FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Black Xmas: Half off classic cult movie posters sale (for the weirdos on your Xmas shopping list)
12.13.2021
08:05 pm
Topics:
Tags:


‘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…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
12.13.2021
08:05 pm
|
Creepy, Sleazy & Well-Hung: Wicked Wall-Candy from Cult Movies, Sex Flicks and Bloody Slasher Films
09.09.2021
03:54 pm
Topics:
Tags:


‘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…

READ ON
Posted by Moulty
|
09.09.2021
03:54 pm
|
Black Xmas poster sale: Half off classic cult movie posters (for the weirdo on your shopping list)
12.08.2020
07:02 pm
Topics:
Tags:


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…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
12.08.2020
07:02 pm
|
A Poster Parade of Plague & Post-Apocalyptic Pandemonium
05.28.2020
03:55 pm
Topics:
Tags:


Cafe Flesh,’ US 1 sheet for sale at Westgate Gallery

The world wasn’t supposed to end like this.  Not if you were brought up, like we were, on the most deliciously lurid horror and exploitation films of the 1960s - 1980s.  As a global society, we’ve been bracing for nuclear annihilation since 1945.  Whatever was left of civilization would crumble into scattered, desperate pockets of humanity, mentally and physically scarred, and as depicted in the smash-hit Australian Mad Max trilogy, and the subsequent wave of cheaper, wilder Italian post-apocalyptic ripoffs like Warriors of the Wasteland (aka New Barbarians, 1981), traffic laws and vehicular safety regulations would become a distant memory as aggro alphas battled for precious petroleum to fuel outlandish road-machines used to subjugate the weak, who could look forward to imprisonment, slavery and rectal trauma at the merciless hands (and wangs) of sneering brutes in scavenged ensembles of Folsom Street finery.  And that’s if a new breed of fiendishly clever mutated super-rodent didn’t rise from the ruins of a decimated metropolis (or the Cinecitta Studios backlot) to finish off you and your punked-out pals in a variety of unpleasant, micro-budget ways, as in Bruno Mattei’s 1984 Rats: Night of Terror.

“Social Distancing’ was taken to then-new and overheated heights in the 1982 Stephen Sayadian/Jerry Stahl cult classic Cafe Flesh.  In this remarkable, highly stylized bone-bender — part-Cabaret, part-MTV, part-porno chic — after the ‘Nuclear Kiss,” 99% of the population cannot touch another person without immediate and severe nausea, so the remaining 1% — including studly circuit-star Johnny Rico (Kevin James — not the one from King of Queens) are governmentally conscripted to perform together in subterranean cafes for the huddled, irradiated, voyeuristic masses (including a youngish Richard Belzer).  Nick and Lana (fan fave Michelle Bauer aka Pia Snow), “the Dagwood & Blondie of Cafe Flesh”, find their loving asexual coupledom threatened by a sordid secret — Lana’s actually sex positive — and yearning for some good, hard, old-fashioned nookie! 

Before COVID-19 we were, of course, familiar with the concept of a pandemic — but a different, more dynamic, unambiguous, way less meh pandemic, rendered in clear black and white, with accents of dripping blood-red.  George Romero set the new bar in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead: the at-risk demo was limited to fresh corpses, who promptly rose up and sought out healthy humans to consume — an army of indiscriminate cannibals, unstoppable short of fire or a bullet to the head.  Romero cemented the modern zombie template in his stunning full-color sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978), Tom Savini’s jaw-dropping gory makeup effects compelling young horror fans to evade the unrated film’s self-imposed “No One Under 17 Admitted” by any means necessary.  Produced by Euroshock maestro Dario Argento, Dawn did especially phenomenal box-office in Italy, igniting a Spaghetti Splatter subgenre kicked off by Lucio Fulci’s expertly crafted, pulpy, EC Comics-flavored Zombie (1979) and Antonio Margheriti’s 1980 Invasion of the Flesh-Hunters (aka Cannibal Apocalypse). 

With the steady onslaught of gut-munching imports eagerly savored at local grindhouses, on pay-TV channels after dark, or as VHS and (briefly) Betamax “Video Nasties,” in 1985 Hollywood responded with glossier, widely released fare like Dan O’Bannon’s Romero-unrelated Return of the Living Dead, Fred Dekker’s retro revenant rodeo Night of the Creeps, and Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce, a Cannon/UK co-production that detailed in big-budget, MPAA-baiting graphic detail a world apocalypse via extraterrestrial vampires led by foxy, frequently naked Mathilda May.  It’s amassed a heavy cult following since bombing at the US box office — if Cannon had used any of the skull-frying Italian poster designs, things could’ve been quite different.

