This is the advance one sheet for the 2010 western Meek’s Cutoff, directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood and Paul Dano. The director is best known for her work on indie films and spent some of the early part of her career working behind the scenes for directors including Todd Haynes (she was involved in his first film, Poison) before beginning to direct in 1994. She’s best known for Wendy and Lucy (2006), this film, and 2016’s Certain Women. The film is loosely based on a real incident that happened in 1845 on the Oregon Trail, a famous route for families who were emigrating across the United States to the West coast. The name of the film references an alternative route that was taken by the famous frontiersman Stephen Meek.

The film focuses on three families who have hired Meek (Greenwood) to take them along the trail to Oregon. They place their trust in him when he suggests a shortcut that will shave time off their journey. After some time it becomes clear that Meek has miscalculated and the group struggle to find a source of fresh water, which is much needed in the arid and sunbleached Oregon High Desert. The group realise a Native Indian has been following them at a distance and eventually Meek sets out to capture him. They then have to decide whether to kill him or trust him to lead them to water and eventual safety.

The artwork on this one sheet is by the noted designer and illustrator Marlene McCarty who was apparently specifically requested to work on the poster by Reicardt. McCarty has been active since the 1980s and gained notoriety for her work with the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury during the 80s and 1990s. She’s also known as the co-founder trans-disciplinary design studio Bureau along with Donald Moffett. As Adrian Curry explains in this ‘Movie poster of the week’ article on mubi.com, the artist has also worked on film posters for various indie productions over the years. More recently she’s been producing large scale drawings of people and chimpanzees, drawn using pencil and ballpoint pen. Curry notes that this illustration of Michelle Williams has been drawn in a similar style, albeit with some digital touch-ups during the design process. McCarty also worked on the film’s titles.

This is the US one sheet for the release of the largely forgotten 1974 horror, The House of Seven Corpses. The film was the sole feature film directing credit for Paul Harrison who seems to have spent more time as a screenwriter. It stars the prolific character actor John Ireland who is known for his many appearances in Westerns (and the 1960 classic Spartacus) and Faith Domergue, star of some 1950s sci-fi flicks such as This Island Earth. John Carradine, the ridiculously prolific actor (351 appearances!) and father of several actors, including David, also appears.

Ireland plays Eric Hartman, a film director who has decided to shoot his next picture in the titular mansion where seven members of the same family met their untimely ends in various ways. Hoping that the location will provide a suitable ambience to the picture, Hartman only has to put up with the cantankerous caretaker Edgar Price (Carradine) and a difficult star in Gayle Dorian (Domergue) who it’s hinted Hartman had a relationship with in the past. The director’s assistant David discovers the Tibetan Book of the Dead in the house (as you do) and decides to suggest some of the text is used in the witchcraft scenes in the film. Unfortunately, this then triggers the reanimation of a zombie from the graveyard outside the mansion and it proceeds to work it’s murderous way through the cast and crew.

Sadly, the film is almost entirely lacking in any sense of tension or horror and it’s over an hour (of a 90 minute film) before the zombie rises up. None of the characters are particularly appealing so it’s a fairly dull watch for most of the time. There’s a twist that’s incredibly badly handled, so much so that I had no idea it had taken place until I read a plot synopsis afterwards!

This one sheet is at least fairly interesting, with a creepy graveyard image that has been made using a cut and paste photomontage technique. The film’s logo is also very 1970s.

A striking photographic image features on this one sheet for the release of Gus Van Sant‘s 2005 drama, Last Days. The film is a fictionalized account of the last few days in the life of a musician who is reminiscent of Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana. Van Sant had been planning the project for over a decade and at one point had wanted to make a biography of the singer. After befriending Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, the director realised that doing so would cause too much pain for Love and the deceased singer’s family, so he decided to fictionalise the story.

Michael Pitt plays the main character Blake and Van Sant had cast him in the part seven years before filming commenced. The rest of the cast includes Lukas Haas, Asia Argento and Nicole Vicius, with notorious director Harmony Korine appearing as a character in one scene set in a nightclub. The plot is thin and Van Sant uses a technique he’s employed in a few of his films where the same scene is shown from different view points but at different times throughout the film, with the audience not given clear indication that this has happened. Most of the scenes follow Blake and take place in and around a large house surrounded by trees. Several interactions between him and his housemates, as well as visitors to the house take place, all leading up to a fatal moment with Blake and a shotgun at the end of the film.

