Time for a double blonde bombshell overload with this great pair….of posters. I wrote elsewhere about The Seven Year Itch, in which a middle aged man lusts after his younger sexy neighbour. Well, the same actor (Tom Ewell) does pretty much the same in The Girl Can’t Help It, only this time instead of Marilyn…
Joan Of Arc / Intermezzo
Here are a pair of very old Belgian posters for pivotal movies starring the late, great Ingrid Bergman. By the time she made 1948’s Joan of Arc, she was already a major Hollywood star, having won an Oscar for Gaslight and appeared opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, her most famous role. She had also starred…
Stage Fright / I Confess
These are two Belgian posters for 1950s Alfred Hitchcock movies. Stage Fright (1950) is not considered one of the greatest Hitchcock movies, by any means. But it does have one very interesting narrative conceit (look away now, spoiler alert!) – the flashback that lied. Jane Wyman spends most of the movie helping Richard Todd escape…
This Woman Is Dangerous / Mommie Dearest
There’s no two ways about it – Joan Crawford had a reputation as an out and out bitch. I’ve not seen This Woman is Dangerous as far as I can recall, but it is a melodramatic noir thriller from 1952. I bought this poster cheaply because I thought it was a great image and with…
The Face Of Fu Manchu
Here’s a poster and a movie from a very different era…. I remember catching the series of Christopher Lee’s Fu Manchu movies on afternoon television in the 70s. They were obviously considered harmless escapist fare, suitable for kids. Back in the day, it was fine for a Caucasian actor to put on “Asian” eye…
Bridge On The River Kwai
Here’s a well-preserved Belgian poster for David Lean’s 1957 classic war movie. Personal story: I have actually been to the site where the bridge was built for the movie. It was shot in Sri Lanka, where I had the pleasure of living and working for a year. One sunny day, a group of us hired…
The Mummy / The Mummy’s Shroud
Here’s two Belgian posters for films in Hammer’s Mummy series. The original Mummy is supposed to be as something of a classic but my memory of it is that it was painfully slow and rather dull, notwithstanding it being one of the relatively few Hammer films to star both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing….
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…
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…
Brides of Dracula
Here are two very different posters I own for the same film. The first is a French ‘grande’ poster, which I bought many years ago at a movie poster fair in London. I always liked it but had nowhere to display it. (When they call it ‘grande’ they are not kidding – its 120 by…