posters printed in the 1950s and 60s by OSPAAAL. They also had a handful of screen-printed film posters, all of which were reprints of the original Cuban cinema posters or re-imagined designs by local artists. They are officially screen printed by the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Artes Industrias Cinematografia) in Havana.

This poster for Stanley Kubrick’s classic Clockwork Orange was designed by the Cuban artist Nelson Ponce (full name Nelson Ponce Sanchez) who was born in 1976 and is a graphic designer and illustrator who also teaches at the ISDI (Instituto Superior de Diseño Industrial) in Havana. His re-imagined poster for the Cuban film Vampiros en la Habana, which was released in 1999, won him acclaim from both the design community and the Cuban public.

The Havana Cultura website has a great interview with the designer.

Whilst at the shop I also picked up a couple of other film posters and a handful of original propaganda posters which I plan to post on the site in the coming months.

The next non-poster addition to the site is this original Japanese program for Disney’s 1979 live-action oddity The Black Hole. The program features some excellent production stills as well as several pages of concept artwork and three rather brilliant cutaway diagrams of the spacecraft Cygnus and the two robots V.I.N.Cent and Maximilian.

To see the other items I’ve collected for The Black Hole, including three Japanese posters, click here.

One of the staple films of my 1980s childhood, D.A.R.Y.L. (Data-Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform) tells the story of a young boy (Barret Oliver) who is found wandering alone by an elderly couple and taken to an orphanage. After being adopted by foster parents Andy Richardson (Michael McKean) and Joyce (Mary Beth Hurt) it becomes clear that Daryl is no ordinary boy as he starts to display a series of uncanny skills, including a perfect talent for baseball and the ability to manipulate funds via ATMs.

It turns out that he’s actually a cyborg with the brain of a supercomputer having been implanted into the body of a 10-year-old boy. Daryl was able to escape from a top secret facility with the help of a scientist but the military are in hot pursuit having decided that the ‘project’ should be terminated. The film was directed by Australian Simon Wincer who would later achieve great success with the family film Free Willy.

This UK quad features artwork by the American artist David Jarvis, who is perhaps best known for his illustration on the US one sheet for Walter Hill’s The Warriors. Having completed a degree in illustration at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design, Jarvis went on to work as a freelance illustrator producing over thirty designs for film posters, as well as record sleeves, magazine covers and more. He also worked as an artist for Disney studios on the films Mulan and Tarzan. The other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

Note the hidden words in amongst the data display on the right hand side. The SR-71 Blackbird stealth plane in the bottom right of the poster plays a prominent role in an action sequence towards the end of the film.

This year the Alamo Drafthouse cinema in Austin, Texas celebrated the 30th anniversary of the summer of 1982, a period they dubbed ‘the greatest summer of movies…ever’. It’s not hard to see why when, in the space of three months, films like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Mad Max 2,  Tron, Poltergeist and John Carpenter’s The Thing were released in cinemas. A series of screenings have taken place over the past few months and for several of these shows a limited edition screen printed poster was created by the folks at Mondo, the celebrated offshoot of  the Drafthouse.

Perhaps the most exciting of these was the one created for my favourite film of all time, John Carpenter’s The Thing. Mondo surpassed everyone’s expectations for the poster by harking back 30 years and working directly with the legendary artist Drew Struzan who was responsible for the fantastic one sheet for the film. Using the original painted artwork, Drew and the Mondo team were able to create a screen print of the classic image; a perfect choice to celebrate the anniversary of the film’s release.

Announcing the poster, Movies.com carried out an exclusive interview with Struzan and it’s an absolute must-read for fans of the artist and his work. One of the most interesting parts of the interview sees Struzan recalling the creation of the original poster:

“I got a phone call, the simplest phone call I ever got, saying, “We have a job, we want to know if you can do it, the catch is we need it by tomorrow.””

After agreeing to the ridiculously tight deadline, Struzan remembers getting to work:

“It was a very odd experience. I got an immediate concept, which is not unusual for me; I usually have something roving around in my mind. I dressed up in a winter snow outfit and my wife took a Polaroid of me. This was 30 years ago, back in the stone age when the only way to communicating a hundred miles away was the telephone or the fax machine. So I did the drawing and I faxed it back to the studio and they said, “Fine. We need it by tomorrow morning.” I went to work.”

