Friday the 13th movie poster
After the movie Halloween ushered in the modern slasher horror film, the original Friday the 13th helped solidify the “horror boom” of the late 1970s and early 80s. (And also set the standard for a bit more gore than John Carpenter’s Halloween offered.)
To celebrate the long running horror series and it’s 25th anniversary, a new book about the Friday the 13th film series has been released: Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th. “Fully illustrated with over 500 never-before-seen photos, rare archival documents and production materials, this is the ultimate oral and visual memoir of the most successful horror franchise in the history of motion pictures.”
The original Friday the 13th movie poster depicts the unknown “mystery killer” by placing an illustration of a scene in the woods within the silhouette of the slasher. (This also illustrates a basic design challenge for many horror film posters: How do you depict an unseen or somewhat abstracted image of a movie monster/killer/villian/etc. that you cannot reveal the identity of?) The one-sheet’s camp scene is surprisingly busy for a “scene within the poster” depiction — the trees and leaves take on a “television static” quality — a blue tint and other-worldly glow around the killer’s body gives it almost a science fiction feel. The disparity of these traits should make the poster less effective, but the image still works; perhaps it helps that they emphasized the killer’s knife in hand by dripping blood onto the film title logo.
I own the original illustration, I have it hanging in my den (I designed it). This piece of art freaks me out every time I see it. Next to it, I have a similar piece but with an axe instead of a knife. Email me if you want to see it. Hangelikas at yahoo.com
Well, if you have images/scans to share, I (and everyone else) would love to see them. You can email them to me via the “Contact: Email” link at the very bottom of the page. (Or you could upload them to an image hosting service and post the link here.)
You mentioned you designed the poster — who was the illustrator of the Friday the 13th poster key art illustration?
The illustrators name was Alex Ebel. I think I am spelling his last name wrong. I sent you the images that I have. Enjoy!
Click on the URL to see the image of the other version.
http://www.fridaythe13thfilms.com/gfx/friday2painting.jpg
Harry, that site has a (misconfigured) “hotlinking” setting. Users will have to copy/paste that link in their browser to see that image.
Harry, Both you and Mr Ebel did a wonderful job. I have always liked the original Friday’s cover art. The design in your url looks like the artwork for part 2. Pretty cool.
http://www.artrosa.loland.nl
Just to be clear, the designer is Spiros Angelikas, my father. Mr. Ebel did a wonderful job on the “Phobia” poster as well. You can see the similarities in his work.
Harry Angelikas
Unfortunately, it is bit misconfigured. Ideally, hotlinking is supposed to only prevent direct “img src=” html linking of images from outside servers.
The link mentioned above:
http://www.fridaythe13thfilms.com/gfx/friday2painting.jpg
is redirected from ALL url requests, not just outside img src requests. In other words, you should be able to click on the above link and be taken to the image, not to the redirected “no hotlinking” image.
Perhaps the htaccess file is configued using a different hotlinking method than the on described here:
http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html
The reason this isn’t such a good thing is it also redirects legitimate requests like search engine spiders, etc.
The setting isn’t misconfigured… it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do :)
You don’t know how hard it was for me to find a great site like this that not only featured but gave background and artist information on some of these types of movie posters, ie, the handmade ones. I’m a big fan of what some might call the “old fashioned” tradition of hand-drawn / painted key art for movie posters. There are still a few done today, notably those for the STAR WARS prequels (past tense), the first HARRY POTTER movie and special edition DVD releases such as the one for THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, all by Drew Struzan, but unfortunately it is by and large not just an “old fashioned” art but a “lost art.”
My main interests are writing and filmmaking, but I’ve sketched and painted since I was trained in grade school and have focused on illustration in self-training over the last few years. I’d love to do this kind of work. I did keyart for the poster coinciding with my own self-written, produced and directed short film THE PILOTS’ LOUNGE in 2004 and for a documentary in 2006, but without official art school credit (again, training is from childhood and also self-administered) or representation I’m not sure how to advance further.
If any of you are interested in my stuff, I’d love to have feedback. Go to http://www.jdmoores.com/gallery.html, click on the “Gallery” link, sign the guestbook and /or e-mail feedback. I also have a new line of greeting cards I designed and am self-distributing at my online shop – http://www.cafepress.com.
My shop url was cut-off: It’s Woodlane Express – http://www.cafepress.com/wlexpress