Movie Posters, Part Eight: The 1960s ~ Anthony Balducci's Journal

This brings us to the 1960s. The posters for Barbarella (1968) and A Hard Day's Night (1964) represented pop art and collage - photomontage, halftones, and playful colors.

French New Wave aesthetic dictated the design for the posters of Breathless (1960) and Jules et Jim (1962).

The poster for Jules et Jim features casual photography and hand-drawn typography.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) was a modernist poster, with abstract shapes, minimalist color palette, and conceptual symbolism.

The striking poster for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) centers on the mirror ball that hangs above the Santa Monica pier dancehall that is the setting of the film.

The common traits of the era's posters were conceptual over literal imagery, strong typographic presence, and symbolic storytelling.

Let us examine specific posters from the 1960s.

Make Mine Mink (1960)

Terry-Thomas leads a mink-heist brigade through arched shadows. Robert Asher's Ealing-esque romp gets cartoon caper vibes. The Time magazine blurb seals the farce. This is pure British whimsy. The cartoonish caricatures by Thomas Eckersley distill the film's farcical tone. The exaggerated figures and tunnel backdrop form a theatrical proscenium, while the tagline “A Jolly Good Show Indeed" captures mid-century British understatement. The limited palette of black, white, and orange-red gives it poster-art economy - more Punch magazine than Hollywood glitz - and perfectly suits its genteel-crime premise.

Beware of Children (1960)

The poster displays cartoon calamity - axe-wielding brats attacking a bellowing parent’s massive head. The kid chaos spoofs the post-war baby boom and suburban dread. It's 1960s innocence corrupted for laughs - a Lord of the Flies meets Brady Bunch meltdown. You might also want to throw in Children of the Damned. The poster leans into a Mad magazine aesthetic: exaggerated caricature, chaotic composition, and loud yellow/orange contrast. The bawdy Carry On-esque doodles (Leslie Phillips’ cartoon stand-in fleeing a bikini-clad wild woman) promises British sex farce elements. Phillips's lechery amid juvenile anarchy captures Ealing Studios' cheeky rebellion, but with more slapstick than satire. The concept is charming in its crassness, a relic of when family entertainment meant winking at adult naughtiness. The cartoon design recalls Ronald Searle or early Ralph Steadman.

One, Two, Three (1961)

This is another Saul Bass masterpiece. A femme fatale, set against a blazing orange background, clutches three numbered balloons in a nod to the film's snappy title. It's clean, cocky modernism.

West Side Story (1961)

This is one of the most iconic posters ever produced: blazing red background, bold black typography forming a fire escape grid, with small white silhouettes of dancers. The designer was Joseph Caroff. This is pure graphic abstraction - energy and structure unified through type and motion. Passion, violence, and movement are distilled into geometry. The typography functions as architecture - "WEST SIDE STORY" literally builds the stage. This poster is a watershed for modern poster design. It is minimalist yet operatic, kinetic yet balanced.

Whistle Down the Wind (1961)

The poster features an enlarged halftone photograph of Hayley Mills with an innocent yet intense gaze, framed by psychedelic color blocks of blue, green, and pink. It blends kitchen-sink realism with pop-art typography, anticipating the hybrid aesthetic of 1960s British design (similar to The Knack… and How to Get It). The thick, organic lettering feels hand-cut, reinforcing the authenticity and emotional rawness. The poster’s mood is a mix of youth culture and spiritual mystery.

The Road to Hong Kong (1962)

The poster for the final Road film gets a modernized, minimalist treatment. The use of cartoon silhouettes and large graphic shapes (a green dragon, stylized travelers) reflects 1960s design trends - simplified, abstract, playful. The characters' stick-figure charm fits Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s self-aware humor, while the bold limited palette (green, purple, orange) makes it eye-catching. It's part of the shift from illustrative realism to symbolic poster design that defined the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s. The poster depicts an exotic cartoon escapade. Hope clings to the coiling green dragon's tail while Bing Crosby and Joan Collins sit on the dragon's back. The dragon design is a pure delight. The poster doesn't lie - Hope and Crosby's last jaunt is appropriately filled with punchlines and peril.