And the result is this iconic image that perfectly captures the mood of the film and stands out as one of Struzan’s best poster designs, which is no mean feat when you consider the artist’s incredible output over several decades.

Around the time of the release, the website Machinima released a brilliant three-part documentary called ‘Limited Run: Mondo’s Modern Classic’ that features the process of creating this poster and includes interviews with Struzan and John Carpenter. Unfortunately, as of 2021, I can no longer find it online, which is a great shame.

A stunning piece of artwork on this Japanese B1 poster for Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, which was the 18th film in the series featuring the King of Monsters. The film was the third release in the second generation of Godzilla films, which were part of the Heisei era of Japanese monster movies (daikaiju eiga). The monster movie eras are named after the Japanese emperor at the time, so the first generation of Godzilla films were part of the Shōwa era.

The story sees the legendary monster facing off against one of his greatest foes, the three-headed dragon monster King Ghidorah. The origin of the monster has changed over the years and this film is no exception; in this story Ghidorah is the result of the irradiated fusing of three genetically-engineered bat-like creatures called ‘Dorats’. The monster is then unleashed on Japan by the villains in the film, time-travellers from the 23rd century called the Futurians. By the end of the film Godzilla has to battle Mecha-King Ghidorah, a resurrected cyborg version that is brought to Tokyo from the future – typically brilliantly bonkers story-telling!

The artwork on the poster is by Noriyoshi Ohrai who is something of an enigma, even in his native Japan. I’ve been unable to find much about him beyond a few pages like this one on the Star Wars Wookiepedia. He’s responsible for a number of Star Wars posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film and the brilliant design for The Empire Strikes Back.

Ohrai painted a poster for each of the Heisei era of Godzilla films, which were always accompanied by a photographic-style poster. I will be adding more of the Ohrai Godzilla posters over the coming weeks.

The other Ohrai posters I’ve added to the site so far can be seen by clicking here.

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.

The third film in the much-loved original trilogy of Star Wars films was written by Lawrence Kasdan and, in a recently produced documentary, he claims to have suggested that the initially planned title of ‘Return of the Jedi’ was too weak and that ‘Revenge’ would be a better option. A teaser trailer for the film featured the Revenge title and legendary poster artist Drew Struzan, who had worked on the style D one sheet for the first film, was hired to paint this teaser poster.

Lucas eventually decided that revenge was not a Jedi concept so the film was changed back to the original ‘Return’ title and all subsequent posters were renamed too. According to the Star Wars poster book, by the time the title had been changed thousands of Revenge posters had been printed and hundreds had been distributed to theaters. Lucasfilm stopped the shipping of the posters and destroyed all but 6,800 posters, which were sold in three days to Star Wars fan club members for $9.50. (Source: The Star Wars Poster Book).

The excellent resource site Movie Poster Collectors has a page on the poster that confirms:

The vast majority of posters that escaped destruction have the tagline “Coming May 25, 1983 to your galaxy” at the bottom.  According to reports, a very few – perhaps 100 – omit that tag line. The posters without the release date command somewhat higher prices than the “Coming May 25” posters.

Unfortunately because of its collectable nature there have been several fakes printed over the years and the MPC page features details on what to look for if you want to make sure you purchase an original.

The poster is one of Struzan’s most iconic designs and brilliantly depicts a moment from what would eventually be revealed as a fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The colours and use of painting techniques are fantastic and you should check out the detailed images to see these up close. The poster features on his own website. The design was later adapted for a British advance quad featuring the Return title.

This teaser one sheet was officially reprinted by Kilian Enterprises on the film’s tenth anniversary but with the Return title instead. This page on Learn About Movie Posters details the various versions that were released.

The other posters I’ve collected by Struzan can be viewed here.

Katsuhiro Ôtomo‘s landmark manga series Akira was adapted into a feature-length anime film in 1988 and directed by Ôtomo himself. Akira had a huge impact on me when it was shown on the UK’s Channel 4 sometime in the early 1990s. I’d never seen anything quite like it and it opened my eyes to the world of anime films that were slowly being released in the UK, including the likes of Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and the great work of Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli.

The film was recently released on blu-ray and the lossless Japanese soundtrack is astonishingly good. There’s still talk of a live-action remake which fills me, and countless other fans of the anime, with great dread. I really hope it doesn’t happen!

