Excellent artwork for this entry into the 1970s Blaxploitation genre. Hit Man was based on the novel Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis that had been previously filmed as the British classic Get Carter a year before this.
Check out the superb trailer on YouTube.
This particular poster is the 30×40 version, printed on thicker paper and typically used for drive-in screenings or at larger cinemas. You’ll notice that the NSS and copyright information at the bottom has been cut off, probably due to a printing error (it hasn’t been trimmed).
Steven Spielberg’s folllow up to JM Barrie’s classic Peter Pan story featured Robin Williams playing a grown-up Peter Pan, now called Peter Banning and working as a corporate lawyer, who has forgotten his life in Neverland. Whilst visiting England his two children are kidnapped by a mysterious stranger and it’s not long before Tinkerbell [Julia Roberts] appears to return him to the world he once knew so that he can reclaim his youthful spirit and save his family.
The film was roundly panned by critics but was nevertheless considered a box-office success (with worldwide takings over $300 million) and is one of those films that splits audiences in two. Today, Hook continues to have as many fans as it does detractors, with some calling it Spielberg’s worst film and others lauding it as a misunderstood classic.
Whatever people thought of the film there’s no question that this final release poster by Drew Struzan was a definite success. It followed a very minimal teaser poster by John Alvin, which doesn’t even feature the name of the film. In his must-have book ‘The Art of Drew Struzan’, the artist talks about the creation of the poster:
‘We had a very long time to work on it, and you know what means: I wound up recombining heads, seemingly forever. ‘Round and ’round, for more than six months; everybody at Sony who needed to stake a reputation had an opinion on what the poster should be.
Nevertheless, Drew used the strong relationship he had built with Spielberg on previous projects to make sure his designs were seen by the director:
(…) I took each group of drawings directly to Steven. The first time, I walked onto the set where they were shooting Peter Pan in the tree stump. Steven stopped everything after he called “cut”, we laid out all the art on this huge table, and he stood there for like half an hour talking with me about it. Now, the cost-per-minute budget on a movie this big is how much? But Steven can do what he wants.
Not everyone was happy with the work in progress, as Drew recalls:
Dustin [Hoffman] said, “It’s not that I don’t like my portrait – it’s beautiful. But I don’t think it’s my character”. He wanted Hook to look “less villainous”. So off I went to Dustin’s house (…) we’re walking and taking and suddenly he goes into Actor Mode to explain what he wants (…) Finally I had to paint out a third of the picture and redesign it. He loved it. They all loved it.
Drew clearly loves the design but he notes that, in a twist of Hollywood madness, the poster wasn’t actually in cinemas until a week after the film opened.
The book (which is also available on Amazon.com and from all good bookshops) features many different versions of the poster before this one was ultimately chosen. Only Drew could have nailed the faces, particularly those of Williams and Hoffman, as well as this.
To see a gallery of the other posters by Drew I’ve collected click here.
The original trailer is on YouTube.
I believe this to be the US re-release one sheet for Joe Dante’s 1987 sci-fi comedy in which Dennis Quaid plays a test pilot who is shrunk to miniature size and accidentally injected into the body of Martin Short. The film is definitely one of the high points in the myriad of high-concept films of the 1980s and I rate it as one of Joe Dante’s best films.
It’s definitely not from the time of the first release and the text ‘Inner’s out again… for the millions who are going to love it’ leads me to believe the film may have been given a wider release, perhaps a few months after it first opened. If anyone knows this for sure please get in touch.
The artwork is by one of my favourite American artists, Dan Goozee, and the other posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.
To see the other posters I have collected for Innerspace click here. The original trailer is on YouTube.
John Alvin artwork features on this advance US one sheet for Joe Dante’s 1987 sci-fi comedy in which Dennis Quaid plays a test pilot who is shrunk to miniature size and accidentally injected into the body of Martin Short. The film is definitely one of the high points in the myriad of high-concept films of the 1980s and I rate it as one of Joe Dante’s best films.
This design was also used for the ‘final’ one sheet and I feel is up there as one of Alvin’s most memorable designs of the period.
The other posters I’ve collected with artwork by Alvin can be seen here.
To see the other posters I have for Innerspace click here. The original trailer is on YouTube.