The film received mixed critical notices and failed to make much of a dent at the box-office in the US. It received limited releases in several territories, including the UK.

This American one sheet was designed by Shoolery Design which now appears to be defunct as a company but was responsible for a large number of film posters from the mid-1990s up to 2007. A gallery of these designs can be seen on IMPAwards. The man who started the company, Mark Shoolery, seems to still be active and he has a website on which a lot of his work, including film posters, can be seen. It looks like he continues to work as an independent art director and artist and his Instagram feed features logo design work. According to his resume Shoolery has worked on projects for the film industry, the music industry, packaging for various products including toys, and marketing strategy for several companies. The LinkedIn entry for Shoolery design notes the following:

Conceived, developed and executed creative advertising campaigns for major studios, network and cable television, home entertainment, music and live events. Oversaw all in and out of-home advertising, collateral and promotional materials. Directed staff of 80-90 employees producing high-end advertising campaigns. Consulted with studio marketing executives as well as producers and directors of major motion pictures. Supervised celebrity photo shoots worldwide.

The other posters I have that were created by Shoolery Design can be seen here.

This is the ‘skull style’ US one sheet for the release of the low-budget 1983 horror Frightmare (AKA Horror Star), directed by the late Norman Thaddeus Vane. The film is largely forgotten today and only really notable as featuring the first appearance of genre legend Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator). The film stars the late German-British actor Ferdy Mayne, a prolific actor who appeared in over 230 films and TV shows over a 60 year period. He is perhaps best known for his performance as Count von Krolock in Roman Polanski’s 1967 film, The Fearless Vampire Killers.

In Frightmare Mayne plays an aging horror film star called Conrad Razkoff, who is very much in the mould of the legendary British actor Christopher Lee – in fact, Lee appears on TV several times playing Dracula, which the audience are meant to infer is Razkoff in his prime. The actor has been reduced to appearing in adverts for dentures and is also suffering from poor health, fainting during a talk to drama students at a university. Soon afterwards Razkoff passes away, but not before he smothers his abusive agent. After his coffin is placed inside an improbably large crypt, which is lit by neon lights, a young group of fans of the star break into the cemetery and decide to steal his corpse.

After returning to the mansion in which they all live, the group sit him at the head of the table and later dance with his corpse before returning him to his coffin in the attic. Razkoff’s wife has discovered that her husband’s body is missing and uses a medium to try and contact him in the afterlife and find out where his body is. This has the unfortunate side-effect of reviving the actor as a murderous zombie who proceeds to work his way through the group of fans, killing each one using different methods. Eventually one of the survivors realises his body must be returned to his crypt. There’s barely anything in the way of character development and it’s hard to care for any of the victims when you have no clue who they are. Mayne’s performance is at least respectable and you do buy him as a fading horror star. It’s also pretty clear what producers like Charles Band saw in a young Jeffrey Combs.

This US one sheet is unusual in that it borrows some key artwork painted for a previous horror film, the 1974 Amicus anthology From Beyond the Grave, and tweaks it slightly in terms of colours and the removal of some elements. The original artwork was painted by the American illustrator Terry Lamb and can be seen here. You can see that the two living creatures were removed and various other elements were modified, but it’s unquestionably the same piece of art. If anyone has any more information as to why the recycling of art took place please get in touch.

This one sheet was printed by Janus films for their 2011 re-release of Jean-Luc Godard‘s celebrated 1967 film Weekend (or Le Week End). One of the most anarchic and surreal films ever committed to celluloid, Weekend is a satire which takes aim at, amongst other things, the bourgeois status and money-obsessed French middle-class. The story, such as there is one, focuses on a self-obsessed couple played by Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne who have plotted to murder her parents and collect their inheritance. They set off from their home in the city and travel into the French countryside where they come across all manner of scenes, including fatal car crashes and a (justifiably famous) sequence of a traffic jam which the audience watches them traverse with horns blaring the entire time. Society appears to be crumbling around them as they make their way to the small village where her parents live. Eventually, things take a turn for the deadly when they end up in the clutches of a band of hippie, cannibalistic revolutionaries.

This one sheet was created by the Vancouver-based designer Steve Chow who is a regular collaborator with Janus and its sister company The Criterion Collection (the film was released on disc soon after its cinema outing in 2011). Chow has worked on hundreds of posters, magazines, advertising elements and covers for home video releases of various films. Check out his official website to see a gallery of his work and a short biography about his career so far.

In 2011, the Criterion website featured a short interview with Chow on the creation of this poster and I’ve copied the detail here (in case that page disappears one day):

What was your inspiration for the new poster for Weekend?
That particular image really only works with all the elements intact—cropping was not doing us any favors—so we figured, Why not use it whole? It’s just that in order to do that, we had to turn it sideways. It was a natural choice—and it seemed to fit the film’s unpredictable, violent, and humorous tenor. It’s like, “WTF just happened? Is that a plane? A body? How did that car end up like that?” It’s kind of like the visual punch line to a joke that starts with “two materialistic bourgeois jerks go on a road trip . . .”

Where does your interest in Godard films come from?
Godard’s influence is everywhere—in contemporary advertising, commercials, music videos. You could be watching something that is “Godard” and not even realize it. (Just the other night, I saw a new Mexican film that riffed on Anna Karina’s back-of-the-head introduction in Vivre sa vie.) His 1960s works, in particular, still resonate with so much life and excitement. So daring, and so very, very cool, even decades later.

Do you have a particular approach to designing for them?
With all of these Godard posters, I pretty much tried to just get out of the way and let the image speak for itself, and in the end, the most intuitive options were successful. With Pierrot le fou and Vivre sa vie, the resonance of those particular images is strong; title treatments that are too heavy or that get too much attention wouldn’t help tell their stories. Similarly, for Weekend, we’d have a hard time creating an image or a collage that captured the crazy, chaotic energy and direction of the film as well as the one we ended up using. So, with regards to these three posters, if I never hear “Wow, that’s a killer title treatment!” I’ll consider that a success.

Chow also designed the Janus re-release one sheets for Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou and Vivre Sa Vie and both can be seen in this Mubi.com ‘Movie Poster of the Week’ article.

Although considered by most Bond fans to be one of the weakest of the series, I know I’m not the only one to have a soft spot for Moonraker, Roger Moore‘s fifth outing as James Bond. Thanks to endless TV showings during the 1980s and early 1990s I’ve probably seen this more than any other in the series and, like Live and Let Die, it had a huge impression on my young mind.

Looking at it through the cynical fog of adulthood it’s easy to sneer at the camp script, supremely daft action sequences (motorised Gondola anyone?) and painfully obvious attempt to cash in on the success of Star Wars (a very common theme amongst films released in its wake). The film is probably the quintessential outing for Moore as Bond and only he could have pulled it off as well as he did, particularly when it comes to the hokey script and madcap action.

The film features several memorable sequences, including a stunning cable car fight over Rio de Janeiro, and a memorable bad guy in Richard Kiel‘s inimitable ‘Jaws’ who used to scare me senseless as a kid. Also notable is John Barry‘s soundtrack, which marked a departure from his previous Bond work by mainly using strings instead of the typical brass. The film also features one of the most (literally) eyebrow-raising character names in the form of Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) and one of the best/worst sign-offs of the entire series:

Sir Frederick Gray, Minister of Defence:  My God, what’s Bond doing? 
Q: I think he’s attempting re-entry, sir.

This particular poster is the advance international one sheet with artwork by Dan Goozee who is responsible for several other Bond posters, including the US one sheet. Other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.

This version has the phrase ‘Blasting off in June!’ at the bottom, but I also have one which says ‘Blasting off This Summer’ – see the last photos for images of it. I know there is also at least one other alternative version that has the phrase ‘Blasting off Soon’ (image taken from emovieposter.com).

The original trailer for the film is on YouTube.

This is the US one sheet for the release of the feature debut of British director Guy Ritchie, 1998’s crime comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. In addition to it being Ritchie’s first, it also introduced audiences to Jason Statham, best known for the Transporter films and recently the Fast and Furious franchise. It also marked the first appearance of British ex-footballer Vinnie Jones. Ritchie had come to attention with his short film The Hard Case which was seen by Trudie Styler and her husband Sting, leading to Styler executive producing Lock, Stock and Sting appearing in the film. Matthew Vaughan, a friend of Ritchie and now a successful director in his own right produced the film.

