’‘Black Christmas’ (Canada, 1974)

Every year around this time, Westgate Gallery‘s poster concierge extraordinaire Christian McLaughlin drastically cuts prices for his annual Black Xmas 50% Off Sale.

Anyway, my pal McLaughlin, a novelist and TV/movie writer and producer based in Los Angeles, is the maven of mavens when it comes to this sort of thing. You couldn’t even begin to stock a store like his if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking for in the first place, and if you want a quick (not to mention rather visceral) idea of his level of deep expertise—and what a great eye he’s got—then take a gander at his world-beating selection of Italian giallo posters. Christian is what I call a “sophisticate.”

He’s got a carefully curated cult poster collection on offer that is second to none. His home is a shrine to lurid giallo, 70s XXX and any and every midnight movie classic you can shake a stick at. But why would you want to shake a stick at a bunch of movie posters to begin with? That would be pointless. And stupid.

The Westgate Gallery’s Black Christmas 50% off sale sees every item in stock at—you guessed it—50% off the (already reasonable) normal price. At checkout your poster tab will be magically cut in half.

The selection below is only a very tiny sliver of what’s for sale at Westgategallery.com.
 

’‘Acid Eaters’ (USA, 1968)
 

’‘Don’t Look Now’ (UK/Italy, 1973)
 

’‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’ (USA, 1965)
 

’‘Lips of Blood’ (France, 1975)
 

’‘Lost Highway’ (USA/France, 1997)
 

’‘Master Beater’ (USA, 1969)
 
Many more after the jump…

‘School of the Holy Beast’ Japanese
 
We first discovered the extraordinary movie posters of
Westgate Gallery a few years ago.  Their annual Cruel Summer Sale is ending soon, but if you’re into such things and haven’t taken the plunge down their “macabre, salacious” rabbit hole, there’s still time to grab some incredible finds and bargains at 50% Off Listed Prices.  What makes Westgate Gallery stand proudly apart, beyond the insanely wide selection of 100% original pieces from all over the world, is the expertise of its poster concierge Christian McLaughlin, whose obsessively deep knowledge of classic, cult, exploitation horror, XXX-rated and Giallo films—and the posters created to promote them—puts his competitors to shame.  For Christian, offering merely cool, rare and eye-popping “wall-candy” isn’t enough — unlike other higher-end movie-art boutiques online, he wants you to know as much as possible about the actual films behind the posters, and in so many cases, you’ll find a wide variety of artwork you never realized existed for movies you love or have only heard about.

A quick survey of Westgate’s Recent Arrivals section reveals what may be their most impressive selection yet.  Where else can you find four different posters for the
1965 Russ Meyer/Tura Satana psychotic go-go dancer masterpiece Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill!?  We especially like the German one featuring full-color cartoon Satana art, from a 1980 re-release (they also have the original German release version)… alongside a hella-rare unfolded 40x60” for Dario Argento’s baroque splatter epic Suspiria, notorious Japanese nunsploitation classic School of the Holy Beast (if you think the poster’s wild, wait til you see the movie), a 46x61” and French Grande for minimalist 1974 John Carpenter sci-fi satire Dark Star.  Speaking of dark, how about convicted pedophile/sexual predator Victor Salva’s 1989 debut Clownhouse — produced by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Sam Rockwell?  Like clowns in horror films weren’t effed-up and scary enough already…

If you’re a Rocky Horror Picture Show cultist, a Kenneth Anger fan or both, point your peepers toward the very rare Japanese 20x29” beauties for RHPS and the Magick Lantern Cycle, refrain from drooling and remember they are, like everything else at Westgate, currently 50% Off (Discount Code No Longer Required)!  Christian’s obvious love for Italian shockers means not only choice oversize posters for everything from lurid trash (1974’s Nude For Satan; Jess Franco’s sinister and psychedelic 1969 Venus In Furs, with Eurotrash royalty Klaus Kinski) to arthouse transgression (Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Criterion-approved Salo, 1975), but also reimagined stunners for Michael Crichton’s Westworld (1973) and—let’s get super-obscure!—Eyes of Hell, the trippy 1961 Julian Roffman flick about a shrink and his patients bedeviled by an ancient nightmare-inducing mask that subjects its wearers to extreme hallucinations then turns them into murderers.  When shown in theaters, the mask sequences required 3D glasses… but no special equipment is required to bask in the glory of Sandro Symeoni’s wall-size 55x78”.

