The notorious schlockmeisters Troma, headed by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, were behind what must surely be one of the only golfing-related horror films ever made (unless you count the clubs wielded by the killers in Michael Haneke’s Funny Games), 1989’s Blades. The film was directed by Thomas R. Rondinella and is his only cinema-released feature to date and, as is typical with most Troma productions, the cast is mostly made up of jobbing b-movie actors. As the second tagline alludes to, the film is apparently a pastiche of Jaws with the shark replaced with a killer lawnmower wielded by a mysterious killer (and often show from the blades’ point of view).

The plot is described thusly on IMDb:

People are showing up sliced and diced at Tall Grass Country Club. Norman, the owner of the club, wants to avoid undue publicity on the eve of the televised pro-am tournament, and encourages new pro Roy to get to the bottom of the killings quietly. Roy has a history of alcohol problems since he choked while playing a big tournament years before, and Kelly, who feels she should have been hired as the new pro, isn’t making the situation easier for him, insisting they cancel the tournament until the killer can be stopped. After a seedy character named Deke Slater is arrested, the owner relaxes, but Roy and Kelly begin to feel that Deke’s rantings about a runaway lawnmower aren’t so far-fetched after all, and after Deke is released the three of them prepare for a battle to the death out on the uncharted fairways.

The film was apparently only released in a small handful of US cinemas before heading to video and HBO soon afterwards. I may be wrong but I don’t believe it ever saw release over here in the UK.

Mr Ricco, a little-seen 1970s crime thriller, marked the last starring role in film for ‘The King of Cool’ Dean Martin (unless you count his cameos in the two Cannonball Run films). The Italian-American entertainer, who had seen great success in several of his earlier roles including Rio Bravo and Ocean’s Eleven (with his fellow Rat Pack members), would continue to make popular TV appearances and music recordings but never headline a film again. After reading the reviews on IMDb it appears he was probably getting too old to convincingly pull-off the action scenes that roles like this one required.

Martin appears in the title role as Joe Ricco, a San Francisco lawyer who successfully defends Frankie Steele (Thalmus Rasulala) a member of a black militant group charged with murdering a woman. Shortly afterwards two cops are gunned down and Steele is implicated in the crime after witnesses describe seeing him fleeing the scene. The detective in charge of the case, George Cronyn (Eugene Roche), is angered that Steele appears to have got away with it again and decides to kill one of the members of the Black Serpents (Steele’s group) and implicate another in the cops’ murder. Ricco agrees to defend the wrongly-accused man but soon after is targeted by a lone sniper who almost kills him. Once again, Steele is implicated in the attempted murder so Ricco sets out to discover why his former client is trying to kill him.

This US 30×40 features artwork by an American artist called Larry Salk about whom I’ve been able to discover very little. A now defunct gallery site described him as a freelance illustrator who worked on around 165 film posters, as well as painting for advertisements, video game covers, record sleeves and more. IMPAwards features a few of his posters (I have his one sheet for the 3D re-release of House of Wax and the advance for Superman III) and he was the artist who painted the famous portrait of Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld. He apparently passed away in 2004.

A largely forgotten entry into the blaxploitation genre, Book of Numbers was written, directed and produced by its star Raymond St. Jacques, who is perhaps best known for his role as Coffin Ed Johnson in the film Cotton Comes to Harlem, as well as the street preacher in John Carpenter’s They Live.

The film sees two African-American waiters set up a numbers racket in a small town in Arkansas, raising the ire of the white gangsters in other towns nearby. Despite being something of a critical success it appears the film was a financial flop and put paid to  further films that Raymond St. Jacques had planned with his recently established production company.

The great artwork on this US 30×40 features a signature but I’ve had a hard time identifying who it belongs to. Take a look at the signature picture and let me know if you can identify it.