This is the rarely seen Japanese B1 poster that features a coloured adaptation of the moment in the original manga that Tokyo is destroyed by Akira’s out of control psychic powers. It’s not in perfect condition but I was really happy to find it at a poster shop on my first visit to Tokyo in April 2012. During the same trip I had the great fortune to be able to visit a retrospective exhibition of Ôtomo’s work called Genga (A Japanese animation term for keyframes, literally ‘original pictures’), which featured hundreds of pieces of his artwork and the original hand-drawn pages for the Akira manga. I was also able to wear Kaneda’s jacket and sit on the legendary red bike!

I also have two Japanese B2 posters for the film; style A and style B, as well as the American one sheet and ace illustrator Tyler Stout’s take on the film.

The next non-poster addition to the site is this original program (brochure) for Stanley Kubrick’s legendary 1971 film Clockwork Orange. I believe that it is from the film’s original release, although (frustratingly) it is not dated to confirm this. It would likely have been given away, or perhaps sold, at particular performances or cinemas and features a short write-up on the film, a cast-list and then a series of quotes alongside imagery from the film.

The cover displays British artist Philip Castle‘s iconic illustration of Alex (Malcolm McDowell) that was used to promote the film around the world, and the brochure also features images of other illustrations that Castle painted for the film (the illustration of the glass and teeth, for example) that were not printed as posters. The lurid pink colours make some of the text hard to read and it’s an odd design choice, although I expect it was intended to convey the ‘shocking’ nature of the film itself.

If anyone has any definitive information as to when this program would have originally been used to promote the film please get in touch.

A colourful montage on this Japanese B2 poster for Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla, which was the 21st film in the series featuring the King of the Kaiju (giant monsters). The film was the sixth release in the second generation of Godzilla films, which were part of the Heisei era of Japanese monster movies (daikaiju eiga). The monster movie eras are named after the Japanese emperor at the time, so the first generation of Godzilla films were part of the Shōwa era.

The story is typically ludicrous and sees fellow kaiju Mothra travel in to space to stop a meteor hitting earth and inadvertently exposing cells from Godzilla (and Biollante) to the radiation from a black hole, which then triggers the creation of an aggressive extraterrestrial closely resembling the famous monster. SpaceGodzilla immediately heads to earth, destroying a space station on the way, and after battling and knocking out Godzilla it imprisons his son on Birth Island and heads to Japan intent on destruction. The Japan Self Defense Forces have time to scramble their latest weapon in the fight against kaiju, the penguin-like robot called Mogeura. But is it enough to stop the rampaging alien?

The artwork on the poster is by the late Noriyoshi Ohrai who was something of an enigma, even in his native Japan. He’s responsible for a number of Star Wars posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film and the brilliant design for The Empire Strikes Back.

Ohrai painted a poster for each of the Heisei era of Godzilla films, which were always accompanied by a photographic-style poster.

The other Ohrai posters I’ve added to the site so far can be seen by clicking here.

Something lurks beneath the surface of Santa Monica beach and it’s hungry for flesh – can it be stopped? That’s pretty much the elevator pitch for the 1980 horror film Blood Beach, which was directed by Jeffrey Bloom and features genre stalwart John Saxon and prolific character actor Burt Young (perhaps best known for his role as Paulie in Rocky) as two local policemen assigned to discover the truth behind a number of mysterious disappearances (and a dog with a missing head).

For a film with such a simple premise Blood Beach is surprisingly boring and features several limp sequences involving the other two names mentioned on this poster. David Huffman and Marianna Hill play two locals with a muddily explained backstory and any pretence of them being the film’s leads is abandoned halfway through. There are a handful of effective scenes featuring victims being dragged beneath the sand (I’d actually like to know how the effect was achieved) and one moment where an unlucky gentlemen (well, technically, would-be rapist) has his privates removed by the creature. When it is finally revealed, the beast is so terribly realised that any fear that might have built up immediately evaporates – perhaps the budget ran out by that point but the rubber monstrosity on show is beyond laughable.

Currently the film is very hard to track down if you do want to subject yourself to it, and I actually ended up watching it on a German DVD, which is the only digital release available worldwide and is the slightly modified R-rated version.

