Thursday, April 29, 2010

Who Painted the 'Orca' Poster?

The poster from which this detail is taken appeared as part of an ad on the back cover of just about every comic book I bought as a 6 year old. For years, I was very intrigued by this image. When I finally got around to seeing the movie on VHS, I was very disappointed to find that it did not come close to living up to the drama of the poster. As an aside, could you imagine a world in which movies actually lived up to the excited of their posters and/or trailers? What I would love to know, however, is the name of the artist responsible for this painting. I've become quite good at spotting Jack Davis and Nick Cardy posters, but I don't know much about non-comic book commercial illustrators of the era, and the identity of this artist eludes me. It has the same feel as the poster for the De Laurenitis King Kong movie poster. Does anyone know? Thanks in advance.

4 comments:

bob said...

According to this auction it was John Berkey.

Scott M said...

Nice

Thanks very much! With the full size Heritage image (3000 X 2000 pixels) I can make out the signature. Interesting to see that it didn't sell - I wonder was the reserve price was set at?

bob said...

Well, there was a King Kong piece he did (not the main poster image) that sold for almost $8000. And man, does that look better than anything I remember from that movie...

Blog into Mystery said...

Every time I see poster art from that era, there's only one thought rattling around my head - "They don't make 'em (posters, that is) like they used to." That's a wonderful image.