Legendary director David Lynch‘s brilliant, surreal nightmare Eraserhead celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2012 and its fair to say cinema has seen nothing else quite like it in the years since it was released. Lynch’s first full-length feature was five years in the making and was begun whilst he worked at the American Film Institute school in Los Angeles. The initial grant of $10,000 given to the director quickly ran out and he was forced to spend the following years using money from odd jobs, as well as donations from friends and family to continue work on it.

Ben Barenholtz, the owner of Libra films saw the completed film at the Filmex Festival and, after declaring it was a ‘film of the future’, decided to help Lynch get the film into cinemas. The first screening took place at midnight on the 29th of September, 1977 and, like Jodorowsky’s El Topo before it, Eraserhead became a staple of Midnight Movie shows in Los Angeles, New York and London.

This Japanese poster is from a 1993 re-release of the film and features the classic shot of Henry (Jack Nance) with his worried stare and great shock of hair. The poster was printed on mirrored mylar paper and is therefore very hard to photograph without capturing lots of reflections.

Having just watched the recent UK blu-ray release of the film, which was apparently supervised by Lynch, I can highly recommend picking up a copy of it as the film has never looked or, perhaps more importantly, sounded as good.

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Outback (AKA Wake in Fright) was originally released in 1971 to a strong critical reception and decent box-office figures in countries like the UK, but it was almost a lost film by turn of the century. Only released in a few markets during the early 1970s, the film was seemingly forgotten about by the end of the decade and when Anthony Buckley, the editor of the film began looking for the original materials in 1996 it would be six years before he finally tracked them down to a warehouse in Pittsburgh. He was just in time since they were due to be destroyed only a week later. A full restoration was instigated and the results were screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to great acclaim. The film was given a worldwide release shortly after and was put out on the blu-ray format at the same time.

An Australian-American co-production, the film was based on Australian author Kenneth Cook‘s 1961 novel Wake in Fright, which was the title it would be released with in Australia (and re-christened for its recent release everywhere). The film’s rights were acquired soon after the book was released but it would be several years before producers from NLT and Group W got involved and invited the Canadian director Ted Kotcheff (First Blood) to helm the adaptation. Kotcheff had never been to Australia before then and now admits to having known little about the outback and the situations he would go on to portray, but he immersed himself in the culture whilst filming on location and the results are clear to see on screen.

The late British actor Gary Bond plays John Grant, a teacher from Sydney who has agreed to the terms of a financial bond with the Australian government that guarantees him a tertiary eduction but means he has to take a teaching job in a remote outback township called Tiboonda. At the start of the Christmas holidays he sets off on a journey back to Sydney to see his girlfriend, which takes him via the mining town of Bundanyabba, known as The Yabba. He visits a bar where he meets a friendly but eccentric policeman (played by Chips Rafferty in his final role) who introduces him to the local gambling obsession of two-up. After winning a few rounds John gets carried away and decides to bet all his winnings to try and escape from the government bond. Unfortunately, luck is not on his side and he’s soon stuck in The Yabba, relying on the kindness of strangers to keep him afloat.

At another bar he meets a local called Tim Hynes (Al Thomas) who invites John back to his home. There he meets Tim’s daughter Jeanette and a bunch of his friends. Things take a dark turn from there as John is drawn into sordid events and descends into a drunken stupor with the aid of the gang of local men, led by alcoholic doctor Doc Tydon (played by a memorably wild-eyed Donald Pleasence). John eventually takes part in a horrific night-time kangaroo hunt that sees the men drunkenly shooting at the poor beasts before John is forced to stab an injured young kangaroo to death. Despite attempting to escape The Yabba via hitch-hiking, he soon finds himself back in the town carrying only a loaded rifle.

The film has a distinctly menacing atmosphere and you can’t help but put yourself in the shoes of John Grant, a man out of place, trapped in an oppressively hot and sticky environment. At some points you can practically taste the dust and sweat. The film attracted controversy for the kangaroo hunting scene, which featured graphic footage shot by Kotcheff and a camera crew after they’d joined a real kangaroo hunt during which the men with the rifles got progressively drunker whilst the night wore on. It’s still deeply unsettling to watch to this day, much like similar footage of animal cruelty in films like Cannibal Holocaust.

