4 Fantastic Italian Film Posters - Vampire Themed Vol. 1

There are two things that go hand in hand with film; art & music.  Music compliments a film, gives life to the story, you could even make the case that without music film would be non-existent as the two have always been essentially paired together.  But art (and when I refer to art I'm speaking of poster/advertising art), has the tremendous responsibility of attempting to grab your attention and provoke a response that will in turn cause you to want to see that film.  Today the film trailer has pretty much usurped that role.  Posters are not so much an art-form but a cookie cutter Photoshop job used for internet advertising.  But 40-50 years ago when there was no internet, and film trailers were typically only shown in the theaters, film studios relied on posters as a main avenue of advertising.  Because of this real effort was put into making some extraordinary advertising, especially for the horrible films.  If you look back through the history of poster art some of the coolest posters were for some of the worst films, B-Movie's for example boast some of the best and collectible art around.  This proved how powerful the poster truly was.


For me some of the top poster art came out of Italy between the 1950's and 1970's.  No surprise that this also happens to coincide with one of the best eras of Italian film history as well.  It's hard to put into words how amazing Italian film art is during this time compared to other countries.  Italian artists not only excelled at creating masterpieces for their own countries films, but managed to exceed most posters for films that originated from other countries, especially the United States.  So it is the goal of this weekly series to introduce you to some of the great film art that originated out of Italy, for films from all over the world.  Ultimately you decide what you like, but it's hard not to be impressed.

This week we'll take a look at a handful of awesome vampire themed posters.  Over the last decade vampires have risen back into style, but it was the vampire posters of decades past that had the real style.

1970's Re-release Horror of Dracula

This is a great example of Italian artists creating a stellar poster for a British film.  This is the poster for the 1970's re-release of Hammer Films, Horror of Dracula, the film that launched Hammer's horror legacy in the late 1950's.  This is a 2 Foglio (2F), which essentially means two sheet.  Another great feature of Italian posters, not only is the art stellar but their standard size posters are typically larger than any other country.  A 2F is 39 x 55"!

1974 The Vampires' Night Orgy

It may come as no surprise, but Italian artists during this era had an astounding ability to reproduce the human body, especially the female form, as well as to so accurately reproduce actor's faces that you'd almost believe it was a photograph.  This 2F is for the film The Vampires' Night Orgy, an Italian based horror film starring Helga Line.  This would be considered a B-movie by most standards, but absolutely killer poster art.  Who wouldn't want to see this film?

1963 Lust of the Vampire

As an Italian film poster collector myself this is by far one of my favorite Italian posters in my collection.  Generally speaking original Italian film posters from this era are not available in as great a quantity as other countries posters, and this is definitely on the rarer side.  This is a 2F for Mario Bava's directorial debut for a feature film, entitled Lust of the Vampire.  Amazingly this is the first sound era horror film made in Italy, prior to this period they were banned from production.

1970 The Nude Vampire

Once again here we have an Italian poster for another countries film.  This was for the Italian release of the French film The Nude Vampire by famous cult French film director Jean Rollin.  This is one of the few instances were the Italian poster slightly resembles the country of origin poster.  The French version looks almost the same, but the quality of the artwork on the Italian version is far superior, much cleaner.  The French version looks like it was drawn by an elementary school student.  This is an example of a 4F, which is essentially two 2F's that would be pieced together, making this poster 55 x 78".



Which of the four above is you're favorite Italian vampire poster?  Or if there is another one let us know and maybe we'll feature it in the next vampire entry.