Halloween Horrors (Painted Movie Posters)

It's Halloween, when all the ghosts and ghouls come calling (usually for chocolate), when the evenings are dark and the air smells of woodsmoke and the thoughts of us all turn to the idea of watching or reading something scary and creepy.

For my fifth Halloween post (following paperback covers, Top Trumps, VHS cover art and behind the scenes special effects shots), I've decided this time to go with something else I love, namely painted movie posters.  Looking at some of these again reminds me of being a young horror film fan in the late 70s and early 80s (when BBC2 began showing Universal horrors in the early evening), seeing gaudily gorgeous posters for films I wouldn't get to see for quite some time (and which, sometimes, didn't live up to my imagining of what they'd be).

So with all that in mind, enjoy this Halloween treat of posters that (very occasionally) promise more than they deliver...

1959

Produced by Gene Corman, this is the perfect horror film poster (something the Corman team did very well indeed).  I really want to see this, even though I know the monsters won't look anywhere near as convincing as they do here (which isn't saying a lot, I realise).

1963

I first read about this in Stephen King's Danse Macabre and couldn't wait to see it, though by the time I eventually did (late one night on BBC2, if I remember correctly), I was waiting for King's suggested last line.  He wrote that there was a legend of a lost ending, where Xavier - having plucked his eyes from their sockets - shouts "I can still see!"  Unfortunately, it's just a terrific rumour - Roger Corman said, in interview, that the scene was discussed but never filmed.

1965

There's so much to love about this film, it makes for perfect Halloween viewing.  An anthology film (an Amicus speciality), this features "Werewolf" with Neil McCallum, "Creeping Vine" with Alan Freeman (which is properly creepy, though it'd sound silly if I explained it), "Voodoo" with Roy Castle and his trumpet, "The Disembodied Hand" with Christopher Lee and Michael Gough lending real weight and "Vampire" with Donald Sutherland (and a cracking ending).  Peter Cushing plays Dr. Shreck in the framing story.

1970

A so-so film (it feels very long) but a great Arnaldo Putzu poster

1971

A brilliant poster from Vic Fair which does so much without really doing a great deal.  How could you not want to see the film are seeing this?

1972

Swinging Dracula on the Kings Road (with added Caroline Munro gorgeousness).

1973

Another terrific Amicus anthology film, well served by an Arnaldo Putzu poster.  This features "Midnight Mess", a creepy vampire story (with some great in-camera effects) with Daniel and Anna Massey, "The Neat Job" with Terry-Thomas, "This Trick'll Kill You" with Curt Jurgens, "Bargain In Death" with Michael Craig (and, in a nice touch, Robin Nedwell and Geoffrey Davies as two trainee doctors - they'd appeared together in "Doctor In The House", an ITV sitcom) and "Drawn And Quartered", with Tom Baker and Denholm Elliot (as well as Terence Alexander, who gets a bigger head on the poster) and some great views of early 70s London.  The framing device sees five strangers boarding a descending lift in a modern London office block.

1976

We can't be sure what H. G. Wells would have thought of this but surely, bearing in mind all the animals they could have chosen for the poster, was a giant chicken really the best one?

1977

Also known as "Shocklines" (the title I first saw it under, as a VIPCO release), I was first aware of it when I saw an advert in Starburst magazine.  The film itself is slow and creepy but those underwater nazis are as effective as the poster art makes them out to be.

1978

A cracking little horror film (you'd be better off with this than the remake), Joe Dante is on top form with a John Sayles script, make-up effects by Rob Bottin and piranha effects by Phil Tippett, amongst others.

1981

Unnerving, dark, claustrophobic and frightening, this is an excellent film (which I wrote about, in detail, here) that was unfairly classed as a Video Nasty for while.  Best seen knowing very little about it, you're wrong-footed from the start and all the way through.  Great stuff.

1981

There's never a great deal of subtlety in a Lucio Fulci film but they're all the more fun for that.  I first saw this on a VIPCO tape (and if you remember that label and their claims, then you'll understand why I thought it was a confusing mess), re-watched it on another label and liked it a great deal more.

1981

A wonderful Graham Humphreys poster for a funny little film that was, sadly, a bit out of step with the times for when it was released (though it did get a Look-In cover).

1987

Graham Humphreys again, giving us some of the highlights from Sam Raimi's bizarre and very funny sequel.

1987

A clever and fairly subtle poster for a darkly intense and unsettling modern vampire tale, long before those creatures of the night got all spangly and sparkling.  I love the film (especially the uncomfortable sequence in the bar when you suddenly realise that everyone's in trouble) and I think this poster serves it well.


Happy Halloween!

