Homicidal

If you’re looking for an interesting, impactful and original movie poster, but are working to a budget, there are plenty of options.

One of the best ways is to consider B movies and other less well known titles.  Television was attacking cinema in the 1950s, but there were still very many new movies put into distribution  All the studios did their best to attract their audience  by the main means of promotion available in the days before social media, the internet and television( for many) – that is, the power of the poster, mainly displayed in or outside the cinemas.

The producers needed immediate impact – so look for action, bright colours, taglines to hook you in…..  The B movies may not have had big name stars, but they did everything in their power to get tickets sold.

This is a nice example, 1961’s Homicidal.  Coming from schlock/horror producer/director William Castle, it owes more than a little to the previous year’s smash hit, Hitchcock’s Psycho. So in the poster you get a knife, a director in Hitchcockian pose, and a marketing gimmick similar (if different) to Psycho’s “No-one admitted after the movie starts”.  Here, you could move to a safe place if you were too frightened in the Fright Break.

It’s an original US Half Sheet poster from that first release.