Movie Posters, Part Nine: The 1970s

Are you ready for the 1970s?

The 1950s Technicolor punch was long gone, now replaced by 1970s New Wave grit and restraint.   The posters of this period were characterized by minimalism and raw, photographic realism. 

Illustrated posters turned up a lot less often, but they were still around.

Scrooge (1970) by Joseph Bowler

Man of LaMancha (1972) by Ted CoConis 

Fraternity Row (1977) by Birney Lettick

Soylent Green (1973) by John Solie

There Was a Crooked Man (1970) by Bill Gold

Le Mans (1970) by Tom Jung

The Hospital (1971) by Gerry Gersten

The Sting (1973) by Bill Gold (designer) and Richard Amsel (illustrator)

The Mack (1973) by Fred Pfeiffer

The Last of The Red Hot Lovers (1972) by Paul Crifo 

Mean Streets (1973) by Joe Caroff

In recent years, this alternate poster was created by Olivier Courbet.

The Towering Inferno (1974) by John Berkey

The Beguiled (1970) by Richard Amsel

The 1960s psychedelia was coming to an end by this time.

Convoy (1978) by Victor Gadino

The film was reissued in 2010.  A new poster was created by Olly Moss.

Now, let's examine a few posters in depth.

 

Catch-22 (1970) 

Mike Nichols' anti-war satire gets a stark, visceral poster: a hairy chest adorned with dog tags and a Purple Heart, turning the military honor into darkly subversive commentary.  The stenciled "CATCH-22" in red screams graffiti protest, echoing Joseph Heller's novel and the Vietnam-era disillusionment it amplified.  No cast list (Alan Arkin, Martin Balsam, etc.) clutters the frame.  It's pure symbolism.  This is the apotheosis of 1970s conceptual poster design: a visual metaphor rather than narrative scene.   It mirrors the absurdist tone of the film and set the tone for later anti-war or dark comedies that used deadpan iconography.  The poster was designed by Bob Tanenbaum.

And Soon the Darkness (1970) 

The poster shows a dead young woman lying in the grass beside a bicycle.  The bicycle wheel is prominent in the foreground.  The top tagline - "Remember the way Hitchcock kept you on the edge of your seat...?" - is provocative.  This is a quintessential British suspense export, with a poster that sets up a bike ride and a green field as harbingers of horror.  It's like Psycho meets a countryside cycle tour - chilling in its everyday dread.  This poster pays homage to Hitchcockian suspense through graphic reduction - a photograph in acid green and black. 

Five Easy Pieces (1970) 

The poster is understated and gritty.  Jack Nicholson squats amid oil rigs like a brooding everyman.  The composition isolates Nicholson within an industrial landscape, suggesting his character's ennui and existential drift.  Nicholson's squint says more about blue-collar frustration and disillusionment than any slogan could.  This New Hollywood manifesto gets a stark, sun-bleached design.   The yellow frame evokes faded Polaroids.   This is not the old-fashioned romanticized poster art.  The minimal layout and muted color reflect a new aesthetic.  The typography - simple and blocky - aligns with the "cinéma vérité" spirit of the day.  At the time, this sort if blunt minimalism promised an anti-establishment work.

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Friends (1971) 

This film is a romantic counterpoint to Five Easy Pieces.  The poster is pure hippie-era illustration. Two lovers are in a fervent kiss amid swirling stars, horses, and moons, all set against vibrant orange.  The drawing recalls both Aubrey Beardsley and 1960s psychedelic art.  The central quote - "Who needs the world when you own the moon and stars?" - reinforces the idealistic escapism of early 1970s youth romance. The drawing within the couple’s silhouettes - showing a pastoral dreamscape - literally visualizes romantic fantasy. The image is elegant, innocent, and utopian.  Paramount's "Under 17 Requires Accompanying Parent" warning underscores its coming-of-age steaminess. It's escapism poster art - romantic, rebellious, and a tad cheesy - capturing the post-Summer of Love haze.  This belongs to the youth-culture subgenre: sentimental, stylized, idealistic.  It bridges the optimism of 1960s poster art and the clean typography of 1970s design.

Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971)

Dustin Hoffman's wide-eyed, furrowed-brow stare from under that cowboy hat dominates the poster, his expression a mix of paranoia and pathos that mirrors the film's neurotic New Hollywood angst. The title's run-on question sprawls across the top like a therapy session rant, emphasizing the story's stream-of-consciousness dread.  Barbara Harris, Jack Warden, and David Burns are listed below in stark white text, but the real artistry is in the subtle gradients and Hoffman's isolated pose against the vast blue void, which evokes his character's dire alienation.  This poster represents 1970s modernist minimalism.  A huge block of sans-serif text dominates the poster.  The exuberant taglines have been replaced by this existential text block.  The sole photographic figure is confined to the lower section, gazing upward, puzzling over the words - a clever integration of image and typography.  This is 1970s introspection in visual form.  The poster reflects the new "neurotic modern man" sensibility found in Hal Ashby and Mike Nichols films.  It's part of the anti-design trend: minimal and word-heavy.

Desperate Characters (1971) 

This poster for Frank D. Gilroy's Desperate Characters captures the gritty, introspective essence of early 1970s New Hollywood cinema, a period when films began trading glossy escapism for raw urban neuroses. The design is stark and monochromatic, evoking the film's black-and-white cinematography by Andrew Laszlo.  Shirley MacLaine dominates the left side in a wide-brimmed hat and trench coat, her expression a mix of weary defiance and quiet unraveling.  Her co-star, Kenneth Mars (often typecast in eccentric roles like The Producers), lurks in the background with a more passive, shadowy presence.  The rainy New York streetscape - lined with parked cars and blurred brownstones - mirrors the couple's fraying marriage amid the city's indifferent chaos, a visual metaphor for isolation in the crowd.  What stands out is the poster's restraint: no bombastic taglines, just functional text stacked like a novel's spine (Paramount's ITC production credits feel almost bureaucratic).  The red "DESPERATE CHARACTERS" slashes across like a fresh wound, contrasting the desaturated tones and hinting at the emotional hemorrhage at the story's core.  It's a poster that sells subtlety, appealing to an audience craving adult, character-driven fare over spectacle.  In hindsight, it foreshadowed MacLaine's later turn toward more vulnerable roles, and the film's cult status today owes much to this unflashy promo that let the performances (and Paula Fox's incisive prose) do the heavy lifting.

Skin Game (1971) 

The tagline's nursery-rhyme cadence ("To market, to market. . .") masks a biting social commentary in which slavery is reimagined as a con game   This aligns with the film's satirical Western tone.  A con man, Quincy Drew (James Garner), pretends that his partner Jason O'Rourke (Lou Gossett) is his slave and he must sell him out of financial hardship.  But, as planned, Jason quickly escapes from his new owner and rejoins Quincy to split the profits from his sale.  The poster cleverly contrasts visual simplicity with moral complexity, a blend of dark humor and sociopolitical critique typical of early 1970s revisionist Westerns.  Garner and Gosset provide an ahead-of-its-time buddy dynamic.

Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) 

This poster is a bold illustrated montage on a bright yellow field, dominated by expressive line art of the ensemble cast.  It’s part psychedelic, part painterly, evoking the hand-drawn collage trend of late-1960s posters.  The faces are outlined with emotional intensity, layered over the family home and logging river, hinting at generational struggle and American grit.  The tagline, "Never give an inch," establishes a rugged, defiant tone. The poster situates the film between traditional Americana and countercultural angst.

Play Misty for Me (1971) 

Clint Eastwood's stalker thriller gets a blood-orange abstraction.   This is a haunting hybrid of pulp illustration and minimalist design.  The halftone orange-black image of the screaming woman has a psychedelic noir quality, echoing pulp magazine covers but with poster-art restraint. The diagonal contrast between her terror and Eastwood’s anxious gaze below creates an off-balance composition mirroring the film’s obsession theme.  The tagline, "The scream you hear may be your own!", is sensational but perfectly paired with the visual graininess.  The use of monochrome duotone gives it a cold psychological edge.

The Omega Man (1971) 

Enzo Nistri's design shows Charlton Heston's rifle-wielding survivor silhouetted against a neon-blue apocalypse, haunted by ghoul-like faces in the gloom. The tagline "The last man alive is not alone!" is a chilling hook, announcing existential dread and gritty survivalism.  Heston's solid jawline sells our hero as the lone macho bulwark against plague-ravaged Los Angeles.  

The French Connection (1971) 

The poster has a raw, frantic, street-level energy - a perfect match for Friedkin's gritty New York crime thriller.  The poster has a split composition.  The top half shows the film's famous stairway scene with Popeye Doyle firing his gun.  The bottom is a calmer image of Gene Hackman, his hat adding retro-detective iconography.  The grainy image quality and harsh contrast push the film's documentary-style realism.  The bold red title evokes danger and urgency.  The tagline - "Doyle is bad news - but a good cop." - encapsulates the contradictory nature of the protagonist.  The poster looks like a crime scene snapshot.  It sells danger, authenticity, and adrenaline.