Boys’ Night Out (1962)

The poster features a a lingerie-clad Kim Novak lounging in bed, with four curious men peeking from behind a curtain. The lower section is pastel pink, featuring playful typography and a cartoon wolf illustration. This represents the "sex comedy" aesthetic of early 1960s Hollywood - polished and suggestive but not explicit. The pink palette and humorous tagline ("If you believe in sex and fun. . . join us!") is flirtatious. The cheerful mid-century innuendo markets desire as witty rather than dangerous. The cartoon wolf punctuates this - a visual stand-in for male appetite in the pre–sexual revolution era. The poster embodies the transitional period before the full embrace of frank sexuality in late-1960s advertising.

House of Women (1962)

This is an archetypal "women in prison" exploitation design. The typography proclaims urgency - blocky sans-serifs and exclamation marks in red slashes, like sensational newspaper headlines. The imagery of women rioting in a steel fortress suggests confinement, hysteria, and rebellion. It is a riot of rage (Shirley Knight's wide-eyed fury, Constance Ford's steely glare). The poster stands out for its raw power. Copy like "Secrets of the cells!" and "Innocents thrown in with female bully-boys!" promises scandal and forbidden spectacle. The overall tone markets moral outrage and titillation simultaneously - a common strategy of early 1960s low-budget shock cinema.

The Caretakers (1963)

Hall Bartlett's asylum exposé blasts "shock treatment" in jagged letters over fractured faces. Joan Crawford's Lucretia snarls from ink-splatter portraits, her eyes daring you to look away. A montage of tormented souls (Polly Bergen and Robert Stack) evokes Snake Pit vibes, with taglines like "These are the borderlines. . . their souls" promising raw psyches. The design mimics tabloid sensationalism.

Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963)

The poster is seamy and silly. Dean Martin's pajama-clad bewilderment ("Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?") towers over a sultry bedroom brigade, including Elizabeth Montgomery and Jill St. John. A red background heats up the scene.

Hud (1963)

Paul Newman looms like a colossus over tiny kinfolk, cigarette dangling as his soul unravels in orange isolation. Bob Considine's quote - "Superbly acted... magnificently filmed" - seals the prestige. Martin Ritt's Texas anti-hero saga (from Larry McMurtry's novel) nails Newman's rogue charm. The poster's stark silhouette signifies 1960s alienation - barbed wire as emotional fencing. It's East of Eden in chaps, with Elmer Bernstein's score lurking in the margins. It is a minimalist, masculine design that defines the emerging modern Western anti-hero aesthetic. The screen-printed brown-and-black palette conveys both dust and moral corrosion. The towering Newman silhouette, cigarette in hand, dominates the negative space - his posture arrogant yet weary. The typography’s distressed texture reinforces the tagline “The man with the barbed wire soul." The composition’s simplicity, with figures reduced to silhouettes, anticipates poster modernism of the late 1960s and conveys the film’s loneliness more than its plot.

The Great Spy Chase (1964)

This poster exhibits pop art exuberance - pink typography intertwined with miniature black-and-white spy vignettes. A trench-coated figure chases bikini-clad spies amid helicopters and guns. This is a parody of 1960s espionage posters - exaggerated glamour and action rendered with playful kitsch. The mood is light, flirty and chaotic. Oversized, central letters double as stage space for the comic scenes - a typographic playground. The poster is fun, self-aware, and quintessentially mid-1960s European in its sexual wit and cheeky design.

The Satan Bug (1965)

The poster for John Sturges's germ-warfare chiller oozes dread: a man plummets through a blue-green pool, a shadowy hand clutches a test tube bioweapon. The image merges comic-book dynamism with atomic-age fear, reminiscent of pulp sci-fi covers. The title’s jagged, uneven font embodies mid-1960s sensationalism, echoing nuclear panic thrillers like Dr. Strangelove. Panic and paranoia are visualized as abstract energy - angular, kinetic, and psychological.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)

This is a classic 1960s comedy poster - maximalist, cartoonish, and theatrical. It borrows the visual language of vaudeville and Broadway musicals. The tagline "Something for Everyone!" reinforces its variety-show spirit. Characters' playful interaction with classical statues positions the film as wild and irreverent. Zero Mostel is centered at the bottom, performing a silly balancing pose, clearly establishing him as the comedic anchor. The busy composition reflects the film's rapid-fire pace and ensemble nature. The poster promises slapstick and bawdiness.

