I’ve posted elsewhere about lousy films that were promoted with great posters. This is the other way around – great film, really awful (IMHO) poster! This is the UK quad original release poster. I’m not a huge fan of photographic posters in any case, but what really bugs me about this poster is that the…
Hammer presents Dracula / The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
Once upon a time I used to listen to this pair of records quite a lot. The Dracula album has one side with an original vampire story narrated by Christopher Lee, whilst the other has ominous theme music from various Hammer films. The story had an intro that began with something like “you think you…
Dance With A Stranger
I have written elsewhere about how I am not normally a fan of photographic posters, but for this one I will make an exception. I really like the bold tinting and the minimalist, dramatic use of black space between the two main characters. I also remember the film (about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to…
Marnie
This is another poster I thought I had sold at auction and was glad to discover I hadn’t. Marnie isn’t the greatest Hitchcock by a long way. There’s been a great deal of debate about whether TIppi Hedren’s performance in the title role is deliberately mannered or just plain bad, and there have been…
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Here’s an original UK quad and a US re-release poster for this Steven Spielberg classic. I still have these, but neither are in the greatest condition, unfortunately. The UK quad is in the condition I bought it in – some tears and missing paper at the edges, which would be repairable if I were…
Film stills
I have never been particularly excited by film stills in the same way as I am for posters, but many people love to collect them. They are relatively cheap to pick up and easy to display. Back in the day, there was a thing called a ‘lobby card’, which was basically a hand tinted still…
The Curse of the Werewolf
This is one of my favourites of the posters I still own. I remember first seeing this image in an 80s magazine called ‘The House of Hammer’, which featured rather cool black and white comic strip versions of the classic Hammer films. These were really well illustrated and I have still got what I…
Spaghetti Western soundtracks
These are my original vinyl copies of some of the most memorable and distinctive soundtracks ever, created by Italian maestro Ennio Morricone, who sadly passed away at the age of 91 recently. Morricone composed all the music for this Sergio Leone ‘spaghetti western’ trilogy and many more classic movies. Even if you have never…
Dracula AD72
No, that’s not a typo above. This is a memorable (albeit late) poster for a not so memorable addition to the Hammer Dracula saga. Dracula AD72 retains a certain kitsch charm, has a very good opening sequence, set in 1872, and brings back Peter Cushing to the Dracula franchise alongside Christopher Lee, but after…
Room At The Top
I am not sure, but I do not remember ever seeing this film. It is one of the few posters I still own that is not either for a Bond film or a horror movie, and also one of the very few that features a photographic image rather than an illustration, which was quite unusual for…