Halloween Film Posters

For Halloween this year we will be sharing some of our favourite haunting and eerie mid-century film posters and diving into the iconic designers behind them.

‍Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

‍Philip Gips, the graphic designer and advertising executive created iconic posters for such films as Rosemary’s Baby, Alien, Network, Superman and Fatal Attraction. Gips, who also designed the ESPN logo which is still used today, was a key member of the New York design community in the late 60s that fostered contemporaries such as Saul Bass.

Gip's artwork for Rosemary’s Baby (1968), “like all the best movie posters … doesn’t depict a scene from the film,” one critic once wrote. “We see the silhouette of a pram on harsh, rocky terrain, set against a sickly green background. Mia Farrow’s upturned face looms behind it, as though the titular mom were lying supine: mindscape as landscape.”

‍The Birds (1963)

‍The second film poster we are highlighting for our mid-century horror film week is from one of Hitchcock's most popular films, The Birds (1963). The Birds is an American natural horror thriller film produced and directed by the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock.In the film the birds represent a new kind of monster, the inexorable force of nature: it’s never revealed what causes them to attack but thanks to their dinosaur DNA they make fearsome and effective predators. A variety of special effects (much blue screen work and some animation provided by Disney technicians) plus the spooky soundtrack (a combination of deathly silence and artificial bird noises) can leave viewers feeling terrified.

For the poster the imagery was taken from one of the mattes used in the opening credits of the film, worked on by famed Disney animator Ub lwerks, where he created swarms of birds attacking actors. We love the simplicity in terms of design and use of colour, the style of the feather and how the design uses the negative space (white), to reveal the details of the film in this mid-century style typography.

‍Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)

‍“Too late . . . too late . . . too late to call for help.”… This fantastic mid–century design was released in 1962 for the film “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?”. The film focuses on a former child star who torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion.This master film poster artist Tom Chantrell designed a truly memorable piece of work, and we are celebrating it in our final post of the week looking at mid-century horror film posters. Chantrell has created some iconic British cinema posters over his working career which includes, Bonnie and Clyde, Let's Make Love and Star Wars.

‍Chantrell was a prolific artist with a liking for colourful, dynamic almost photo-realist type painted poster illustrations. However, he was a versatile artist and able to switch styles to caricature, impressionistic, photographic and mixed-media compositions too which is why we love this poster at Motel.

Here are some mid-century film posters that didn’t make the cut but we still wanted to share their spooky designs.