Let's Kill Uncle (1966)

This poster, for an over-the-top William Castle thriller, hoists a child like a piñata over a Technicolor trap. Nigel Green leers amid a carnival of peril (poison, swords, sharks). This is pure 1960s kid-horror hokum. The tagline - "Lovable or Lethal?" - winks at the film's absurdity.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, a pair of mismatched cops, are silhouetted against glowing orbs. The tagline boxes ("They got a murder on their hands. They don't know what to do with it") frame the racial powder-keg plot with stark efficiency. Norman Jewison's Oscar-winner gets a poster that's equal parts abstract art and crime expose - those green-on-red accents pulse with the South's simmering heat. The poster was created by Paul Crifo.

Divorce American Style (1967)

Dick Van Dyke finger-wags at Debbie Reynolds amid a Statue of Liberty cartoon. The tagline - "A timely probing look at today's marital drop-outs!" - is blunt statement from a. comedy out to skewer suburbia. Its red-white-blue palette suggests that 1960s American optimism is cracking at the seams. The poster, with a pop-art design reminiscent of Mad Magazine, promises domestic farce and social commentary.

The Honey Pot (1967)

Joseph L. Mankiewicz's whodunit farce bursts with mod excess: Rex Harrison as a dapper and vampiric Cecil Beaton-type in a swirling cape, which releases a kaleidoscope of glamourous dames in psychedelic prints. The poster's explosive pinks, oranges, and patterns suggest Swinging London, with taglines like "Don't just sit there like a drone" urging audiences to ditch TV for a wild ride. It's the illustrated frenzy - vampish lips, martini glasses, swirling gowns - that sells the venomous wit. It's visual cocktail of 1960s glamour with a bitter twist. The neon-like typography alternates between playful (pink/orange) and formal (white serif credits), embodying the film’s blend of wit and decadence. This is the high-glamour pop art phase of comedy poster design, bridging the ornate and the ironic. It's maximal yet cleanly composed. It mirrors the playful confidence of 1960s British and Italian design, which can also be seen in the posters for Modesty Blaise or Casino Royale.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)

Robert Morse and Michele Lee swing from swivel chairs with yellow exuberance. David Swift's Pulitzer-winning satire becomes a mod office frolic. The comedy provides peak 1960s satire on ladder-climbing lunacy. The poster is a bright, buoyant blend of pop art and office satire. The composition balances photographic cutouts of exuberant secretaries and the bold typographic chair-shape logo. The color blocking (yellow, red, blue and purple) mirrors advertising aesthetics of Madison Avenue itself, making the poster both subject and parody. The playful tagline ("See this picture before your boss does!") reinforces the era’s cheeky marketing of corporate rebellion in musical form. The poster was created by Paul Crifo.

Up the Down Staircase (1967)

The poster contrasts blue duotone classroom chaos with a large close-up of Sandy Dennis mid-sentence. Her image is accented by crimson text. This is a social-realism poster with pop-inflected color separation, bridging documentary grit and mid-1960s design boldness. The tagline "Simple words that start a war" emphasizes moral urgency, while the stylized student montage situates the story within youth rebellion and urban tension. The typography is unusual. It is a hand-drawn downward-pointing arrow that replaces part of the title. The poster reflects the cinéma vérité crossover into mainstream marketing.

The Happening (1967)

A retired gangster (Anthony Quinn) is blindfolded as he walks alongside a group of young kidnappers. This poster marks a sharp stylistic shift - bright, pop-art-influenced, youthful. The ransom-note typography for "The Happening" evokes rebellion and counterculture, while the tagline ("Four young swingers out for kicks. . .") connects to the youth movie trend of the mid-1960s. The cutout collage of figures in motion suggests mod mayhem and psychedelic peril. It's design-savvy and self-aware, aimed at a generation rejecting old Hollywood glamour.

The Subject Was Roses (1968)

The poster features a striking image: a shattered porcelain vase that has spilled red roses like emotional shrapnel across a white floor. A subtle script ("A mother. . . A father. . . A son") whispers domestic implosion.

