Retro Movie Posters: Star Wars

Whilst the Hilderbrandt poster is more classical, I much prefer this outstanding example of how to promote a movie with style and artistic verve.

This was the first poster I saw for Star Wars. It had been pasted onto a wooden board that was screwed onto the gable end of the last house on our street. I can still recall seeing it on my way home from school and thinking "WOW!!" This would be about November of 1977 with the movie not released until December 27th. 

The experience of being at that first packed showing at our local Odeon cinema is something that I'll never forget and will probably come back to in a future post.

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Retro Sci Fi Mags: Fantastic Films

Fantastic Films #1 - April 1978

From the post Star Wars fallout circa 1978, a number of new science fiction/fantasy magazines began to appear on the shelves of your local friendly neighbourhood newsagent. Whilst mags such as Starlog and Starburst went on to have a long and healthy publishing lifespan, some only burned bright for a short period of time. One such magazine was Fantastic Films which was, in my opinion, the best of the bunch.

Published in the USA by Blake Publishing Corp, FF had it's own distinctive style with dynamic presentation and more in depth commentary/articles than it's competitors. For me, those years between 1977 and 1983 will always be the "classic" era when everything appeared new and the future one only limited by the imagination. FF captured that vitality to perfection. At first it was a bi-monthly mag but it's popularity quickly turned it into a monthly event.

Issue #46 published in 1985 was the last one and featured Back to the Future on the cover. I still have a couple of issues packed safely away and are a great reminder of how much fun magazines were back then..

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Retro UK Comics: Planet of the Apes

As a kid, I was a huge comic fan and collector. During the 60's, I was more into UK comics such as Topper and Beezer but as I grew older I began to get into anything Marvel UK published such as the Spectacular Spiderman, Mighty World of Marvel or the Avengers.

I loved and bought them all. But if I had to choose a favourite comic from all those I'd collected it would be the UK version of PLANET OF THE APES which was first published in October of 1974. 

There is something about the whole ape mythology that just fascinated me as a 11 year old. The idea that astronauts from our time were lost in space somewhere and had landed on a planet run by simians was both exciting and scary in equal measure. I remember seeing an advert on Saturday morning kids tv promoting the first issue of POTA along with DRACULA LIVES which had also launched on the same day. Pocket money in hand, I had run down to our local newsagents and there in one of those tall metal wire racks you could spin around where both first issues. Magic. I put the free posters above my bed and always made sure those #1's were on the top of my comics pile...

Great memories. I still kick myself for swapping them months later!!

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