Let’s not forget that being dead was hardly an iron-clad prerequisite for succumbing to contagion — in a dizzying, nerve-shredding array of terror triumphs rampaging across screens both large and small, characters in surgical masks weren’t speculating about coughing Whole Foods co-shoppers.  Plague victims wore it loudly, proudly and homicidally, whether infected by tainted meat-pies in the gleefully disgusting shocker I Drink Your Blood (1970); a sexually transmitted parasite in David Cronenberg’s body-horror debut They Came From Within (aka Shivers, 1975), or a stinger concealed in the silky armpit of Marilyn Chambers in his equally ferocious 1977 follow-up Rabid; or guzzling bargain-priced hooch from a Skid Row liquor mart that’s not only corrosive to the liver… we get liquefied, exploding winos, as it wipes out Street Trash (1987) more efficiently than a fun-hating, Deuce-phobic NYC mayor.

For many of us, being trapped at home these many weeks has triggered re-decoration impulses, and now Dangerous Minds’ favorite original movie-art webstore, WestgateGallery.com, has it made it frightfully easy.  All of the posters seen here, as well as their entire massive international inventory of rare gems, are now 50% off for a limited time only, by using the discount code CRUELEST20 at checkout… and as part of their biggest-ever summer sale, they’re offering further incentives to sweeten the deal: spending various amounts ($400/750/1000) unlocks escalating bonus store credit ($100/250/600) — meaning $1000 buys you $3200 in list-price wall-candy. Displaying any of these posters is the perfect way to commemorate surviving COVID-19… and if we’re all doomed, then why the hell not splurge? 


Dawn of the Dead,’ Italian 4F, 55” by 78”


Escape from New York,’ Japan, 20” by 29”


‘I Drink Your Blood,’ Italian 2F Manifesto, 39” x 55”


Invasion of the Flesh Hunters,’ Japanese B2, 20” x 29”

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Moulty
|
05.28.2020
03:55 pm
|
Black Christmas movie poster sale: For the film snob (or weirdo) on your holiday shopping list
11.24.2019
06:31 pm
Topics:
Tags:


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…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.24.2019
06:31 pm
|
The lurid world of cult movie posters
07.12.2019
04:46 pm
Topics:
Tags:


Italian movie poster for ‘Profondo rosso’ for sale at Westgate Gallery
 
Every year around this time, Westgate Gallery‘s poster concierge extraordinaire Christian McLaughlin drastically cuts prices for his annual Cruel Summer 50% Off Sale. Why that’s almost half off, even…

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 silly!

The Westgate Gallery’s Cruel Summer 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 “CRUEL2019” at checkout and your tab will be magically cut in half.
 

The Pit’ aka ‘Teddy’ (Canada, 1981)
 

‘Andy Warhol’s Dracula’ poster for sale at Westgate Gallery
 

Rare Japanese ‘Sisters’ poster for sale at Westgate Gallery
 

‘Pets’ poster for sale 50% off at Westgate Gallery
 

Jess Franco’s ‘Lorna the Exorcist’ (France, 1976)
 
Many, many more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.12.2019
04:46 pm
|
Black Xmas: Half off classic cult movie posters sale (for the weirdo on your Xmas shopping list)
12.05.2018
10:38 am
Topics:
Tags:


Torture Garden’ (UK, 1967)
 
Every year around this time, Westgate Gallery‘s poster concierge extraordinaire Christian McLaughlin drastically cuts prices for his annual Black Xmas 50% Off Sale. Why it’s almost half off, even…

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 “BlackXmas2018” 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.
 

‘Multiple Maniacs’ poster on sale at Westgate Gallery
 

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

The Pit’ aka ‘Teddy’ (Canada, 1981)
 

‘Andy Warhol’s Dracula’ poster for sale at Westgate Gallery
 

Rare Japanese ‘Sisters’ poster for sale at Westgate Gallery
 
Many, many, more marvellous movie posters, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
12.05.2018
10:38 am
|
Program your own grindhouse film festival with these sleazy cult favorites!
10.02.2018
08:52 am
Topics:
Tags:


‘Pets’ poster for sale 40% off at Westgate Gallery

There’s never been a better time to add a multi-region Blu Ray player to a 65” flat-panel TV and program your own private repertory theater/grindhouse. Along with medical marijuana, the avalanche of uncut, HD-remastered transfers of formerly obscure cult titles available to subject your friends and houseguests to, or obsessively watch and rewatch alone in total silence, almost makes up for nothing else today being as good as it was in the 1970s and 80s.

The selection of posters here are for sale at Westgate Gallery which has a 40% sale going on right now!
 