Of course one of Westgate Gallery’s specialties is painted/illustrated posters, both foreign and domestic, for adult films from the Golden Age of hardcore (1970-1989ish).  No wonder Robin Bougie tapped WGG for rarities to include in his essential coffee table book Graphic Thrills 2.  These saucy specimens superbly demonstrate the art of the tease — in an era long before anyone with a cell phone could access an endless array of pornography with titles like ‘Busty Stepmom’s Anal Gangbang’, the charmingly naughty 1-sheets for 1979’s Librianna, Bitch of the Black Sea (with its shamelessly phony “Filmed in Russia” claim), Punk Rock (1974), Lialeh (the first African-American porno movie, 1974) and Starship Eros (1980, complete with a C3PO-headed robo-stud) had the tough task of enticing patrons into their local Pussycat cinema while still maintaining enough decorum for exhibition on Main Street USA.

At the moment, Westgate also features a healthy assortment of softcore posters, displaying a wide range of styles from Pop Art (1968’s Big Switch, directed by UK future-horror maverick Pete Walker) to the old-timey carnival vibe of Switcheroo (1969) to the classic grindhouse delights of Ramrodder (a western roughie from smut-filled ’69—wink wink—costarring then-Manson Family members Bobby ‘Cupid’ Beausoleil and Catherine ‘Gypsy’ Share) and 1972’s Harry Novak spoof Please Don’t Eat My Mother, which devotees of Something Weird Video will fondly recall as the unauthorized raunchy redux of Little Shop of Horrors… in which the carnivorous monster plant enjoys a steady diet of nudie starlets, including chipmunk-cheeked fan-fave Rene Bond.

Let us assure you — the above sampling barely scratches the surface of Westgate Gallery’s remarkable collection, now numbering Over 5000 Posters… and be aware that several of their Recent Arrivals we planned to include in this post were snatched up within 48 hours of being listed.  Honestly, what are you waiting for?  Faster, pussycats!  Shop!  Shop!

The Westgate Gallery’s Cruel Summer 2021 50% off sale sees every item in stock at—you guessed it—50% off the (already reasonable) normal price. Discount is automatic at checkout. No code needed. Ends on September 21 at 11:59 PM PST
 

’Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! German Re-release
 

’Suspiria US 40x60
 

’Dark Star French
 

’Clownhouse Japanese
 

’Rocky Horror Picture Show Japanese
 
 
More after the jump…

’Baba Yaga’ (Italy/France, 1973) 
 
Every year around this time, Westgate Gallery‘s poster concierge extraordinaire Christian McLaughlin drastically cuts prices for his annual Black Xmas 50% Off Sale.

Anyway, my pal McLaughlin, a novelist and TV/movie writer and producer based in Los Angeles, is the maven of mavens when it comes to this sort of thing. You couldn’t even begin to stock a store like his if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking for in the first place, and if you want a quick (not to mention rather visceral) idea of his level of deep expertise—and what a great eye he’s got—then take a gander at his world-beating selection of Italian giallo posters. Christian is what I call a “sophisticate.”

He’s got a carefully curated cult poster collection on offer that is second to none. His home is a shrine to lurid giallo, 70s XXX and any and every midnight movie classic you can shake a stick at. But why would you want to shake a stick at a bunch of movie posters to begin with? That would be pointless. And stupid.

The Westgate Gallery’s Black Christmas 50% off sale sees every item in stock at—you guessed it—50% off the (already reasonable) normal price. All you have to do is enter the discount code “BlackXmas2020” at checkout and your tab will be magically cut in half.

The selection below is only a very tiny sliver of what’s for sale at Westgategallery.com.
 

’Cinderella 2000’ (USA, 1977)
 

’Dead Alive’ (New Zealand, 1992)
 

’Exhausted’ (USA, 1981)
 

’Femmes de Sade’ (USA, 1976)
 

’Man Who Fell To Earth’ (USA/UK, 1976)
 
More after the jump…

Black Christmas, Italian, 28x39”

Every year around this time, Westgate Gallery‘s poster concierge extraordinaire Christian McLaughlin drastically cuts prices for his annual Black Xmas 50% Off Sale.

Anyway, my pal Christian, a novelist and TV/movie writer and producer based in Los Angeles, is the maven of mavens when it comes to this sort of thing. You couldn’t even begin to stock a store like his if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking for in the first place, and if you want a quick (not to mention rather visceral) idea of his level of deep expertise—and what a great eye he’s got—then take a gander at his world-beating selection of Italian giallo posters. Christian is what I call a “sophisticate.”