The Art Of British Comics (in the 70s) - part 4

In his excellent autobiography about editing 2000AD and others, The Mighty One, Steve MacManus writes that the traditional age range for comics readers in the late 70s was the 8-12's (making my golden period 1977- 81).  Looking back at that period of British comics reveals a lot of impressive cover art, much of which remains vivid in my mind.

Since my previous posts (in 2018, 2019 and 2020) I've collected a few more issues and I'm still struck by the high quality of the artwork, both for the strips themselves and the covers and it's a real shame you don't see this kind of thing any more.

So, to once again make up for the lack of hand-drawn colour on comic shelves these days, here's another selection of covers from the 1970s (and sneaking into the 80s).

Enjoy...

My favourite childhood comic, I wrote an appreciation of Bullet which you can read here

I wrote an appreciation of Starlord, which you can read here

I wrote an appreciation of Tornado, which you can read here

I wrote an appreciation of The Crunch, which you can read here

Misty gets absorbed...

"Exciting news for all girls who like a good read", code for "your favourite comic is about to disappear".  In this case, this was the last issue of Jinty before it was absorbed into Tammy

If you enjoyed this, I'd highly recommend Great News For All Readers and A Resource On Jinty, two excellent comic blogs

Even More Look-In Cover Art

Look-In, 'The Junior TV Times', was a much loved magazine of my childhood (I wrote a Nostalgia post about it in 2016), which helped develop my love for The Six Million Dollar Man, Blondie and behind-the-scenes stuff, amongst other things.  It also featured painted covers, mostly by Arnaldo Putzu, an Italian artist working in London who made his name creating cinema posters for the likes of Morecombe & Wise, Hammer (Creatures the World Forgot and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), the Carry On series and Get Carter (which I wrote about here).

Looking back over the old covers was wonderful (often reminding me of things I'd completely forgotten about) and I posted some of them in 2018 with a follow-up in 2019.  Now, with little encouragement needed (as ever) and a special focus on 1980 (all of forty years ago), here's another small selection of that wonderful artwork.

Enjoy.

While I don't recall seeing this at the time (I was only six), I vividly remember the TV show (as I wrote about before) and collecting the Topps cards with my friends

Look at all that action!

Does anyone remember Flintlock?  Judging by their coverage in the magazine, they must have been big at the time...

I haven't seen it in decades (and not sure it'd be wise to revisit it) but I loved The Man From Atlantis.  I used to use plasters to simulate the webbed skin on my fingers

This shows how long it used to take films to get to TV, as the big Bond film for Christmas 1978 was Diamonds Are Forever (released in 1971)

Was it just me that found Worzel Gummidge terrifying at times (especially when he pulled off his head)?

On a Saturday morning I would often flick between Tiswas and Swap Shop - I liked the anarchy (without, at that time, understanding the concept of it) of the former and the more orderly nature of the latter

Ah, Sir Roger and the excellent "For Your Eyes Only", which I wrote about here

for more, there's a great Look-In archive on Facebook here

Bullet Comic Art

My collection of Bullet comics is slowly growing and I'm thoroughly enjoying the process, picking copies up from here and there.  I found a copy on ebay this week and it occured to me that it's been a while since I showcased some of the covers on the blog.

Bullet, my favourite comic growing up (I wrote a retrospective on it here), was launched by D. C. Thomson on 9th February 1976.  ‘Packed with action stories - fast and furious’, the figurehead and main character, Fireball, promised readers “rough, touch action stories” and the comic duly delivered.  Focussing on action and adventure, science fiction, sport and war, this popular boys comic ran to 32 pages and cost 7p an issue.

  

As well as the decent array of stories, the comic featured Fireball Calling, a letters page that included trivia, password messages and competitions.  Readers letters got a Fireball t-shirt and the letter of the week won an electronic pocket calculator, which was a big deal then. There were also sports profiles, mostly featuring footballers and fact files, while the back pages often carried “A to Z” entries on various topics.

Me, in 1981, proudly wearing the Fireball jumper knitted by my aunt

The Fireball Club (which you could join for 25p, postal orders only please) gave you the Fireball story (which also acted as the decoder for the Top Secret messages in Fireball Calling) in a red plastic wallet, an ID card and, best of all,  the Fireball ‘Flaming F’ pendant (which was not only very cool, it was worn constantly by Fireball and saved his life on occasion).  I wore mine with pride.

Bullet’s fine run ended with at issue 147 on 2nd December 1978 (as I wrote about here), when it merged with Warlord, a linked comic from the same publisher.  I read it for a while even though, as was often the case, most of the strips I enjoyed didn’t make the transfer while the rest quietly faded out as the weeks or months rolled on.

Reading it back now, more than forty years later, it’s still great fun and I’m thoroughly enjoying the nostalgic blast - in fact, I’m turning some pages and seeing a host of images that instantly push me back to the late seventies.