The film focuses on four lifelong friends who are small-time criminals, Eddy (Nick Moran), Tom (Jason Flemyng), Soap (Dexter Fletcher) and Bacon (Statham). At the start of the film Eddy has entered a high-stakes underground card game after the four put together the £100,000 entry fee. The game has been organised by local gangster Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty) and the quartet soon discover that the odds are rigged in Harry’s favour. Before they know it they are half a million pounds in debt and under pressure from one of Harry’s enforcers, Big Chris (Jones).

A desperate Eddy overhears his next door neighbours, a gang of robbers, discussing plans to hold-up a local cannabis farm which also has cash and valuables. Eddy relays the information to his friends and they decide to rob the gang once the heist has taken place. So begins a madcap caper that continues to spiral into violence and an increasing body count. The two barrels in the title refers to a pair of antique shotguns that also feature in the story.

The film was given only a limited release in the US in March of 1999 and this one sheet was designed by the Hollywood marketing agency New Wave Creative. The company has been working on campaigns for major studios for over 25 years and, as well as posters, they also work on trailers and other aspects of film and TV campaigns. Their page on IMPAwards indicates how prolific they were at creating posters and it appears their first one was for a 1998 re-release of Gone with the Wind. It also looks like they stopped working on posters around a decade later and presumably now only focus on other aspects of marketing campaigns. The other posters I have collected by New Wave can be seen here.

A unique design and artwork on this English one sheet for the Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte comedy action film 48 Hrs. In 2012 I met and interviewed the artist responsible, Brian Bysouth, and the resulting article can be read here. This poster was briefly discussed:

Another favourite of mine is your painting for 48 Hrs, which features Eddie Murphy raising his middle finger. Was that from your design?
No, I can’t recall who designed that. I need to check my invoice books to confirm, as I’d always write who briefed me to do the painting. Sorry, but I never really liked that design. I’d been given poor reference material and I think Nick Nolte’s likeness is fairly dire. I spent a while on it because of that difficulty but really didn’t like the painting because I never liked the design.

This one sheet was supposedly withdrawn by the studio after Sigourney Weaver objected to the image of her toting the pulse rifle/flamethrower bundle as she is known to be staunchly anti-firearms.

Several hundred copies of the poster must have survived the withdrawal and have made their way into collectors hands. I owned a reprint of this poster before I started collecting original one sheets and the quality of the reprint was atrocious.

If anyone has any more details on this please get in touch

Legendary pop artist Andy Warhol had been making films since the early 1960s but after his near fatal shooting in 1968 he relinquished direct involvement in those coming out of The Factory. Warhol’s acolyte and assistant Paul Morrissey stepped into the role of director and made close to a dozen films over the following years. Two of these, filmed at the Italian studio Cinecittà, were unquestionably more mainstream than the others; Blood for Dracula (1974) and Flesh for Frankenstein.

Morrissey is co-credited with prolific Italian director Antonio Margheriti although the latter’s role in the production has since been disputed by several people involved, including Morrissey. The film is a sex and gore-filled update of the classic tale, starring German cult favourite Udo Kier as the insane Baron Frankenstein who is obsessed with breeding a Serbian super-race by creating the perfect couple, bit by bit. He makes a poor choice for the male’s head (and brain) when his assistant Otto (Arno Juerging) kidnaps a local man who had plans to enter a life of celibacy in a monastery nearby.

Factory regular Joe Dallesandro plays a randy stablehand and friend of the kidnapped man who ends up at Frankenstein’s castle and  quickly gets caught up with the mad doctor’s wife (Monique van Vooren) whilst trying to rescue his friend. The film features a bucket-load of blood and guts, perverted sexual behaviour (including the use of all-new orifices), hints of incest and plenty of wild dialogue. The film was originally released in 3D, which served to enhance the already over-the-top gore with disembowelled innards being thrust towards the audience.

The film was also released in 2D but was granted an X-rating in the US on its initial release. This poster is for the 1982 3D re-release and is markedly different from the original 1974 one sheet; the tagline leaves you in no doubt as to the audience the re-release was aiming for. I’ve been unable to determine the artist for this poster so please get in touch if you have an idea.

In the UK the film was released as Flesh for Frankenstein and was originally passed with an X-certificate with over 8 minutes of cuts. It was later caught up in the infamous Video Nasties debacle and was only finally released uncut in 2006.

The trailer is on YouTube.