He’s got a carefully curated cult poster collection on offer that is second to none. His home is a shrine to lurid giallo, 70s XXX and any and every midnight movie classic you can shake a stick at. But why would you want to shake a stick at a bunch of movie posters to begin with? That would be pointless. And stupid.

The Westgate Gallery’s Black Christmas 50% off sale sees every item in stock at—you guessed it—50% off the (already reasonable) normal price. All you have to do is enter the discount code “BX19” at checkout and your tab will be magically cut in half.

The selection below is only a very tiny sliver of what’s for sale at Westgategallery.com.
 

Abominable Dr Phibes, Italian, 26x37”
 

All the Colors of the Dark, Italian, 39x55”
 

Attack of the Mushroom People, Italian, 55x78”
 
Plenty more posters, after the jump…

The House That Dripped Blood

Christian McLaughlin, a Los Angeles-based TV writer/producer and the self-described “poster concierge” behind the online movie poster store WestgateGallery.com, is my new best friend. We’ve never actually met in person, but I do enjoy knowing that someone is out there who is impossible for ME to stump. Everything I mention to him over email, he already knows about. I suggested, for instance, that he watch the utterly batshit insane British soap opera Footballers Wives. Not only had he already seen all the episodes—and the spinoff series—he was pals with one of the cast members. Then he told me about a newer “women in prison” show from the same producers called Bad Girls that I’d never even heard of, and co-starring the main “evil bitch” actress from Footballers Wives as the same character she’d played in that earlier series who was now in prison!!! I sent him a link to an eBay listing for a poster for an Andy Warhol movie with Karl Lagerfeld and Patti D’Arbanville from 1973 that had somehow completley slipped by me and not only did he know all about it, he was selling the poster in his store.

I asked Christian to pen a guest post for DM about how he got started collecting movie posters and about why he’s now selling his incredible collection. This is what he sent me:

“OBSESSION” and “HOARDING” are such ugly words.  So let’s pretend they don’t apply here.  I was three years old when I scored my first movie poster (The House That Dripped Blood US 1 sheet), a freebie—but when you’re three, what isn’t?  My favorite stop on the frequent walks with my grandfather in Fort Kent, ME, was the Century Theatre, where I’d stare at the two posters (Now Playing & Next Attraction) on display in glass cases outside the box office, lingering as long as possible whenever there was horror involved.  I was so taken by the one-sheet cooked up by Cinerama Releasing Corp for a British anthology chiller starring Peter Cushing & Ingrid Pitt, I’m told I requested extra walks for a few bonus peeps at its lurid majesty, which features a long-haired beauty, the middle third of her face a toothy swath of bare skull, holding a man’s severed head on a tray.  One fateful afternoon on what had to be one of the final days of the run, theatre-owner Gilberte spotted us and came out to greet her dear friend (my grandfather) and his unnervingly precocious towheaded, rambling companion (me).  Apparently I then asked if I could have the poster when she was done with it.  Charmed or shocked, or both, she said yes, and soon after delivered this treasure to my grandparents’ door, thoughtfully enclosed in a stiff cardboard envelope, wrapped in a thin blue plastic shopping bag. 

Dissolve to Hollywood, California, 43 years later.  I still owned that poster—and roughly 2999 others.  My taste for horror was completely intact, but it had broadened to encompass all manner of salacious and macabre pieces of original movie art from a dozen countries, ranging from 13"x18” French petites to a ten by five foot 6-panel Italian billboard for the spectacularly sleazy 1975 Giallo trash epic Strip Nude For Your Killer (which I had foraged piece by piece from a mouse-infested pit of paper beneath a Roman antique shop in the shadow of the fun-hating cinephobic Vatican itself).  Finally allowing myself to splurge on linen-backing and archival framing to display the billboard and nine other large-format Italian Giallo posters with the panache they deserved, I had a moment of clarity while narrowing my Top 50 down to the ten I could fit on my home and office walls:  I could have five homes, two offices and an unlimited restoration and framing budget and I’d barely make a dent in this outrageously massive, meticulously archived collection. 3000 movie posters?!  I was out of my fucking mind.

