Top Ten 1980’s Inspired Movie Posters

With the up and coming documentary about poster artist Drew Struzan coming to cinema screens soon, it seems that more and more people are interested in the movie poster as a valid and exciting part of the cinema going experience. Back in the 80s, poster art reigned supreme with some of the greatest examples becoming not only popular with fans, but iconic for film goers. Who can forget the posters for movies like Star Wars, The Goonies, Back to the Future, Big Trouble in Little China, and how these images bombarded our senses when we went to see a movie? It seems in the last few years that interest in the fine art of poster making has picked up again with some truly stunning pieces of art coming out for mainstream blockbusters. There has also been an interest in the 80s style of poster making. It has a very distinct quality with brass colors, fully loaded designs filling the screen with outlandish characters from the movie, or in some cases just posing down. Here are some eye catching examples, most of which are official alternative posters for mainstream films that have come out in the last few years.

So without further ado, let’s brace ourselves for neon lights and over the top action with ten of the best 80’s inspired posters…

10) Drive (2011)

 

Drive, with its thumping 80s soundtrack and gritty feel really caught the imagination of many cinema goers, and the original artwork for it is incredible. This early promotional piece gave us the cool factor that Ryan Gosling exuded in this film, but it also gives off a Miami Vice vibe with its bright, but not over powering, use of color and the sun back rising up from behind the cast.

9) Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

 

The poster that really started the ball rolling with a return to the grindhouse style of artwork found in cinema houses and video shops back in the early 80s. Sure the Grindhouse movies by Tarantino and Rodriguez (which spawned this film) did a great job of bringing this particular style back to the masses, but it was this gritty poster art that really got a lot of viewers’ attention. This poster just makes you take notice, even with its muted color scheme, it still manages to elicit a response. Many 80s posters had guns shoved into the viewer’s face and this is following in that long tradition. Below is one of my favorite examples of this style from an actual 80s movie…

 8 & 7) V/H/S and V/H/S/2

On first glance the poster for the great horror throwback V/H/S does not seem incredibly 80s, but when compared to the poster below for the 1982 William Shatner and Micheal Ironside horror thriller Visiting Hours, you can see they share a striking resemblance.

 

Now for V/H/S/2 they have gone over board with the poster art. There are tons of great promotional pieces out for this movie, but the key one was in the incredibly gory cover by ex-Walking Dead artist Tony Moore. It encapsulates the gory covers VHS stores used to use to grab viewers into to the store. It also bears a  resemble to one of the most notorious horror covers of all time, the cult movie Cannibal Holocaust. Not an exact copy, but the style is very similar.

 

6) The Heat (2013)

Now the more popular and incredibly generic posters that have come out for this movie in cinemas recently has come under tons of controversy due to the abuse of Photoshop to enhance one of the co-stars features. This could have all been avoided if the advertising department had decided to go for the more action packed poster shown above.  I had no interest in this movie up until I saw this poster that basically just told me that everything explodes in this film. Whether it does or not hardly matters because this is a great example of how to advertise a mainstream movie using poster art. Here is another great example of  how the 80s action flick used to use this very same method of presentation.

5) Rewind This (2013)

 

We have mentioned Adjust Your Tracking on Grizzly Bomb before and also Plastic Movies Rewound, but we have never really looked at the other recent VHS related documentary Rewind This, and it gives me great pleasure to present it here. It covers a mix of those other two documentaries and will definitely be one to look out for VHS fans. The cover is amazing and it looks exactly how I remember the 80s movie art. Horror pictures especially always had a hand sticking out the front. Look at this one for example.

Another great retro poster though not based on any film is this one for Video Nasties which I just threw in here as a companion piece for Rewind This just because it look to good not to include it.

4) The Last Stand (2013)

The film may have been a bit of a damp squib in the action department, feeling like a cross between Knightrider and Jackass in places, it did give us this great late 70s-early 80s style action poster which seems to follow the motif we have seen for many action movies past and present, the bomb exploding! It’s a great way to grab an audience’s attention and certainly got me to watch the movie.

 3) Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

 

Now it is easy to put a poster about video games into this article because of how many of the classic (and not so classic) 80s sprites popped up within this heart-warming tale, but what really caught my attention was this great poster actually showcasing Wreck It Ralph as a real life computer game coming soon to your local arcade. It’s the attention to detail which I found fantastic, and it reminded me of my childhood and seeing similar poster advertisements in issue of Crash magazine.

2) The Expendables 2 (2012)

 

The Expendables posters have always been full of testosterone, but this cover really gives off that macho 80s action movie vibe, with its collage of armored killers ready for action. This cover looks so much like a 80s action flick that someone decided to create a VHS cover and 80s style trailer for it!

Shame the film did not deliver on the action goods but it does not take any power away from the extreme cover which is an amalgamation of several different types of 80s poster. [Ed. Note – I disagree. Obviously.]

1) Manborg (2011)

By far the best cover on this list is for retro film Manborg, which takes the best elements of 80s cheese and rolls them up into a tiny package for a new audience. The cover reminded me of so many other covers from the dawn of the video shop era. Just look at some of the VHS sleeves for The Eliminators and Rotor and you can see where this cover got its inspiration. Absolutely stunning.

 

That was just a small taste of what’s around at the moment and websites like Mondo and The Alamo Draft House are making superb posters like this all the time. It has never been such a great time to be a fan of poster art. Here is hoping we get more and more examples of this type of art popping up in the near future.

A ‘Maniac Cop’ Prequel! Nicolas Winding Refn Involved, Hopefully Directing?