The poster was designed and illustrated by Tom Beauvais, a British artist with a lengthy career working in film marketing which saw him design and/or illustrate several notable posters, including the quad for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Mad Max. He was also responsible for the infamous ‘rotten hand bursting from the ground’ image for Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters, a device Tom was clearly happy reusing for this poster! In 2012 I was lucky enough to meet and interview Tom and the article can be read here.

An appropriately lurid design on this UK quad for the release of infamous independent studio Troma Entertainment’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High. The film was directed by Richard W. Haines and Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman (under the pseudonym Samuel Weil) and the story centres on the Tromaville High School in New Jersey, which is located close to a dodgy nuclear power-plant that continuously suffers leaks of hazardous material. The Cretins are the school’s anarchic gang (who feature heavily on this poster) and are responsible for peddling drugs to the other pupils. When they inadvertently buy a marijuana plant that has been contaminated by nuclear waste things start to get very messy indeed. Of particular note is the parasitic offspring birthed by Chrissy (Janelle Brady) under the influence of the toxic weed, which mutates into the spiky monstrosity seen at the top of this poster.

Criticising a Troma production is a bit like tearing down a school production; this is amateur entertainment at best, with acting that is hilariously awful across the board, choppy editing and a total lack of atmosphere. With that being said, if you go in expecting the usual Troma mixing-pot of gore, guns, girls and explosions you won’t leave too disappointed. Some of the effects are actually well-realised on what I can only assume was a minuscule budget.

The montage on this quad was designed and painted by one of my favourite British artists Brian Bysouth, whose wonderfully detailed illustrations featured on hundreds of posters over three decades. Some of his most famous posters include the withdrawn one sheet for A View to a Kill, Highlander, Big Trouble in Little China and The Living Daylights. In 2012 I was lucky enough to meet and interview Brian and the resultant article can be read by clicking here.

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.

The debut film from writer-director Richard Kelly, Donnie Darko is a thought-provoking and genre-defying classic that has gained a strong cult-following since its release in 2001. Trying to describe the plot of the film is no easy task since it combines a coming-of-age teen storyline with a mind-bending alternate-reality/time-travel plot. The titular character is played by Jake Gyllenhaal who was only 21 at the time of release and the film was instrumental in catapulting him to stardom. Also appearing was Jake’s older sister Maggie Gyllenhaal who saw a similar boost to her already established career. In addition, the film had attracted a number of respected actors including Katharine Ross, Mary McDonnell and the late Patrick Swayze, playing against type as a self-help guru with a dark secret.

Despite critical adulation (and a low-budget), Donnie Darko failed to break-even at the box-office due to a botched release in American cinemas in October 2001, not helped by the terrible tragedy that unfolded only a month before. The subsequent international release was delayed for over a year. The film’s success was cemented by its release on DVD following word of mouth raves from fans that saw the film’s details and meanings endlessly discussed online, and the 2004 release of a director’s cut also helped to spread the cult of Darko.

This excellent American one sheet features a montage of characters and scenes from the film that together form the head of the ‘evil rabbit’ Halloween costume worn by Frank (James Duval) one of the film’s integral characters. It was designed by the Los Angeles-based design agency KO Creative that was apparently formed only a year before this film’s release. They designed a couple of one sheets for the film, including this one (IMPAwards actually features a slightly alternate version) and another poster that was apparently used for the film’s release at the Sundance festival in early 2001.

American author Richard Matheson‘s 1954 post-apocalyptic tale I Am Legend has been adapted for the screen three times, first in 1964 as the Vincent Price-starring The Last Man on Earth that was shot in Rome and co-directed by Italian Ubaldo Ragona and American Sidney Salkow. The rights to the story had originally been bought by Tony Hinds of the British Hammer Studios and Matheson was asked to write the screenplay, but worries about the gruesome content being too much for British censors saw the script being sold to the American producer Robert Lippert. Matheson was apparently so disappointed with his own screenplay and resultant film that he asked to be credited with the pseudonym Logan Swanson. The Last Man on Earth’s limited success at the box-office might explain why The Omega Man was put into production only seven years later.