During 1989, after four months of writing, the Coen Brothers experienced a period of difficulty in pulling the story together for their gangster-themed classic Miller’s Crossing and the pair decided to take a break. They traveled to New York from Los Angeles and during their stay there they penned a new script for a film set in a largely abandoned hotel in Los Angeles, with John Turturro in mind for the lead role. Once filming was complete on Miller’s Crossing the pair returned to the script and started to plan the production with the actor.

Set in 1941, the film follows the titular playwright (Turturro) who has seen great success with his recent play on Broadway and is persuaded by his agent that an offer from Capital Studios in Hollywood of a thousand dollars a week to write scripts is too good to pass up. Although Barton is worried that living there will make him lose his connection to the ‘common man’, which is what he feels give his plays their power, he reluctantly agrees and decides to stay at the almost empty Hotel Earle, rather than a more salubrious establishment. His room is dark, drab and devoid of any decoration save for a photograph of a woman in a bikini on a beach looking at the surf, which mesmerises Barton as he imagines the scene come to life.

Soon he meets the boss of Capital, Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), who promises him his total support and asks him to start off with writing a wrestling picture. Disappointed with the choice of subject, he returns to the Earle and sits down at his typewriter. Immediately he finds himself suffering writers block, a situation made worse by distracting sounds in the hotel and the appearance of his room neighbour, Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), who introduces himself as a traveling salesman and tries to help Barton to get back on track. Later he meets a famous novelist called W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney) who moved to Hollywood years before and has been writing scripts ever since, despite suffering from alcoholism and anger management issues. Mayhew’s long-suffering assistant, Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis) agrees to help with his script as the demands from Capitol grow stronger. After visiting his hotel room, Audrey and Barton spend the night together, but when he tries to wake her the next morning he finds that she’s been murdered and soon a pair of belligerent detectives appear in the lobby of the Earle.

The film clearly references a number of real characters from 1940s Hollywood but their characters are skewed just enough that it’s not libellous, and the ‘Sources, inspirations and allusions’ section on the film’s Wikipedia page gives a good rundown of the recipe for the Coens’ script. Barton Fink was a huge critical success and was the first film to win the Palme d’Or, Best Director and Best Actor at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Unfortunately, critical success didn’t translate into box-office performance and the film apparently failed to recoup its production budget.

This one sheet was created by the prolific poster design team at Concept Arts. They started out in London in 1972 working on printed material for film releases in the UK before eventually opening an office in Hollywood from where they still work today. Their official website can be seen here and indicates that they’ve diversified to also include digital, AV and social media campaigns. The gallery of their work on IMPAwards is very impressive and features 613 posters! To see the other Concept Arts posters I’ve collected click here.

Gruesome artwork for this one sheet for Bloody Birthday, an early 80s horror featuring a trio of demonic kids. From IMDb:

In 1970, three children are born at the height of a total eclipse. Due to the sun and moon blocking Saturn, which controls emotions, they have become heartless killers ten years later, and are able to escape detection because of their youthful and innocent facades. A boy and his teenage sister become endangered when they stumble onto the bloody truth.

You can watch the trailer on YouTube.

One of Clint Eastwood’s lesser known outings, Bronco Billy is nevertheless apparently one of the actor-director’s favourites amongst his myriad films. It was pitched firmly in the vein of his earlier Orangutan-featuring screwball comedy dramas, Every Which Way But Loose and its sequel. The studio presumably hoped to ape their success, but in the end the film failed to generate similar box-office numbers.

Eastwood stars as the titular Billy, the leader of a traveling Wild West show and so-called ‘fastest guns in the West’. Things aren’t looking too great for the show and go from bad to worse when they pick up Antoinette Lilly (Sondra Locke) a wealthy heiress who has been abandoned by her future husband. Antoinette must learn to cope without the luxuries she has become accustomed to whilst Billy struggles to keep the show afloat. Eventually the pair strike up a relationship, but it’s not long before Antoinette’s former life catches up with her.

This US one sheet features artwork by American Roger Huyssen, a commercial artist who has worked on advertising campaigns for some of the world’s largest brands, as well as magazine covers, packaging design and several movie posters. His website features plenty of samples of his work and this poster can be seen on there. He often partners with lettering designer Gerard Huerta (working as 2H studio) as is the case on this poster. You’ll notice both signatures are included on the poster.

It’s a brilliantly detailed and colourful design and works perfectly for the film it’s advertising. I particularly like the idea of using a billboard in the style of the Wild West show to display the film’s title.

