I’ve always been a big Clint Eastwood fan. This is my favourite Clint western, and one of my favourite poster images from his films.   

The movie is a redemption story, some say a Vietnam war allegory, of a farmer who becomes an outlaw when his family is murdered. He then makes a long journey back to becoming a farmer again, escaping his violent past to care for a new surrogate family of misfits. 

I saw this movie in the cinema when it first came out, and everything about it is terrific, from Clint’s laconic performance in the lead to the many excellent character actors in the minor roles. Unforgiven was the film that later netted Clint his Oscars, but I prefer Josey Wales.  

I had been looking to buy this poster image for awhile, but the US one-sheet proved hard to come by. (The UK quad is less appealing IMHO as it shoehorned the vertical image into a horizontal layout – a common issue with many posters which share the same artwork across different markets and formats.) So when I came across this Spanish version I thought it was rather cool, even though the paper stock quality is rather poor. For the non-Spanish speakers out there (me included), the tagline “valia por todo un ejercito” translates (loosely) as “an army of one”, which pretty much sums up the film.

I also have an Italian ‘photobusta’ for the same film, which I bought right at the start of my movie poster collecting journey, during an open-day at Pinewood film studios. The name rather says it all – these are quite common and are basically mini-posters with various photos from the film squeezed in, often tinted. It is not a format I love, to be honest, but some people collect them avidly. The title this time translates as “The ice-eyed Texan”.