Charlton Heston stars as Robert Neville, the Army scientist who manages to inject himself with an experimental vaccine just as the world’s population is obliterated by biological warfare between the Chinese and Russians. Two years later Neville believes himself to be the only surviving human and spends his days exploring a deserted Los Angeles and hunting down a group of infected mutants known as The Family. One day whilst exploring a shopping centre Neville has an encounter with another human survivor but quickly dismisses it as a hallucination, having been alone for so long. When he is captured by The Family and almost burned at the stake his rescue comes from a ragtag bunch of human survivors who ask for his help in saving a group of children that are infected and slowly succumbing to the disease. Neville decides to see if his blood can be used to create a serum to save them, but The Family are not done with him yet…

The Omega Man has several memorable scenes, particularly during the first half of the film as Neville explores a convincingly deserted Los Angeles, which was achieved with out any visual effects by shooting in the city’s business district early on Sunday mornings. The soundtrack is also excellent and Heston does a solid job in the lead role, supported by Rosalind Cash who’s memorable as one of the other survivors with whom Heston shares a controversial (for the time) interracial kiss. The make-up for the mutants has dated rather badly but it’s nowhere near as poor as the terrible CGI abominations that all but sank 2007’s I Am Legend, starring Will Smith in the lead role.

I’m unsure who is responsible for the design of this poster but the pencil drawing is similar to the one seen on the Dirty Harry one sheet that was designed by Bill Gold, so I suspect the same artist may be credited and that Gold was also behind the design. If anyone knows for sure please get in touch.

A colourful montage on this Japanese B2 poster for Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, which was the 2oth film in the series featuring the King of the Kaiju (giant monsters) and was marketed as the 40th anniversary of the series. The film was also the fifth release in the second generation of Godzilla films, which were part of the Heisei era of Japanese monster movies (daikaiju eiga). The monster movie eras are named after the Japanese emperor at the time, so the first generation of Godzilla films were part of the Shōwa era. Despite sharing the same title with a 1974 film, this is neither a remake or a re-imagining of the earlier version.

The story sees the United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Center (UNGCC) created in order to stop the legendary monster. Two machines are manufactured from the salvaged parts of Mecha-King Ghidorah, a mechanised abomination last seen in 1991s Godzilla vs King Ghidorah; one is a flying gunship called Garuda and the other is the titular Godzilla-like robotic beast. When a mysterious egg is discovered on an island in the Bering sea, both Godzilla and Rodan – the irradiated pteranodon seen in several previous films in the series – appear and battle over it, allowing a team to escape to a research centre in Kyoto. When the egg hatches it is revealed to be Baby Godzilla (AKA Godzilla Junior) and once again the legendary Kaiju is summoned to Japan by its psychic powers. The UNGCC decide to mobilise their new defence weapons and both Rodan and Godzilla are pitched against the metallic foes.

The artwork on the poster is by Noriyoshi Ohrai who is something of an enigma, even in his native Japan. I’ve been unable to find much about him beyond a few pages like this one on the Star Wars Wookiepedia. He’s responsible for a number of Star Wars posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film and the brilliant design for The Empire Strikes Back.

Ohrai painted a poster for each of the Heisei era of Godzilla films, which were always accompanied by a photographic-style poster. I will be adding more of the Ohrai Godzilla posters over the coming weeks.

The other Ohrai posters I’ve added to the site so far can be seen by clicking here.

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!”).

A colourful montage on this Japanese B1 poster for Godzilla vs Mothra, which was the 19th film in the series featuring the King of the Kaiju (giant monsters). The film was also the fourth release in the second generation of Godzilla films, which were part of the Heisei era of Japanese monster movies (daikaiju eiga). The eras are named after the Japanese emperor at the time, so the first generation of Godzilla films were part of the Shōwa era. There was an earlier film in the franchise called Mothra vs Godzilla (1964) but this film is not a remake of that story.

Godzilla vs Mothra is, adjusted for inflation, the most financially successful entry in the entire series. The story sees a meteor crashing to earth and awakening not only the legendary lizard but also uncovering an egg of the benevolent giant moth, plus an evil version of Mothra called Battra that was created by Earth’s ‘life force’ to protect the planet itself from threat. Godzilla sets off on one of his usual rampages and Battra attacks Tokyo in anger at the pollution that mankind has caused. The trio of monsters face-off against each other in several battles and there’s also a subplot involving an Indiana-Jones-like treasure hunter and ethereal creatures known as Cosmos who are involved in the bigger conflict.

