The 1980’s may have been the high water mark for horror poster art. One used to be able to walk through the halls of the local video store and see a wide variety of horrific tableau’s adorning the boxes and posters promoting horror movies. In the new millennium, we are living in an era of bland posters and box art. A seemingly endless parade of floating heads and faces stare back at us from what now passes for movie posters. Where artists once strived to tell a story with a single image – now these “designers” seek to inundate us with the who’s who of actors in the film.
Poster art is truly a lost art form. That’s why it always thrills me to see the Japanese designs for Western films. They are simply the best produced poster works on the planet. Let’s celebrate this lost art form by taking a peek at a few fantastic designs from the land of the rising sun.
