Exploitation movie posters

My old Internet buddy Jeff is doing a cult movie special in his blog this week, which inspired me to to take the Exploitation Movie Posters book down from my shelf and thumb through all those wonderful poster.

The web-site for the book has a sample gallery in hi-res.

Karoly Grosz, The Universal movie posters

Universal horror poster artist Karoly Grosz is one of the most legendary poster designers of the 1930s. I'm not an expert on this guy, and there's not that much info available online, so you'll have to buy horror movie poster books or search for old universal horror movie posters in online poster shops like Movie Goods or Movie Poster Shop.

But i know that the poster for "The Mummy" is usually considered his masterpiece, and it IS a really awesome piece of work.

The Bride of Frankenstein (1931)


Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

The Invisible Man (1933)

The Mummy (1932)


The Old Dark House (1932)

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

John Ford's "Stagecoach"

I already posted that Stagecoach poster once, sorry about double posting. But it's one of the all time great movie posters, and I spent the evening watching this iconic 1939 John Ford movie for the first time since since I was... I dunno... 8 or 9 years old.

If you want to read a perceptive review of the movie you can go here - if you want a really deep analysis you can go Here.

Anyway, some of the other Stagecoach posters were more than decent too - here's a selection:

Short clip of the scene that introduces the John Wayne character, including awesome use of zoom:

More movie posters

More 30s movie poster, thanks to "The Film Posters of the 30s" book and the http://www.moviepostershop.com . Gorgeous stuff!

I'm trying (and probably failing at) not to sound like a conservative 'everything was better in the olden days' type of guy, but really... what went wrong? These modern and monstrous photoshop movie posters are SO ugly.

And as a special bonus - and old photo of that lovely "Love Before Breakfast" poster actually hanging in the streets back in the 30s. Yay!

The photo is available in hires at Shorpy's.

Film Posters of the 30s Part 1

I love the "Film Posters of the [decade]" series so much. They're some of my favorite books in my collection, and they're fairly inexpensive.

Here are some of my favourite 30s movie posters from the book, including both high art (Fritz Lang'" M" etc) , entertainment ("Robin Hood"), and some early exploitation films (S&M! drug vices!):