The Impossible Years (1968)

The poster represents an archetypal late-1960s "generation gap" comedy. It's colorful, cheeky, and text-heavy - nearly a comic strip with dialogue captions labeling each stereotype ("The Bearded Hippie," "The Mother," "The Teacher," etc.). The design revels in the chaos of misunderstanding between youth and adults, using bright pinks and yellows to evoke energy and farce. The composition - everyone crammed together in a single tableau - suggests sitcom-style ensemble conflict. The poster presents a psychedelic split-screen satire - a groovy gap that causes parental panic.

No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

The giant disembodied hands represent the menace of the film. Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, and George Segal are presented in torn-frame triptychs. Jack Smight's killer-cosplay caper examines the fraying sanity of a serial killer. William Goldman's story provides twisty fun. It's Psycho meets drag revue. The title typography slices through negative space like a crime headline. The poster is sleek, stylish, and era-defining for late-1960s suspense design.

If. . . (1968)

The poster presents Malcolm McDowell with a submachine gun, rebelling against boarding-school authority in explosive yellows. Lindsay Anderson's film is a revolutionary fever dream. McDowell's glare foreshadows Clockwork Orange. It's a youthquake in print. The tagline (". . . which side will you be on?") a rallying cry for 1968 radicals.

3 in the Attic (1968)

The poster presents a pink-drenched fever dream of revenge porn. Christopher Jones broods as the stud caught in a web of vengeful vixens, their nude silhouettes forming a triangular trap like a psychedelic sorority house. It's peak 1960s liberation-gone-wrong - equal parts titillating and troubling, with that attic title suggesting a forbidden space. The tagline ("You're being cut down in your prime by a trio of vengeful young women") is something off the cover of a pulp novel. This poster embraces mod pop art minimalism - flat fields of hot pink and magenta, simple silhouettes, and bold sans-serif lettering. The framing device (the attic outline) cleverly contains the figures, implying both a physical and sexual enclosure. The design feels distinctly AIP (American International Pictures): cheeky, youth-oriented, and slightly risqué but softened by cartoonish abstraction. The tagline directly addresses the viewer, using playful second-person narration that echoes 1960s "swinging youth" advertising language. The pink/orange/yellow palettes of late-1960s posters shifted poster design away from realism toward pop graphics that mirrored the era’s magazine illustration and record cover design. Late-1960s designs treated romance and sex with irony or pop detachment. We will also see this with the posters for A Nice Girl Like Me and Friends.

The Boston Strangler (1968)

The poster is pure sensationalism, a lurid relic of late-1960s true-crime exploitation cinema. Produced by 20th Century Fox during the dawning of the MPAA ratings era, it leans hard into the film's basis in real events - the Albert DeSalvo murders that terrorized Boston from 1962 to 1964 - while amplifying the prurience to box-office bait. Tony Curtis, glammed up with heavy brows and a menacing glare, peers from the shadows in close-up, his face half-lit like a pulp novel cover, embodying the killer's deceptive charm. The real hook, though, is the grid of 13 women's faces - distorted in yellow-tinted terror, mouths agape in silent screams - arranged like mugshots or a macabre collage. It's a nod to the film's tally of victims, but the tagline ("Why did 13 women willingly open their doors to the Boston Strangler?") drips with victim-blaming sleaze, framing the horror as a puzzle of female folly rather than systemic failure. The yellow "THE BOSTON STRANGLER" title explodes like a tabloid headline, paired with that chilling quote: "'Come in.' He did. Thirteen times." It's manipulative genius - promising psychological thrills (the film splits into split-screen experiments for DeSalvo's fractured psyche) while indulging voyeuristic dread. The chain-link borders around the women add a B-movie bondage vibe. This poster's bombast reflects Hollywood's pivot from classical epics to gritty procedurals, influenced by In Cold Blood (1967). Still, it's iconic for how it commodified fear, turning a national trauma into popcorn fodder and foreshadowing the slasher boom of the 1970s.

Skidoo (1968)

Tomi Ungerer's poster for Otto Preminger's Skidoo is a prime example of late-1960s pop-psychedelic satire. The close-up of denim-clad hips with playful typography curving along the waistline - “It takes two to Skidoo” - merges sexual liberation and pop art cheekiness. The minimalist palette and confident use of white space accentuate the risqué humor without vulgarity. Ungerer’s cartoon prison convict (reminiscent of his children’s illustrations twisted into countercultural irony) gives the image a psychedelic, underground-comic energy. The poster reflects the studio system’s attempt to capture youth culture’s energy through countercultural graphic design and sexual innuendo.

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

Nine posters were created for this musical anti-war extravaganza. Let us look at three.

The first one bursts with Union Jack psychedelia - pop-art soldiers and flapper ghosts swirling around a mustachioed general pointing like Uncle Sam on acid. This initial design was created by John Billingham, but the finished artwork was handled by Brian Sanders.

The second poster amps the whimsy with a giant cartoon helmet as a stage, flowers sprouting from bayonets in a kaleidoscope of red, white and blue. The central figure, a showgirl standing on cannons, is surrounded by soldiers and dancing girls. The poster captures the idea of war-as-spectacle.

The third poster sobers up with stark white crosses extending into infinity, John Mills' haunted general dwarfed by WWI's grim casualties. The three posters show the evolution of one film’s ad campaign from madcap pageant to antiwar elegy.

Heaven With a Gun (1969)

Glenn Ford, as a preacher-turned-gunslinger, is captured in blue-sky quadrants of dusty duels and mission mayhem. This poster transforms the Western duel into a storyboard tableau: four sequential stills play out like comic-strip panels, emphasizing movement and treating violence like visual art. The panels pulse with 1960s cynicism, The sky's hyper-saturated cyan contrasts with the sandy neutrals, giving the design a sunbaked harshness. The tagline - "Jim Killian killed like an artist" - echoes revisionist Western rhetoric. The engraved-revolver illustration below is a witty graphic flourish, bridging the photographic realism above with stylized design below.

A similar design was used the following year with the poster for Darker Than Amber (1970).

The April Fools (1969)

The poster places a large photographic portrait of Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve against a white field - elegant, minimalist, romantic. The couple is in an intimate pose, with Lemmon resting in Deneuve's embrace. The image reflects the refined advertising aesthetic of the late 1960s - similar to The Graduate and Cactus Flower posters - where emotional intimacy replaces graphic boldness. The tagline - "He has a wife. She has a husband. . . " - encapsulates urbane adultery with a knowing wink. The neutral color palette conveys sophistication and melancholy. It's emblematic of the late-1960s drift toward romantic realism.

A Nice Girl Like Me (1969)

Barbara Ferris is pregnant in polka-dots across London, Paris and Venice. Desmond Davis's swinging-1960s sex comedy is matched with a poster that's pure mod whimsy - those triplicate silhouettes like a fertility ad. The poster is cheeky and carefree. Vibrant pink again dominates, but here it’s more whimsical than sensual. The triplicate cartoon figure evokes the repetition and symmetry of 1960s psychedelic graphics and Carnaby Street fashion ads. The line drawing and polka-dot pattern feel like something from Seventeen magazine, connecting to the light romantic tone of the film. The flatness and repetition echo Saul Bass-influenced poster trends but filtered through British pop design.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)

Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark stand amid boater-hatted boys. The film is a musical mix of an old classic bathed in Panavision pastels. Arthur P. Jacobs' lavish redo trades sentiment for songs. The crowd-shot design evokes Eton idylls. The tagline - "A love story as timeless as forever" - is syrupy sweet. O'Toole's tweed is peak 1960s heartthrob restraint.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969)

The poster is morbidly clever - a woman’s face half-buried in soil, a spade beside her, blood running from her nose. This is macabre realism meets surrealism, with the image simultaneously literal and metaphorical. The tone echoes What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’s grotesque psychodrama, emphasizing morbid curiosity over gore. The typography is clean and restrained, contrasting the shocking imagery - enhancing the film’s perverse elegance. This is a striking example of late-1960s horror minimalism - concept-led shock rather than pulp sensationalism.

Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969)

The poster presents kinetic cartoon chaos, blending Brit wit with speed-demon slapstick. Rainbow-colored jalopies careen toward a yellow roadster tilted over the edge of a cliff. The driver dangles from the undercarriage in daredevil fashion.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

The poster features an illustrated portrait of Maggie Smith, whose enigmatic gaze is bathed in red. Schoolgirls in hats stand alongside her like disciples trapped in the red void. Elegant and evocative, it teases intellectual seduction - a prime example of how one person can command a generation's awakening. This is a refinement of 1960s art-house design: emotional abstraction meets moral complexity.

During the decade, illustrators stayed busy making movie posters.

Jessica (1962) by Mitchell Hooks