The only sins I believe in were the ones overheated copywriters brazenly trumpeted across hundreds of these very posters, but if I’d remained in Fort Kent long enough for the Catholic church to wash my brain to their strict local cleanliness standard, I’d have a new sin for the popular Mortal category—-  allowing these amazing, beautiful pieces of Pop Art to languish in storage, when they all belong on walls, rolled-out or completely unfolded, to be enjoyed daily by like-minded connoisseurs of the salacious and the macabre.  Like one of those no-kill pet shelters everyone with a heart should lavish with donations, I was determined to find good, loving homes for all of them.  (And attempt to recoup a reasonable return on my what-I’m-too-terrified- to-actually-calculate-but-must-be-high-six-figures-minimum investment.)  So, two years ago, with the brilliance of friends/design-photography mavens Paul Ahern, Barry Morse & Beth Hall, WestgateGallery.com was born.  Named after my childhood porn theatre in Bangor, ME, whose painfully cropped ads in the local paper were my entree into the delectable poster paradise of the XXX Golden Age, this webstore answers Stevie Nicks’ question in a certain chart-topping Fleetwood Mac song: 

“Do you have any dreams you’d like to sell?”

Yes, Stevie, I do.  And through December 24, they’re all 40% off!

Yours truly,

Christian McLaughlin, poster conceierge
WestgateGallery.com

***

Here’s a selection of the posters for sale at WestgateGallery. This gallery is sort of a “beloved cult films 101” overview. If you’re looking for Giallo or golden age of porn posters, there are separate posts for those genres.
 

Tenebre
 

Re-Animator
 

Gummo
 

Torso
 
Many more after the jump…

‘The Night Bird is to porno what Studio 54 is to disco!’ Of course it is…

If you’re looking for just the right movie poster—one that simply screams YOU (or even someone else’s name)—then you should probably head over to our expert friends at the Westgate Gallery, one of the very best curated selection of groovy movie posters anywhere on the Internet.

Westgate Gallery—named after a seedy 70’s porn theater in Bangor, Maine—is now having a sale—and not just on their “Golden Age of Porno” merch, either, but the entire store (they specialize in cult films, XXX and particularly lurid Italian giallo posters) is 40% off. If you know someone who is a big cinema buff (or retro porn addict?) they will love a gift from the connoisseur’s dream selection at Westgate Gallery:

SILENT NIGHT, BOOGIE NIGHTS!   It’s going to be a Merry XXX-mas for everyone on your Naughty List!  Online original movie poster boutique WestgateGallery.com has just launched our 2nd annual BLACK THROAT FRIDAY 40% OFF ORGY OF SAVINGS!  With the largest collection of illustrated/art-style original XXX movie posters commercially available, you can follow The Erotic Adventures of Wall Candy from its white-coater/marriage manual-skanky storefront beginnings with Rene Bond and Tina Russell through the heyday of porno chic superstars Marilyn Chambers, Annette Haven, Seka, Veronica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Vanessa Del Rio, Desiree Cousteau, Constance Money and Serena through the heavily hairsprayed princesses of the VHS home-video explosion including Ginger Lynn, Lois Ayres, Christy Canyon, Amber Lynn & notorious fake-ID enthusiast/Redondo High dropout/amnesia sufferer Traci Lords!  Pick up saucy Pop Art classics by Chet Collom, Tom Tierney, Olivia DeBerardinis, Armand Weston, Elaine Gignilliat and mysterious airbrush queen Penelope, some for under $20!  And our exhaustive archive of large-format Italian posters for American, French, West German & Danish hardcore humpfests is a dazzling array of lush masterworks (and a few hilariously kitschy hair-salon stunners guaranteed to heat up any boudoir, by the same top Euro commercial artists—Enzo Sciotti, Mafe, Aller, Morini, Sandro Symeoni & Mario Piovano—responsible for the thousands of non-porn Italian posters.  Another WG exclusive:  an extensive collection of ravishingly restored, linen-backed one-sheets ready for framing, which, like everything else in-stock, are 40% Off through Dec 24.

 

‘Dental Nurse’—makes a great gift for your dentist or dental hygienist. Or maybe not. No.
 

‘il Vizio di Baby’ AKA ‘Baby’s Vice & Ramba’s Greed’
 

‘Proibito’ AKA ‘Babylon Pink’
 
More, more, more after the jump…

7 Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes  (Italy/France/West Germany, 1973)    d. Antonio Margheriti     Italian 4F Manifesto     55x78

You may recall last month, when—against my better instincts as a collector of these things—I recommended my new favorite online movie poster shop, the Los Angeles-based Westgate Gallery. Why spoil one of the least picked-over bastions of high-end movie posters on the entire Internet for myself, right? Well anyway, I did share it with our readers and apparently y’all turned out in force and picked the place clean.