For the fans of shlock and crappy horror movies all around, there is no bigger name in the biz than Bruce Campbell. To them the man is a veritable living god, but even hardcore Bruce Campbell fans would have a hard time placing Maniac Cop as one of his better films in his oeuvre. But in it’s own right, Maniac Cop, and it’s two sequels, are all very successful at what they set out to be. All of them are fun, sometimes gory, always entertaining films about a cop, who is also a maniac. Or a zombie. Or half-dead braindead guy who was revived and somehow gained super strength from that. I have a hard time remembering, because I’ve never watched the film sober.

With a tagline like that, could YOU watch it sober? Didn’t think so.

Anyhow, the movie is one of those films that is undeniably cheesy, yet so memorable and enduring, that it manages to retain an audience years after its release. Which leads us to the headline news itself. While initially I thought Nicolas Winding Refn was remaking it, it turns out to be he’s producing a tentative prequel. Which I find a puzzling choice, since we had the identity and origin of the Maniac Cop explained in the original. Now nothing is definitely confirmed, nor is his actual status as director locked in yet,  but the likelihood of him deciding to helm it as director is not out of line. Truth be told, I’m hoping he comes around to the idea of just remaking it, since it’s one of the few films I can name off the top of my head, that would  really suit to being remade.  (The other is Logans Run. Holy crap that would be awesome.)

Nicolas Winding Refn is certainly a very talented director, who since his Pusher trilogy, seems to be finding a niche by very successfully imitating other famous director’s stylistic storytelling, cinematography, and aesthetic design. Valhalla Rising was a modern Ingmar Bergman film to its core, Bronson was a Kubrickian attempt at a bio-pic, and last year’s Drive was a breakout Michael Mann-esque, 80’s action movie through an urban noir filter. If there was anybody who could take a source material as cheesy and borderline laughable as Maniac Cop, and make it GOLD, it’d be Refn. He’s one of the few people to make Los Angeles look new again as he did in Drive, and I’d be very interested to see his take on giving new life to the streets of New York. Factor in the fact that he could pull off the whole mystery subplot of the original Maniac Cop much more competently, and in Drive and Valhalla Rising he effectively pulled off visceral scenes of gore, he’d be pretty much the perfect guy to remake it, and have it actually be really good.

Even if it does turn out to still be a prequel, it’ll at least be interesting to tackle the same ideas the original came from, and have it expand the depth of the franchise, even if it’ll be wildly different in quality from the other three. In a good way, I mean.

‘Logan’s Run’ Joining the Remake Train

Nicolas Winding Refn – the Danish director responsible for the Pusher Trilogy, Bronson, Valhalla Rising and the recent crime thriller Drive – is set to remake the 1976 SF film Logan’s Run. It will star Ryan Gosling – who was also the star of Drive – as the titular Logan.

 For those of you who haven’t seen the orignal film: it is set in a future city where everyone lives a life of pleasure, untill they reach the age of 30 when they are terminated. Logan is a member of the enforcers of this law, but ends up rebelling against the system.

The original film won an Oscar for its visual effects – they look quite dated now though. Winding Refn is hoping to use less CGI and rely more on sets and designs.

The film is to be scored by (the ridiculously monikered) Johnny Jewel. He was a collaborator on the Drive soundtrack. He, apparently, didn’t take much persuading, he was already a fan of the orignal – at his 30th birthday party he had a replica blinking gem in his hand, like in the film.

Grizzly Review: Drive

[pullquote_left]“My hands are a little dirty.”
“So are mine.” [/pullquote_left] That’s all it took for me. When the trailer came out and I heard that exchange between Albert Brooks and Baby Goose, I knew I needed to see this movie. And now, having seen it, I can tell you that the sheer magnitude of said exchange proves to set up the entire movie from there out, with neither participant fully grasping the effect they will have on one and other.

Brooks plays an L.A. gangster that agrees to invest in a race car, and subsequently a driver. This connection is facilitated by Shannon (Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston) who knows Brook’s character from way back, and who employs Baby Goose at his garage. They plan to make a mint letting Baby Goose race.

On the home front Carey Mulligan plays the girl next door, who quite obviously becomes the catalyst that triggers all the trouble for our beloved driver. Brooks’ partner is played by Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy) and the cast is rounded out by Christina Hendricks (This week’s Grizzly Girl) and Oscar Isaac. So the cast as a whole is great, but they are merely more than players in the much bigger story. It’s almost as if the story is moving on its own and the characters are just along for a ride. That’s how well this movie flowed.

Vince Mancini over at Film Drunk said: “Drive is Dialog-Free True Romance“. I can see where he would get that, as both Drive and True Romance are unconventional love stories with a crime element, and it even kind of felt like a Tarantino movie, just shot more beautifully and with almost none of the dialogue that QT thrives on. But for me, I think I’d say that’s only half right, and its more like a mix between True Romance and Punch Drunk Love. Never thought I’d say that…

Gosling pulls off the role perfectly, and the pacing, music, and cinematography all lend to an aesthetic that delivers a unique movie going experience. Not at all like the action movie some of the trailers made it out to look like, Drive is so much more than that.

In the end we are met with more ambiguity then I’d like, but overall I loved this movie. It’s one of those where you walk out of the theater with music that you’ve never even heard prior still resonating in your head. It’s a movie that can stick with you, unlike so many new films which are forgotten by the time you reach your car, this is one that will ensure conversation on the drive home.

4.5 / 5.0 Bears 

‘Hey girl!’

Hero Express – More ‘Man Of Steel’ Costume Pics, Marisa Miller gets R.I.P.D., and the Skrulls in ‘The Avengers’?

Welcome to Hero Express, your one-stop shop through the news filled world of superhero’s in Film, TV, Video Games and whatever else floats your boat.

This is the Hero Express for September 8, 2011: