The Avengers '98 - The Director's Cut DVD/Blu-ray covers

'The Avengers' movie released in 1998 has to be one of the biggest disappointments ever in the history of movies... at least for me. I was genuinely looking forward to it having missed out on the opportunity to visit the set the year before. A stuntman friend of mine was doing some work on the film and needed some help with his gear. He knew I was a fan of the original series and tried to get in touch with me. But this was a few years before the advent of mobile phones, so his calls to me went unanswered as I was at the day job helping Sooty to put on a show at The American Adventure Theme Park.

When the film was released, it got blistering reviews. And it's easy to see why. The film was a mess and its narrative virtually incomprehensible. There were rumours of it being a troubled production. The film seemed to have very short running time for a so-called blockbuster. There had been no preview screenings for the press prior to its public release. Indeed its premiere was virtually non-existent. And what's more, even more sinister, was the fact that Sean Connery's face appeared nowhere in the Titan Magazines special published to coincide with the release (save for a shot of him in a full page ad for another publication).

Titan Books had also published a novelisation written by Julie Kaewert. Kaewert had used the original screenplay and the book revealed many omitted scenes and the plot actually made more sense. Indeed, it was one of those rare occurrences where the novelisation was actually better than the film!

Adding to the ignominy of the film's reputation (at least on a personal level). I was browsing a second hand VHS stall at the local flea market one Saturday and found, to my surprise, a brand spanking new copy of the film on VHS. It was the Saturday before the Monday the film got its official release on the medium. The VHS was a genuine copy and the tape inside had been played for about ten minutes. You can picture the history... Reviewer gets preview copy - Watches ten minutes of it - Gives up - Can't wait to get shot of it - Sells it on to a second hand stall - Rescued by fan out of pity.

As the years rolled on, stories of the production and the apparent existence of a 'Director's Cut' started to fly around filmdom.

Fast forward to last year and I was approached by Dan Martin who runs a Facebook page dedicated to getting the 'Director's Cut' released on Blu-ray. He wanted a faux cover as a proof of concept to put on social media to drum up some support for the campaign in the wake of 'The Snyder Cut' of 'Justice League' getting a release.

How could I not refuse?

Here it is with a few variants. Hopefully it speaks for itself. It's different to the original artwork. Not TOO quirky or stylised with the fun being emphasised through the use of old BBC weather symbols in the background. I also slipped in the union flag/rampant lion symbol which, although from 'The New Avengers' fitted in with the flavour of the design - especially since its a symbolically burning icon behind Sir August. 

Hope you like it and I'm still waiting for the call from Warner Bros either to ask me to produce a final version of the cover or to issue a take-down order.

Here's some textless versions of the artwork.

And a selection of logo variants too...

If you've enjoyed viewing this page, then you can show your appreciation by purchasing my a coffee via my Ko-fi account here. Thank you.

Lockdown II - Cinema Posters

Yes, I'm back. It's been three months since my last post so not only am I apologising to you for the neglect, I've also got a backlog of stuff to post. So without further ado, here's a very large one to be going on with...

Obviously, there's been a second lockdown in the UK during much of December and that very nice Emily Cook from Doctor Who magazine again took it upon herself to organise a selection of tweet-a-longs for the Whovian community. 

To cut a long story short, I uploaded one of my cinema posters to the lockdown website and next thing I know I'm doing social media ads for all of the tweet-a-long episodes. 

They are (with one or two exceptions) all based on vintage (and not-so-vintage) movies. Some are quite familiar whilst others are on the obscure spectrum. They've really been fun to do and the only real labour was the effort in finding suitable old posters to homage. 

In no particular order, here they are - all 23 of them*. At the end of these, is a list of posters that I paid homage to.

* Yes, I know there weren't 23 tweet-a-longs but I kind of overdid it. All of the Christmas/festive specials are included even though they weren't all selected.

A Christmas Carol – The Muppets' Christmas Carol (1992)

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways – This Island Earth (1955)

The Christmas Invasion – Invaders from Mars (1953)

Dark Water/Death in Heaven – Original

The Return of Doctor Mysterio – Batman (1966)

Last Christmas – Miracle on 34^th Street (1947)

Resolution – Not of this Earth (1957)

Revolution of the Daleks – Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956)

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe – The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

The End of Time – El Cid (1961)

The Husbands of River Song – Tobor the Great (1954)

The Next Doctor – Konga (1961)

The Pilot – Fantastic Voyage (1966)

The Runaway Bride – I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

The Snowmen – Great Expectations (1946)

The Unquiet Dead – Scrooge (1951)

Thin Ice – Wuthering Heights (1949)

The Time of the Doctor – The Time Machine (1960)

Turn Left – Original

Twice Upon A Time – It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Utopia – Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Voyage of the Damned – The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

If you've enjoyed this or any of the 300 odd post of this blog, then you can show your appreciation to the blogger by purchasing for him a nice coffee via his Ko-fi page - where you'll find a gallery of the tat he thinks is his best work. The link is here.

Doctor Who Lockdown Cinema Posters - part two

Here's the rest of the retro cinema posters I did for the Doctor Who Lockdown tweet-a-longs. 

As before, most of them are based on actual posters. You're welcome to guess which films are the inspiration in each case. I tended to go with designs that fitted the episodes rather than the original films themselves. 

The Fires of Pompeii appeared on the back cover of issue 507 of the DWAS's Celestial Toyroom in an anglicised form. The original Italian version is here along with the textless art.

Click here for part one.

I also did a few random original series ones and I'll upload them as a separate post.

If you liked this post (or any of the now 500 odd other posts in this blog), why not buy me a coffee via my Ko-fi profile. The link is here.

Thunderbirds - The Motion Pictures!

As you can tell from an earlier post, I spent a lot of the first few weeks of lockdown creating cinema posters for the Doctor Who episodes that had been picked out for the mass tweet-a-longs. Haven't check the exact number but I did quite a few - including some classic series ones.

During that time, I felt I needed a break from Doctor Who. Yes, the creative juices were still flowing but I just needed to do something a bit different.

I'd just acquired the blu-ray of the original Thunderbirds TV series and was cherry-picking my favourite episodes. One of the many comments levelled at the show was how much like mini-movies each of fifty minute productions were. Indeed, there are some that even have very similar plots to later movies. So I started doing period film posters for some of them. 

Here they are:

Trapped in the Sky

The poster is based on one for Airport 1975 - the second film in the Airport series. The Fireflash that replaces the jumbo jet of the original is actually some cut-out and flipped artwork from an old Japanese model kit box. I had to 'reverse' the lettering on the side of the fuselage. It wasn't until I'd posted it on Twitter that I realised that the Fireflash lettering wasn't actually on the original aircraft. 

Operation Crashdive

This one is based on the poster for Airport 1977 - the third film in the increasingly desperate Airport series. In that film, a jumbo jet crash-lands in the sea (in the Bermuda Triangle of all places) and sinks to the bottom. The crew and passengers survive as the plane remains airtight. It's almost the same scenario as the episode 'Operation Crashdive'. So the choice of film/poster was a no-brainer. The artwork on the original is iconic and I had fun recreating it in photoshop. In this case, finding an image of Fireflash that was the same angle as the original sunken aircraft was difficult. There are very few promo images of it from the original series and I couldn't screengrab an image of it from the blu-ray as I didn't own a blu-ray drive. Instead I found a photo of the original Japanese Fireflash model kit. A few tweaks here and there and it looked okay - especially darkened and tinted blue/green. I think this is probably my favourite of the four posters.


City of Fire

This one was another obvious choice. No prizes for spotting the iconic poster for The Towering Inferno. I needed an image of the burning Thompson Towers (no relation). Again there were no suitable production stills so I had to create it in Photoshop. Luckily, the building is a simple skyscraper and building it in PS was comparatively straightforward. I distorted it and surrounded it with plenty of fire and smoke. It surprised me that it looked pretty authentic looking if a little stylised. The head shots of the family are simple pics taken off the telly and filtered to look more like artwork. I had a bit of fun with the words on this one. I can't help doing that. Please forgive me! 




The Perils of Penelope

I couldn't get the idea of doing a very sixties one for this Lady Penelope-centric episode. Barbarella was a no-no so I went for the much-maligned 1966 movie Modesty Blaise - a European film based on a British newspaper comic strip about a freelance lady spy. The poster is very sixties and is an art-based collage of images of Blaise - so it was a straight-forward task to create a similar design using Lady P - made all the more easier thanks to the fact she wore so many colourful dresses and that there are a lot more production stills of her than there are of Fireflash. I like the look of this one. Very sixties. And it's set off by having an off-white background instead of just plain white. 




Here's some of the textless artwork from the above designs.

And here are the originals:

If you liked this post (or any of the 400 odd other posts in this blog), why not buy me a coffee via my Ko-fi profile. The link is here.

Supermarionation Movie Blockbusters!

The wonderful Talking Pictures TV channel recently broadcast 'Captain Scarlett' here in the UK. I didn't watch it. It's not my cup of tea. 


"Why?" I hear you ask. "It's the popular Gerry and Sylvia Anderson supermarionation TV series from the sixties featuring an indestructible secret agent and his battles against intangible slow speaking aliens from Mars."

"Ah, but it isn't." I say (somewhat smugly). "Take a note of the extra 't' at the end of 'Scarlett'. This is in fact the 1953 movie 'Captain Scarlett' - a period adventure film that starred Richard Greene - TV's Robin Hood - as a Napoleonic swashbuckler who attempts to save a Princess from a dodgy marriage. So not really my cup of tea in any world even though it was shot in Technicolor in Mexico and was Brazillian actress Leonora Amar's final film." (You can tell I've looked it up on Wikipedia, can't you!) 

I thought it would be a tremendous wheeze to create a cinema poster for the indestructable Captain Scarlet based on the original one for 'Captain Scarlett'. So I did.

And as usual, I got carried away. I also did ones for 'Stingray' (Based on the poster for 'War Gods of the Deep' (1965) aka. 'City Under The Sea', 'Fireball XL5' (Based on the poster for 'Rocketship XM' (1950) and er... 'Timeslip' (Based on the poster for er... 'Time Slip' (1950) a movie that shares the same name as the eponymous children's TV serial from 1970.)  

If you've enjoyed these efforts, why not buy me a coffee via my Ko-fi account to show your appreciation. Even if you don't, the link will also take you to a Gallery featuring what I consider my finest pieces of work. Both of them. Thank you.