This artwork was used for the American marketing campaign and I think it was an adaptation of the Australian art (the two are very similar but there are a few notable differences). I’ve been unable to determine the name of the artist so if anyone has an idea please get in touch.

This is a screen print by the American artist Mark Englert for the 1990 TV version of Stephen King’s classic novel ‘It’, which was recently remade to great critical acclaim (and box office success). Originally shown as a two-part mini series, then later released on DVD and blu-ray as an edited single movie, the film is set in the fictional Maine town of Derry during two time periods (1960 and 1990). The story focuses on a group of children who are menaced by a shapeshifting creature that preys on their worst fears in order to attack and eat them. The creature appears once every 30 years and over the previous century many of the town’s children have disappeared. The group (nicknamed by themselves as The Losers Club) decide to take on It who most often appears as the malevolent clown Pennywise (Tim Curry). After driving it back underground in 1960, the group make a promise to return and put a stop to It once and for all 30 years later.

Note that this is the regular edition and it glows in the dark which reveals hidden details, including Pennywise’s face in a hidden moon, and the spider form of It in the top left corner glows too.

This print was created in 2012. Englert, whose official website is here, first appeared on collectors’ radars with his print for The Thing that was released earlier in 2012. Since then he has worked on a number of landscape format prints (typically 12″ x 36″) featuring scenes from cult films and TV shows. One of his most popular releases was one for The Walking Dead that was released around the same time as this print. Each is given a name that relates to the property in some way. In this case ‘They All Float’ is part of the famous line spoken by Pennywise.

Check out this interview with Englert on Collider.com which was carried out at the 2012 Comic Con and they also featured him in their first ever ‘Limited Paper’ column. Englert’s own site features the posters and other items he’s worked on so far, which includes vinyl sleeves and more. There’s a short biography on his website which mentions he was born in 1979. There’s an excellent interview with Mark on 411posters.com here.

He has a store here and you can follow him on Twitter here.

Unquestionably the most famous image from Spielberg’s 1982 classic, this poster was never actually used to promote the film in cinemas. The ‘fingers touching’ design is the final US one sheet and there is an advance known as the ‘spaceship in the clouds’ .

It is believed that Spielberg himself requested the poster to be designed by B.D. Fox Independent and that they were to be given out to cast, crew and other people associated with the film and his production company. There were two printings done with the only major difference being the dimensions. There are known reprints of this poster and the first time I picked one up I inadvertently bought a fake. I was able to return the poster and eventually found what I believe to be an original.

There are several guides online to recognising an original and I’ve tried to collect as many as I can here.

Mel at the now defunct Moviepostercollectors.com created an excellent guide to spotting a fake along with lots of detailed photographs.

In any event this poster (in any size) was never distributed to theaters.  The exact reason is unknown.  According to reports, it was created solely for the purpose of internal distribution to cast and crew members. (It was reported on MOPO that the posters were placed in the company lobby for employees to pick up.) Many of these posters have personal notes to/from executives and crew members.  It is known that Spielberg used the image as the logo for his company, so perhaps he did not want it released to the public.  I’ve also read speculation that Spielberg believed it gave away a major plot point from the movie.

From Dave at Cinemasterpieces.com (scroll down to find the poster):

The bike/moon one sheet is EXTREMELY RARE. Not intended for theatrical use, but rather a “Studio Issue” for cast and crew. All of the originals we have personally handled (a few came straight from former ILM employees) measure 26 3/4″ x 40 1/2 (or within 1/8″ of those numbers). There are reports from long time highly credible collectors of an authentic full size 27″ x 41″ version. This 27″ x 41″ version if authentic (we believe it is….although we haven’t seen it) is undoubtedly much rarer than the 26 3/4″ x 40 1/2″ version as few have ever come to light within the collecting community. There are also reprints/bootlegs of this poster with varying sizes…..so collectors beware!!

He also has a picture of a known fake for comparison.