‘Last House on the Left,’ Italian 1-sheet poster for sale at Westgate Gallery

The last word on Wes Craven’s 1972 debut The Last House On the Left is the massively loaded 2-disc/3-cut Arrow box-set of the first post-Manson/Vietnam War horror classic, which cribbed the basic plotline of Bergman’s Virgin Spring for an amalgam of Nixon-era parents’ worst nightmares — hippies, rock concerts, reefer, slutty bad-influence BFF’s, NYC — personified by the shockingly well-acted trio of villains (David Hess, Jeramie Rain, Fred Lincoln) whose blood-soaked antics still pack a queasy punch.
 

‘The Killing Kind’ Italian 4F poster for sale at Westgate Gallery

B-movie cult director Curtis Harrington is at his overheated, dysfunctional, fagnificent best in The Killing Kind, a 1973 psycho-biddy treat in which cuddly paroled sex-offender John Savage moves back into overbearing mom Ann Sothern’s L.A. boarding house and runs afoul of ballsy judge Ruth Roman and ingenue trio Cindy Williams, Luana Anders and Faster Pussycat Kill Kill’s Sue Bernard… Vinegar Syndrome has a limited edition out for Halloween
 

Rare Japanese ‘Sisters’ poster for sale at Westgate Gallery

The two best conjoined-twin horror films make a great BD double-feature (we suggest as a warm-up an episode of the bizarro reality show about that poor precious two-headed girl in Minnesota):  Brian DePalma’s witty, twisted Sisters (1973, Criterion) with underrated Margot Kidder as separated sibs Danielle and Dominique and American Horror Story/Nip Tuck writer Jennifer Salt as the spunky columnist from the Staten Island Panorama out to solve a murder mystery and Frank Henenlotter’s 1982 Basket Case, a valentine to the Deuce at its scuzziest, this outrageously endearing Skid Row sickie is that rare gem from childhood that’s even better than you remember in a great stacked Arrow release… 
 

‘City of the Living Dead,’ Italian 2F poster for sale at Westgate Gallery

Arrow’s also about to unleash majorly upgraded special editions of two beloved Italian frightfests, Lucio Fulci’s splatter-classic dress rehearsal for The Beyond, City of the Living Dead aka Gates of Hell (1980) — don’t go in looking for logic, narrative sense or competent dubbing, just immerse yourself in 90 minutes of visually ravishing wacked-out waking nightmare, crammed with unforgettable macabre imagery and still-eye-popping makeup effects…
 
More grindhouse sleaze after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Christian McLaughlin
|
10.02.2018
08:52 am
|
Dazzling movie posters from the golden age of adult cinema
08.23.2017
10:10 am
Topics:
Tags:


Motorpsycho, 1965
 
The urge to observe the sex act is probably an un-displaceable mainstay in the human animal, and the 1960s, ushering in revolutions in so many different arenas, also featured a noticeable mainstreaming of the X-rated movie. Interest in sexual subjects was brewing in the period just prior to that, for sure. In the mid-1950s Nabokov’s novel Lolita had been banned in England and France; while the U.S. authorities took no official action against the book, publishers were leery of offering it. Eventually Putnam took it on and it rapidly made the bestseller list.

Porn movies saw a somewhat similar evolution. At the start of the 1960s they were “unmentionable.” By 1970 they were a common topic of conversation among sophisticated adults, and there was even talk, which seems hopelessly quixotic today, of the existence of sex movies that would exist alongside foreign movies, documentaries, etc. as a respectable genre. By 1980 the initial impulse of curiosity had given way to a well-organized industry, and (as Boogie Nights taught us all) the advent of video threatened to do away with brick-and-mortar porn cinemas, and with them would go the amusing and/or startling X-rated poster.

Russ Meyer was obviously a dominant figure in this evolution, especially in the 1960s, and his playful obsession with large mammaries led him to direct several masterpieces of titillation, including The Immoral Mr. Teas, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Motorpsycho, and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
 

 
If you take anything from the 1950s and 1960s, whether it be TV commercials or matchbook covers or LP cover design or living room sets, it often elicits a powerful appreciation in us, partially out of reasons of nostalgia but also due to obvious aesthetic appeal. The same is true of X-rated posters, it turns out. The need to hide and yet reveal what the movie is about nudged graphic designers to get inventive with the imagery, and as a result the entire genre appears to us today to be simultaneously crass and innocent.

Reel Art Press has a marvelous volume coming out soon celebrating the graphic design of the X-rated poster from the classic age of porno, titled X-Rated: Adult Movie Posters of the 60s and 70s (edited by Tony Nourmand, designed by Graham Marsh). Featuring an introduction by Peter Doggett, author of respected tomes about the Beatles and Lou Reed, the book is jammed with pictorial marvels that are a feast for the eyes. We’ve selected a few sample posters to whet your appetite but the book has dozens more as well as helpful context for many of them.
 

