Nicolas Winding Refn’s superb neo-noir Drive ended up at the top of many ‘best of 2011’ lists, including my own, and there were few films released last year that matched it for sheer cinematic cool. The nameless protagonist was played by Ryan Gosling who suddenly found himself rocketing to the top of the Hollywood hot list, helped in no small part to the silk ‘Scorpion’ jacket and toothpick his near-silent character sports throughout the film.

At the time I, along with many others, felt that the official US one sheet failed to capture the spirit and feel of this supremely stylish film and its release felt like something of a missed opportunity. Thank goodness, then, that the talented graphic designer and illustrator James White (AKA Signalnoise) also felt this way and took it upon himself to design a fitting poster for the film. The results speak for themselves and James’ use of a single image from the opening sequence of ‘cat and mouse’ (as seen in this clip) combined with the striking neon colours is the perfect distillation of the film into one frame.

The poster was designed as a personal project and something of a tribute to the film but, thanks to the effort of James’ agent, Ollie Judge, James was able to gain permission from the film’s rights owners and print the poster as official merchandise to sell on his website.

I was lucky enough to be sent this first edition late last year that was printed as a limited, not-for-sale run before the rights had been secured. You’ll notice the text at the bottom of the poster that confirms this.

See this blog post on my site for and interview with James and details on the making of this awesome poster.

The official poster will be available to purchase online on Thursday, January 19 at 1pm EST. The poster will be activated in the Signalnoise Store at that time. I will have 300 copies of the 22″ x 28″ poster for $50 along with a super limited 30 copies of the 24″ x 36″ poster for $90.

The trailer for Drive can be watched on YouTube.

Richard Pryor was clearly seen as a major draw for audiences who were contemplating going to watch the third entry in the Christopher Reeve series of Superman films, and the artwork on this US advance one sheet was reused for the final design. In the end, the inclusion of the infamous comedian proved one of the films biggest flaws since most of his scenes involved slapstick comedy, and his character’s daft antics serve to almost completely eradicate any of the gravitas the previous films had manage to establish. Pryor had appeared in a string of successful comedies during the early 1980s, including Stir Crazy (1980), but his casting in this film apparently came about after he mentioned on a US talk show how much he’d like to appear in a Superman film.

Richard Lester, the director who had completed work on the troubled Superman II after Richard Donner had been fired, took on directing duties for the sequel. The story sees Pryor’s computer ‘genius’ Gus Gorman blackmailed into using his skills for wealthy megalomaniac Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn), whose various plans for world domination are foiled by Superman. After attempting to cripple the superhero with synthesised kryptonite, the plan goes awry when a key ingredient is missed and, rather than stopping him, the material causes Superman to turn into an evil incarnation of his former self. This ends in a battle between the righteous Clark Kent and the malicious Superman and after successfully defeating his alter-ego, the good Superman heads to Webster’s lair in the grand canyon where a giant supercomputer built by Gorman almost succeeds in defeating the hero.

The film features a sequence that terrified me when I watched it as a child, which sees the supercomputer turning self-aware and forcefully changing Webster’s sister into a bizarre cyborg creature.

The poster art is credited to 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 he was the artist who painted the famous portrait of Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld. He apparently passed away in 2004.

The late artist John Berkey painted a scene from the finale on the international one sheet.

This 1974 Canadian horror, originally produced and released as Black Christmas, is often credited as being the first in the slasher sub-genre that went on to spawn countless others in the years that followed, including John Carpenter’s Halloween and Friday the 13th. It was one of the earliest films to feature the concept of a mysterious psychopath hunting down and murdering teens one by one, and it also was one of the first horrors to feature scenes shot from the killers point of view. Director Bob Clark was an American who worked in Canada for over a decade, producing some of the country’s most successful films, of which this was the highpoint. He had previously helmed the low-budget zombie horror Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1973) and would later see great success with the teen comedy Porky’s (1982) and the classic A Christmas Story one year later. Clark was tragically killed along with his son in a head-on car crash in 2007.

Although the film had seen great success in Canada with its production title of Black Christmas (for its release in 1974) the American distributor Warner Bros apparently changed the title to Silent Night Evil Night (and later Stranger in the House) because it feared audiences would think the film was an entry in the then burgeoning blaxploitation genre. After flopping in its first release in the USA (in 1975), the title was later changed back to Black Christmas and the posters that had already been printed with ‘Silent Night…’ had a snipe with the original title glued over the top, as can be seen on this one sheet.

The artwork is by the American artist Robert Tanenbaum. To see other posters I’ve collected by him click here.

One of my top three Coen brothers films (with ‘Fargo’ and ‘The Big Lebowski’) and probably my favourite Nic Cage performance (the other contender being ‘Wild at Heart’), I like the simplicity of this US one sheet. I’ve been unable to find out the artist so if anyone knows could you please get in touch or leave a comment.

You might spot a strange looking stain on the bottom of the poster. I’m unsure of its origin, but I like to think Leonard Smalls had something to do with it.

The original trailer is on Youtube here, although it doesn’t do the best job of selling this classic film.