Posterwire.com is a movie poster weblog. From images of the latest Hollywood one-sheets to vintage movie posters, this film poster weblog hopes to offer a bit of insight into film key art.
An interesting film poster key art subject matter are the many creatures (and monsters) found in the “wild kingdom”. In honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday, we thought we would post a few images of movie posters featuring all matter of animals inflicting various types of terror, horror, and mayhem. So here is a poorly written paragraph with a lot of movie poster image links:
The deadly creature menace goes all the way back to the prehistoric era of dinosaurs (and in this case, fur bikinis). Many victims become worm food. Battle against an empire of ants. Overcome a swarm of angry bees or a single fly. There are creepy spiders. Dirty rats. Not so harmless birds. It may be raining cats and dogs. There are plenty snakes (without a plane). Kissing a few frogs might be dangerous. Watch out when the fish are biting. Speaking of biting, what is the difference between a crocodile and an alligator? An octopus may be one of the largest sea creatures, but the scariest of all sea life will always be sharks. Then again, some work really hard to avoid pigs. Others wonder if man descended from gorillas or (space?) apes. And don’t forget the lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!
Then there are the most dangerous creatures of all: man… or is it woman?
Dimension Films has just announced the studio will be producing a remake of the 1978 film Piranha. The original Roger Corman B-movie was directed by Joe Dante (and written by John Sayles), and features flesh-eating piranha fish being released into a summer resort’s rivers. On the surface, Piranha is nothing more than a Jaws rip-off. (Although, the tongue-in-cheek horror film does have its fans — including Steven Spielberg. The film even generated a sequel directed by a young James Cameron.)
The Piranha poster also follows the Jaws poster formula: swimming beauty on the water, in danger from said creature (with large teeth) from below. The Piranha poster illustration does invoke the right look — another example of how exploitation poster artwork was the great equalizer when compared to the advertising of big budget counterparts. After all, hiring a good illustrator wasn’t beyond the expense of lower budget films.
The illustrator giving the Piranha key art it’s teeth was artist John Solie. No stranger to exploitation film posters, Solie illustrated posters for some interesting 1970s films, including Candy Stripe Nurses, Shaft’s Big Score, and Soylent Green. Solie, speaking about his time working for Roger Coreman’s New World Pictures:
If they gave me as much of a free hand as possible to do the work, I didn’t care whether I was working for a B-movie company or a major. At New World, I’d go to lunch with the art director, he’d tell me the story of the movie, I’d make a drawing on a napkin, he’d approve it and I’d go home and do it. I never saw any of the movies, but I made the movie ads and they made a lot of money!
Peter Jackson’s King Kong may be getting all of the attention of late, but a lot of 30somethings may remember the 1976 remake of King Kong — or at least it’s menacing looking movie poster. Courtesy of infamous producer Dino De Laurentiis, the 1970s Kong film wasn’t short on the hype and bombast, even in it’s tagline:
The most exciting original motion picture event of all time.
Interesting copyline considering the film is a remake.
Perhaps the most effective part of the film’s ad campaign was the 1976 King Kong movie poster, featuring a memorable depiction of the giant ape by illustrator John Berkey. A science fiction illustrator who was best known for his impressionist style paintings of spaceships, Berkey was commissioned to do a King Kong illustration by Paramount Pictures even before filming had begun. An interesting choice for the Kong poster key art — Berkey produced a poster far superior to the film itself — the savage looking Kong straddling the two towers of the World Trade Center looks even more arresting than it did in ‘76. Since this artwork was pre-production, it bears little resemblance to the De Laurentiis remake: Kong looks nothing like he does in the film, both in size and appearance, and the daytime scene depicted on the World Trade Center doesn’t reflect the nighttime of the WTC scene in the film. (Would that kind of disparity be tolerated by film fans in modern Hollywood film posters?)
This King Kong poster was also the subject of a “remake” when the U.S. distributer of Godzilla vs. Megalon hoped to ride the wave of King Kong publicity with a Godzilla vs. Megalon poster depicting similar artwork of the two Toho monsters battling atop the two World Trade Center towers. (Which doesn’t actually happen in the Godzilla film itself.) Of course, King Kong and Godzilla have battled each other before, but we’ll save that for another time.
After a few leaked images and an advance poster, one of the first teaser posters for the upcoming King Kong remake has finally been revealed. Universal has timed the release of this one-sheet to coincide with the latest King Kong theatrical trailer.
As for a reaction to the new King Kong teaser poster itself — it really depends on how excited and/or impressed you are by seeing a high resolution digital image of the CGI King Kong himself. It does feel a bit like “look how hard we worked” — every digital hair seems to be just so. Personally, we are hoping that the rest of the key art campaign of the film might try to re-imagine some of the original King Kong posters. (Which isn’t out of the question, since director Peter Jackson has made very clear his affection for the original film, including setting his version back in the same time period.) Of course, the 1976 King Kong poster has it’s share of fans also.
With the recent announcement of another Jaws Special Edition DVD release of the Steven Spielberg classic film, Guido Henkel of DVD Review notes the Jaws DVD cover design “features the crappy new cover art that disgraced the previous release, showing a Mako shark as opposed to a Great White.” This kind of criticism seems a bit unfounded, since the shark as depicted in the poster art has never been a Great White or Mako shark, just an ungodly sized set of teeth bearing little resemblance to any real type of shark whatsoever. The artwork used in the Jaws DVD releases is a reworking of the original Jaws one-sheet art. (The updated DVD art was reportedly done by noted movie poster illustrator John Alvin.)
The original Jaws one-sheet was created by film advertising legend Tony Seiniger. Known as the “New York Yankees” of film advertising, Seiniger Advertising was one of the biggest forces behind movie posters for several decades. And no “Yankees” team would be complete without a George Steinbrenner, in this case company head and namesake Tony Seiniger. The Jaws artwork itself was painted by illustator Roger Kastel, and remains an icon of film related key art. It also launched Seiniger as the premiere ad design house in the film industry for many years. Despite the countless sequels, the original image of “Bruce” the shark about to devour the disproportionately sized nude swimmer remains an effective image.