The artwork on the poster is by Noriyoshi Ohrai who is something of an enigma, even in his native Japan. I’ve been unable to find much about him beyond a few pages like this one on the Star Wars Wookiepedia. He’s responsible for a number of Star Wars posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film and the brilliant design for The Empire Strikes Back.

Ohrai painted a poster for each of the Heisei era of Godzilla films, which were always accompanied by a photographic-style poster. I will be adding more of the Ohrai Godzilla posters over the coming weeks.

The other Ohrai posters I’ve added to the site so far can be seen by clicking here.

Notorious Danish director Lars von Trier‘s apocalyptic drama Melancholia‘s 2011 release was somewhat overshadowed by the controversy surrounding his comments at the Cannes festival press conference for the film in which he expressed various (idiotic) thoughts, including ‘What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. … He’s not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathise with him a little bit.’ This and various other comments saw the director being declared ‘persona non grata’ by the festival’s directors in an unprecedented move. Von Trier apologised for his remarks hours later and even held a press conference in Danish, but the damage was done.

Arguably the director’s most accessible film, certainly when compared to his earlier Dogme 95 features and 2009’s Antichrist, Melancholia opens with a stunning CGI sequence showing the destruction of Earth as the titular planet smashes straight into it. Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Justine (Kirsten Dunst) are sisters dealing with different forms of anxiety and depression during the latter’s wedding reception taking place on the family estate. Justine is shown to be almost catatonic with depression whilst Claire is dealing with her fears over a large blue planet which is revealed to be on a collision course with Earth. The film is split into two sections and follows the way each woman deals with the impending destruction and their relationships with the people around them.

According to this interview article with the director, ‘the idea for the film emerged while he was in treatment for the depression that has haunted him in recent years. A therapist told him a theory that depressives and melancholics act more calmly in violent situations, while “ordinary, happy” people are more apt to panic. Melancholics are ready for it. They already know everything is going to hell.’

This is the ‘static lightning’ style American one sheet for the film that, like the ‘water‘ style is pretty much a still shot from the film (with likely some minor adjustments). It was designed by the Los Angeles-based company Gravillis inc. who are responsible for some of my favourite recent one sheets, including Monsters and I Saw the Devil. IMPAwards features a gallery of a lot of their work. Melancholia was also given a set of teaser posters that can be seen on IMPAwards and features, bizarrely, a Lars von Trier version!

Notorious Danish director Lars von Trier‘s apocalyptic drama Melancholia‘s 2011 release was somewhat overshadowed by the controversy surrounding his comments at the Cannes festival press conference for the film in which he expressed various (idiotic) thoughts, including ‘What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. … He’s not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathise with him a little bit.’ This and various other comments saw the director being declared ‘persona non grata’ by the festival’s directors in an unprecedented move. Von Trier apologised for his remarks hours later and even held a press conference in Danish, but the damage was done.

Arguably the director’s most accessible film, certainly when compared to his earlier Dogme 95 features and 2009’s Antichrist, Melancholia opens with a stunning CGI sequence showing the destruction of Earth as the titular planet smashes straight into it. Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Justine (Kirsten Dunst) are sisters dealing with different forms of anxiety and depression during the latter’s wedding reception taking place on the family estate. Justine is shown to be almost catatonic with depression whilst Claire is dealing with her fears over a large blue planet which is revealed to be on a collision course with Earth. The film is split into two sections and follows the way each woman deals with the impending destruction and their relationships with the people around them.

According to this interview article with the director, ‘the idea for the film emerged while he was in treatment for the depression that has haunted him in recent years. A therapist told him a theory that depressives and melancholics act more calmly in violent situations, while “ordinary, happy” people are more apt to panic. Melancholics are ready for it. They already know everything is going to hell.’

This is the ‘water’ style American one sheet for the film that, like the ‘lightning‘ style is pretty much a still shot from the film (with likely some minor adjustments). It was designed by the Los Angeles-based company Gravillis inc. who are responsible for some of my favourite recent one sheets, including Monsters and I Saw the Devil. IMPAwards features a gallery of a lot of their work. Melancholia was also given a set of teaser posters that can be seen on IMPAwards and features, bizarrely, a Lars von Trier version!

