I love Blade Runner, but this is one movie that somehow has never seemed to be truly finished! Lots of films change significantly before release during the editing process, but Blade Runner is an example of the relatively recent habit of film-makers going back and tinkering with their movie after release. Steven Spielberg started something…
Bullitt
Before today’s Fast and Furious style CG-enhanced, gravity-defying car mayhem there was the car chase in Bullitt. It is rare that a movie’s reputation rests on one scene – but I think that’s very much the case with Bullitt. The first/only thing people remember about it is the iconic car chase around San Francisco, for…
Twins of Evil / Hands of the Ripper
This double bill poster is for two of the more memorable latter-day Hammer horrors. Twins of Evil had Peter Cushing and twin lesbian vampire sisters to recommend it, but skimming through it again recently on You Tube it all looks rather cheap and style-free. I’ve not seen Hands of the Ripper in years but…
The Outlaw Josey Wales
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…
Point Blank / Payback
These two hard-boiled thrillers make for an interesting movie pairing. Point Blank was released in 1967, starring Lee Marvin, directed by John Boorman, and is held up as something of a ‘noir’ classic. It is basically a revenge story. In it, a double-crossed career criminal, shot and left for dead, works his way up through…
The Seven Year Itch
I recently bought this great poster. It is for the German 1966 re-release of this 1955 movie and is, I think, the most striking original Marilyn Monroe movie poster design I have ever seen. This poster was designed by the German artist Dorothea Fischer-Nosbisch and is reminiscent to some degree of the Andy Warhol Marilyn…
Ben Hur / King of Kings
‘Sword and sandal’ movies are probably one of my least favourite genres. But they do make for spectacular posters! I will make exceptions for Gladiator and Spartacus, but in general these lengthy quasi-historical Roman/Biblical epics bore me to tears. They were however hugely popular in the 60s (and hugely expensive too – the excesses involved…
Zardoz / The Final Programme
These are two of the weirdest movies to come out of the UK in the 70s. I’m posting the Zardoz UK quad in memory of the late, great Sir Sean Connery, although in all honesty this is probably not the movie for which he would most like to be remembered! Zardoz was a sci-fi movie…
King Kong
The original 1933 King Kong has always been one of my favourite movies. I love everything about it, from concept to execution, and IMHO it still holds up nearly 90 years later. It was – and remains – a technical marvel of stop-motion animation. Animator Willis O’Brien managed to bring real pathos to an…
Live And Let Die/You Only Live Twice
One of these James Bond posters is an original, the other is a reprint. Can you tell which one is which? I bought these 2 posters together from a shop in Singapore, when I was living there. It was very unusual to find any places selling movie posters there, so when I saw these I…