The film’s trailer is on YouTube.

This is the ‘shopping cart’ style American one sheet for the 2010 documentary (or possibly mockumentary) Exit Through the Gift Shop, directed by the famous street artist Banksy. The film tells the story of Thierry Guetta an eccentric Frenchman living in Los Angeles who obsessively carries a video camera around recording practically his every move. Whilst on holiday he discovers his cousin is street artist Invader and thus begins an obsession that sees him tracking down and interviewing various other artists, including Shepard Fairey.

Eventually Guetta forms an obsession with tracking down and meeting the elusive and mysterious British artist Banksy, which is eventually possible thanks to a situation where Banksy is stuck in LA without his usual guide and Guetta happily steps in. Banksy later invites him back to the UK and allows him to film him in action as he recognises the importance of documenting street art with its short lifespan. A series of events see Banksy eventually taking over the editing of the documentary whilst Guetta devises an alter-ego artist called Mr Brainwash and sets up a near disastrous gallery show that is saved by friends of Banksy before going on to earn Guetta in excess of a million dollars. When asked subsequently if the events of the film are real, Banksy continues to say ‘yes’.

Another shot of the man with the shopping cart features on the unreleased style British quad that can be seen here.

With great art by Robert Tanenbaum, this style A one sheet for Galaxina features an excellent tagline and an even better logo. The film itself is an undoubted clunker and currently has a rating of 3.0/10 on IMDb. I love this excerpt from the main review currently featured on the site:

While the guys are in cryosleep Galaxina, who has fallen in love with Sarge, teaches herself to speak and makes her body warm and soft. Upon thawing him out she offers herself to him, saying that she’ll make his every wish her command. Then she is kidnapped by space bikers who are going to sacrifice her to the god “Har Lee David Son,” when she is rescued, they get the blue star, the end.

Sadly, Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten (Galaxina) was murdered just before the film’s release by her ex-boyfriend – more details on Wikipedia.

The bizarre trailer (Japanese version) can be seen on YouTube.

The brutal, brilliant ‘revenge’ drama Hard Candy is the film that put Ellen Page firmly on the map. Patrick Wilson is also excellent and perfectly conveys the terror that would fill any bloke faced with ‘that’ situation. The Japanese B2 features a still from the infamous scene.

This one sheet by Art Machine perfectly captures the mood of the film and is one of my favourite film posters of the last decade.

You can watch the trailer on Youtube.

This particular design by Drew Struzan was never actually used as a theatrical one sheet. It was apparently sold at later date. I’m not 100% certain that my copy is an original, although I do trust the seller I bought it from, so it’s hard to say for sure.

This one sheet, with brutal artwork by Joe Coleman, was supposedly withdrawn from cinemas and it’s not hard to see why.  I watched the uncut version of the film recently and, 25 years on, it hasn’t lost any of its shocking power.

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.

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.

One of George A. Romero‘s lesser known titles, mainly because it’s quite unlike any of his other output, this tale of a traveling troupe of motorcycle-riding jousters is often cited as one of his best by those that have seen it. This advance one sheet features superb artwork by the great Boris Vallejo. You’ll notice that the bike (a Honda CBX1000 apparently) has been rendered with careful detail and I’m a big fan of the tagline too. You might also spot that the title has been trademarked.

You can watch the trailer with or without a commentary from Mick Garris on the superb Trailers From Hell site.

This is the US one sheet for the first (and my favourite) Roger Moore-starring James Bond film, Live and Let Die, featuring artwork by the great Robert McGinnis. Along with the others in the series I probably saw the film on TV about fifteen times and can vividly recall many of the best scenes. Like British comedian and director Joe Cornish admitted when interviewing Roger Moore, his Bond films are responsible for many of my first ‘awakenings to the delights of the female form’ (being a young teenager at the time it would have been shown). The gorgeous Jane Seymour who plays ‘Solitaire’ is definitely responsible for putting at least a couple of hairs on my chest, as it were.

McGinnis is responsible for some of the best Bond posters, including Thunderball,  The Man With the Golden Gun and Diamonds are Forever as well as multiple other classic posters from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

You’ll notice that this particular poster has ‘East Hemi’ written at the bottom. This page on Learn About Movie Posters explains what the significance of that text is. An excerpt:

[Albert] Broccoli met with [Harry] Saltzman and tried to acquire the rights but Saltzman refused to sell. They instead decided to co-produce them. [….] After some success they decided to divide the production credits and entered into a contractual agreement for top billing and so was created the Hemi’s. [….] They divided the world into hemispheres. Harry took the East Hemisphere and Albert took the West Hemisphere. So Saltzman would get the European countries and Broccoli would get the Americas.