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 colourful montage on this Japanese B1 poster for Godzilla vs Biollante, which was the 17th film in the series featuring the King of the Kaiju (giant monsters). The film was also the second release in the second generation of Godzilla films, which were part of the Heisei era of Japanese monster movies (daikaiju eiga). The eras are named after the Japanese emperor at the time, so the first generation of Godzilla films were part of the Shōwa era.

This film was the belated follow up to the 1984 series reboot, Return of Godzilla, and the concept for the film was actually the result of a fan competition to decide the plot, which had seen Shinichirô Kobayashi, a dentist and part-time scriptwriter, emerge as the winner. His script was heavily altered before filming began. Considered something of a box-office failure, Godzilla vs Biollante features the legendary beast facing off against a brand new foe that hadn’t featured in the franchise before and this was used to excuse its poor showing. Toho would return to familiar enemies in the films that followed in the franchise, such as 1991’s Godzilla vs King Ghidorah.

In this film, which follows on from events in ‘Return of…’, a team of American paramilitary soldiers working on behalf of a US genetics company attempt to collect material left over from Godzilla’s last attack on Tokyo. Whilst escaping with a sample, the team are attacked by a mysterious lone operative and the material is stolen. Meanwhile, Genshiro Shiragami, a Japanese scientist working in the Middle East, is about to return home with his beloved daughter Erika when a terrorist strike destroys his lab and kills Erika. Five years later, a grief stricken Shiragami is working on experiments for the government to try and develop a way to defeat Godzilla should he return. What his benefactors don’t realise is that Shiragami has also conducted a secret trial in which he combined the cells of Godzilla with those of a rose (the psychic energy of which he has also been studying) and the cells of Erika. The result is a creature he calls Biollante, and before long Godzilla is released from his volcano prison and heads straight for a confrontation with the new kaiju.

The artwork on the poster is by Noriyoshi Ohrai who is something of an enigma, even in his native Japan. I’ve been unable to find much about him beyond a few pages like this one on the Star Wars Wookiepedia. He’s responsible for a number of Star Wars posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film and the brilliant design for The Empire Strikes Back.

Ohrai painted a poster for each of the Heisei era of Godzilla films, which were always accompanied by a photographic-style poster. I will be adding more of the Ohrai Godzilla posters over the coming weeks.

The other Ohrai posters I’ve added to the site so far can be seen by clicking here.

In the mid 1980s there were few actors who could get away with having their head dominate a film poster, and fewer still who could couple that with their surname in giant letters spread across the entirety of a 40″ wide poster, but then there was Arnold Schwarzenegger and this British quad for the 1987 film The Running Man. Set in the dystopian future of 2017 where the world’s economy is in ruins and America is a totalitarian police state, the populace is pacified by the broadcasting of a series of gameshows that see convicted prisoners fighting for their lives across various kinds of formats. The most popular of these shows is the titular Running Man in which the unwilling participants must try to survive in a closed-off area against an onslaught of vicious killers with catchy names and different methods of dispatching their prey.

Ben Richards (Schwarzenegger) is a former police helicopter pilot who was wrongly convicted of massacring a crowd of people and sent to prison. After escaping several months later with a pair of fellow convicts, Richards is preparing to flee the country but is turned into the authorities by Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso), a composer for the network that he finds living in his brother’s apartment. He is taken to the Running Man studio where he meets the ruthless show host Damon Killian (a memorable turn by the late Richard Dawson) who informs him that unless he takes part in the show his two friends will be sent in his place. After agreeing to get dropped into the play zone, Richards finds that Killian has tricked him and has also sent his pals into the arena. The trio must face-off against the killers whilst trying to work out how to escape the arena and put an end to the show once and for all. When Amber looks a little too closely at the reasons for Ben Richards’ incarceration, she too is captured and dropped into the Running Man arena (she’s pictured next to Arnie on this quad).

Ably directed by Paul Michael Glaser, best known for his acting career – he was Starsky in the classic 1970s cop show Starsky and Hutch – the film is well paced and features several memorable scenes, whilst not holding back on the the violence and gore. The bad guy killers, including Sub Zero, Fireball and Captain Freedom and particularly memorable. It’s definitely a highlight of the Austrian Oak’s filmography, although it was released the same year as the incredible Predator, which is unquestionably the better film. Note that the tagline on this British quad fudges the date that the film is set – 2019 instead of the correct 2017.