But fear not, Westgate’s deeply knowledgeable self-described “poster concierge” Christian McLaughlin has unleashed over two hundred new sophisticated eye-popping wall coverings for your perusal and purchase. He obviously had to turn over a lot of rocks (many of them in Italy, from the looks of things) to find posters like the ones you see below. Trust me, you can search through eBay for thousands of pages—I do it all the time—and not find the gold like this passionately persistent and proficient poster prospector can.

And right now—as in right now and for the next seven days only, there is a 30% off Halloween sale—every item in stock—going on at the Westgate Gallery. Just enter the discount code HFS30 at the checkout.

Here’s a selection of some of the best from the latest crop of rare posters at Westgate Gallery...

Slasher Is the Sex Maniac  (Italy, 1972)  d. Roberto Montero     Italian 4F Manifesto       55x78
 

Jack the Ripper   (Switzerland/West Germany, 1976)    d. Jess Franco     Italian 2F Manifesto   39x55
 
Many, many more after the jump…

’Candy’ (USA/Italy, 1968) by Averardo Ciriello
 
Collecting movie posters can be a rewarding hobby—and even a lucrative one, too, if you view your collection as an investment that you’d be willing to sell later in life, after it has appreciated in value.

That’s what I try to tell my wife all the time! She’s never amused and resists my “charming rogue”/“Honey, can I spend some money?” puppydog act with a stone-faced sternness that makes me dribble away, chastened every time I run into her office with my laptop asking her to “Hey, look at this!” Because what she knows—and you don’t know—is that I really, really, really like buying movie posters. I have a lot of them. A lot a lot of them. Not hundreds upon hundreds, but certainly several dozens upon dozens of them. And the sad fact is, even with some of the beauties that I’ve amassed over the years, I have framed exactly one of them (a nice Magic Christian one-sheet that hangs in my office) while the rest have remained rolled and folded in my closet, safe, but unseen and under-appreciated.

See that nifty Italian 2-panel poster for Candy painted by artist Averardo Ciriello, above? I stumbled across that looking for something else a few days ago. And now it’s mine. I just didn’t tell my wife that I bought it. She’s probably finding out about it the same way you are. (I knew that if I asked, that she’d only say no. So I didn’t ask her!)

I got it via a Los Angeles-based high end poster gallery known as the Westgate Gallery. You can find their online presence at Westgategallery.com.

After the Candy poster was safely MINE ALL MINE I wrestled with the idea of sharing the Westgate Gallery and its wonderful wares with our readers. This is the kind of thing where you don’t want to tell too many people about it and spoil it for yourself. Yes it’s that good. Westgate Gallery—named after the Westgate Cinema, a porno theater in Bangor, Maine known to the proprietor during his obviously wayward childhood—is probably the single best-curated—and not at all picked over—high end movie poster gallery to open in recent years. Launched a bit over a year ago, the Westgate Gallery specializes in posters of Horror, Italian Giallo films, 70s and 80s “Golden Age of XXX,” classic cult films and basically exploitation films of any genre.

Westgate Gallery‘s poster concierge Christian McLaughlin, a novelist and TV/movie writer and producer based in Los Angeles, is obviously a total maven of mavens when it comes to this sort of thing. You couldn’t even begin to stock a store like this if you didn’t know exactly what you were looking for in the first place, and if you want a quick (not to mention rather visceral) idea of his level of expertise—and what a great eye he’s got—then take a gander at his world-beating selection of Giallo posters. He’s what I call a “sophisticate.”

Right now the Westgate Gallery’s flash sale has been extended through January 9th. Every item in stock is 40% off the (already reasonable) list price with the discount code “BF40” at checkout (that’s almost half off if you are bad at math.)

The selection below is only a very tiny sliver of what’s for sale at Westgategallery.com. In fact, 99% of these are culled solely from the horror and retro porn posters sections simply because I didn’t want to hip any of you motherfuckers to THE ONES THAT I WANT in the cult classics and Giallo sections.

Jean Rollin’s ‘Shiver of the Vampire’ (France, 1971)
 

’Grave of the Vampire’ aka ‘Seed of Terror’  (USA, 1972)
 

’The Pit’ aka ‘Teddy’ (Canada, 1981)
 
Many more macabre and sexy exploitation posters from the Westgate Gallery after the jump…