Brilliantly over-the-top artwork on this US one sheet for the equally over-the-top 1982 action flick, Megaforce, which was directed by former stuntman Hal Needham, perhaps best known for Smokey and the Bandit (his directorial debut) and The Cannonball Run. The film focuses on an elite squad of soldiers equipped with an array of advanced weaponry and vehicles (several of which are depicted on this poster) who lend their help to a peaceful nation that is being invaded by the hostile forces of a neighbouring country.

Prolific film and TV actor Barry Bostwick plays Commander Ace Hunter, the leader of the titular unit who, in one of the more infamous scenes, rides a flying motorcycle to escape death and rendezvous with his squad in mid-air. The film was a commercial and critical failure and plans for a sequel called Deeds Not Words were shelved indefinitely. It didn’t help that the film was released in the summer of 1982 and was up against the likes of Blade Runner (released the same day) and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (released two weeks before).

Apparently, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are huge fans of the film and there are several references to it in their 2004 satirical action comedy Team America: World Police.

I’m unsure who is responsible for the artwork so please get in touch if you have an idea.

The trailer is on YouTube (“The good guys always win… even in the 80s!”)

Artwork by the great Drew Struzan on this US one sheet for French director Jean-Jacques Annaud‘s 1986 medieval whodunnit, starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater in one of his first major film roles. Based on the book by Italian novelist, semiotician, philosopher and critic Umberto Eco, the film focuses on the investigation of a series of mysterious deaths in an isolated abbey by the monk William of Baskerville (Connery) aided by his novice Adso of Melk (Slater). The pair must race against time to prevent falsely accused suspects, including Ron Perlman‘s demented hunchback Salvatore, being punished at the hands of the inquisitor Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham).

Struzan’s portrait of a balding Connery is absolutely spot on and easily on par with the one he did three years later for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. According to IMDb, the presence of the ugly characters in the film (and on the poster) is due to Annaud “casting the ugliest actors he could get because he wanted the characters to appear “real”, based on the men in the village where he lived. When he returned to his village, some of the men asked him if he really considered them to be as ugly as the actors, and he said, “Yes.”

Several other international posters for the film, including this German one, depict Connery looking extremely serious and glum.

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

The original trailer is on YouTube.

Guillermo Del Toro’s sublime, fantastic fairy tale Pan’s Labyrinth almost had an official cinema poster by the great Drew Struzan, that is until the studio suits had their way. The poster you see here is from a special screening in London and the design was never actually used as a cinema poster in any country. The final American Pan’s Labyrinth one sheet can be seen here.

The full story of how Struzan and Del Toro worked together on the poster can be found in the fantastic book ‘The Art of Drew Struzan’, which is an absolute must-buy for anyone who who has even a passing interest in Drew’s work (it’s currently only £16.49 on Amazon UK and $23.07 on Amazon.com). The stories associated with each of the artworks are a fascinating insight into what it’s like to work with directors and studios during the creation of a film poster.

These excerpts are taken from the Pan’s Labyrinth section of the book.

Drew on the completion of the artwork:

Then the shit hit the fan – the studio never used the painting. It did wind up on a special vinyl issue of the soundtrack album though.

Once the image had been released online there were many who couldn’t believe that Drew’s artwork wasn’t used for the final poster.

They were having a press conference in Europe, and a reporter actually stood up and asked one of the suits, “How come you didn’t use Struzan’s artwork for the poster?” … The suit’s reply was: “We didn’t use it because it looks too much like art.”

That statement from the studio representative says it all really. It seems like they genuinely believe that cinema-goers won’t respond to illustrated posters any more and that the photoshopped monstrosities so prevalent today are the only way to sell films successfully.

This particular example of the poster was obtained from a very established and trusted poster dealer that had bought them from a contact in London, who managed to secure a few after the event had finished. I’m assuming it was for the UK premiere or a large press screening, but I’d love to know for sure so please get in touch if you have any more details. I’m certain it’s not a bootleg poster as it measures the standard size for one sheets, is printed on decent paper and the details are sharp when viewed up close.