The Immoral Mr. Teas, 1959
 

Eve and the Handyman, 1961
 

The Orgy at Lil’s Place, 1963
 
Many more posters after the jump…..
 

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
08.23.2017
10:10 am
|
There’s a riot going on: Posters of resistance from Paris 1968
12.21.2016
12:24 pm
Topics:
Tags:


“Beauty is in the street”
 
As the annus horribilis of 2016 draws to a close, my mind tilts towards predecessors of resistance. It is easy to focus on what cannot be done. Much more important to consider what can be done.

In May 1968 Paris was brought to a standstill thanks to widespread protests against the unemployment and poverty under Charles de Gaulle’s conservative government. The situation got so bad that even De Gaulle had to flee the country briefly. 1968 was a year of violence and resistance in the U.S. and Europe alike—in Europe the year has taken on iconic significance for the generation that took part in a way that never quite happened on the other side of the Atlantic.

The uprisings of Paris 1968 were notable for extremely fine examples of polemical poster art. The Atelier Populaire, run by Marxist artists and art students, occupied the École des Beaux-Arts and dedicated its efforts to producing thousands of silk-screened posters using bold, iconic imagery and slogans as well as explicitly collective/anonymous authorship. Most of the posters were printed on newssheet using a single color with basic icons such as the factory to represent labor and a fist to stand for resistance.

As MessyNessy astutely observed earlier this year, the posters had something of the iconic power of Saul Bass’ notable output.
 

The Atelier Populaire
 
In 2008 the Hayward Gallery in London mounted an exhibition under the title “May 68: Street Posters from the Paris Rebellion”. Its curator, Johan Kugelberg, made the following statement in an interview:
 

There was no formal organisation behind this uprising. It was everyday people who had been pushed too far, showing a solidarity that jumped the shackles of class, age and education. The kind of revolution of everyday life leading to a societal dialogue where people truly functioned as a collective brain, pulse and heart. There seems to be evidence here of the making of an ultra-potent antidote to the extremely scary fragmented, cubicled and computer-screened hyper-individualism of today. Your blog won’t change anything. Your Facebook potentially could, but only if you add to it by meeting and communicating face-to-face with people from walks of life very different to yours.

 
Sobering words, in the era of fake news.

Many more posters after the jump…...

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
12.21.2016
12:24 pm
|
Wild world of movie posters: Classic cult films from around the globe
12.09.2016
12:31 pm
Topics:
Tags:


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.

He also had a perfectly plausible explanation for this. You see what I mean about him being hard to stump? And how many conversations have YOU had IRL recently about Barbara Bouchet, Tina Aumont or Andy Milligan?

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…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
12.09.2016
12:31 pm
|
Fantastic vintage Japanese movie posters
12.02.2016
10:51 am
Topics:
Tags:

12hardsdaynight1964.jpg
‘A Hard’s Day Night’ (1964).
 
A friend collects Japanese movie posters. He’s rich enough to afford it. The walls of his house are almost covered with these bright, garish, beautiful film posters. Last time, I visited him I asked why he never exhibited them or at least scanned them digitally to share on the Internet. He said he thought of them as art—and as art they had to be viewed in person and not through a screen. I thought he was just being a pretentious twat—but there you go.

Fair to say, it was an impressive collection—a mix of Japanese features and American/British imports. But his collection went no further than the late-seventies to early-eighties. I wondered why? This, he explained, was because the best Japanese movie posters originated during the Shōwa period—the time of Emperor Hirohito’s reign 1926-1989—when the printing process meant the posters were by artists creating collages from cut-up photographs. These were airbrushed and colorized to glorious effect. There was an art and craft to making these posters—which remained roughly the same from the twenties to the seventies—which the digital era no longer employs.

Inspired by my dear friend’s collection, I’ve collated together a mix of images which exemplify some of the best in Japanese poster design—and let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want one of these hanging on their walls?
 
21batman1966.jpg
‘Batman’ (1966).
 
33bedazzled1967.jpg
‘Bedazzled’ (1967).
 
More fantastic Japanese movie posters, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
12.02.2016
10:51 am
|
Silent Night, Boogie Nights: Sexy movie posters from the golden age of XXX
11.26.2016
04:02 pm
Topics:
Tags:


‘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…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.26.2016
04:02 pm
|
Night Gallery: A connoisseur selection of bloody, gruesome & sexy Giallo and horror movie posters
10.27.2016
12:45 pm
Topics:
Tags:


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…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.27.2016
12:45 pm
|
I probably shouldn’t tell you about this online cult movie poster gallery, but I’m going to anyway
09.15.2016
05:41 pm
Topics:
Tags:


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…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
09.15.2016
05:41 pm
|
Page 1 of 3  1 2 3 >