The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972) 

The poster features a sepia-toned cowboy congregation under brutal block letters, with handwritten scrawl adding folksy grit ("The boy from summer of '72 becomes a cattle man").  The ensemble huddle - beards, bandanas, squints - feels like a Magnificent Seven outtake, but dustier and more lived-in.  Dick Richards's revisionist Western flips the genre on its head: a teen's bloody cattle-drive awakening.  The group portrait humanizes the young cowboys, evoking Bonnie and Clyde's anti-mythology amid 1970s cynicism.  No glamour, just sweat and Stetsons - Gary Grimes's wide-eyed kid circled like a bullseye.  The worn faces and rough textures sell grit over glory for the post-Easy Rider crowd.  The design is similar to the photographic earthiness of McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Bad Company posters.

They Only Kill Their Masters (1972) 

The poster, which was designed by Robert Armstrong, features a close-up of James Garner nose-to-nose with a German Shepherd.  It is a mirrored confrontation, with their profiles forming a symmetrical standoff.  It evokes both intimacy and threat. The tagline - "Was the murderer a man. . .  or man's best friend?" - is the film’s central riddle.  The image is a nod to 1970s paranoia (who can you trust - even Fido?).  James Goldstone's beachside mystery mixes Chinatown darkness with Columbo charm.  The poster follows 1970s minimalist design  in which one striking conceptual photograph is used in place of a montage.

Joe Kidd (1972) 

Clint Eastwood's bounty hunter leers from a shattered hacienda, shotgun barrels framing his tagline growl ("If you're looking for trouble - he's JOE KIDD.").  John Sturges' Eastwood vehicle gets a sunbaked abstraction - orange cracks like parched earth, the double-barrel a visual "make my day" precursor.  Parental guidance stamp nods to the violence.  This is a late entry in the illustrated Western poster tradition, but with modernist structure.  The orange-brown dust tones and the gun barrel extending downward create a tense perspective.  The typography mimics Wild West signage yet is rendered in bold, clean lines, balancing pulp tradition and sleek 1970s design.

Across 110th Street (1972) 

The photograph is gritty Blaxploitation, with Richard Ward presiding over a table of mob money like a king of Harlem's underworld.  The cash stacks are practically spilling off the page. The poster provides a bridge from 1960s crime flicks to 1970s urban realism.  The tightly framed photo of men around a table of cash instantly communicates tension and moral corruption. The composition is a claustrophobic, masculine tableau.  The tagline - "If you steal $300,000 from the mob, it's not robbery. It's suicide." - heightens the film's fatalism, while the inclusion of inset portraits (a 1940s holdover) grounds the marketing in traditional studio seriousness.  Muted colors and smoke evoke both the grime and style of early 1970s urban crime cinema.

The Valachi Papers (1972) 

The poster features a high-contrast black-and-white photo of a dead body slumped over a barber chair.  The image resembles a gritty newspaper photograph.  It evokes Italian neorealism crossed with 1970s crime grit.  It is grim and lurid, promising bullets and betrayals without glamour.  The minimalist layout and large negative space suggest realism and cold detachment.  Bold sans-serif title anchors the frame.  This poster's design was similar to the posters for a recent satirical comedy, The Hospital (1971).

The Salzburg Connection (1972) 

A man's dangling silhouette over Salzburg's snowy spires sets a chilling tone: espionage agents from East and West converge like shadows on a Cold War chessboard.  The stark black-and-purple palette and hanging rope evoke precarious alliances, with the title's swastika hinting at buried Nazi secrets.  Minimalist yet ominous, it promises Hitchcockian suspense in alpine gloom - a poster that whispers "trust no one."

The Candy Snatchers (1972) 

The poster for this gritty 1970s exploitation film oozes sleaze: blindfolded Susan Sennett (as "Candy") cowers amid leering men with guns and shovels, under a stark white title.  The photo is shot from a low angle with the kidnappers looming over their victim.  The poster represents the grindhouse poster shift - from illustrative fantasy to documentary-style menace.  Sepia tones and tagline "It started as such a simple crime" promise descent into depravity.  Raw and unpolished, it mirrors the film's low-budget edge - a visceral hook for drive-in crowds thrilled by moral depravity.

The Carey Treatment (1972) 

The clean, text-heavy composition is dominated by James Coburn's  confident stance and cigarette gesture. This is minimalist modernism, influenced by magazine layouts - Helvetica typography, photographic restraint, and white space.  The body language and tagline emphasize detached professionalism and subversive intelligence.  The poster reflects early-1970s adult thriller marketing (similar to The Hospital or Klute).

The Laughing Policeman (1973) 

The poster features a stark black background with yellow silkscreen-style imagery - a silhouetted gunman bathed in bright yellow light that makes him look electrified. The tagline bisects the image: "This movie is so real it makes every other movie in this town look like a movie."  The imagery, brutalist and minimalist, is indebted to grindhouse and anti-glamour realism of the early 1970s.  The limited color palette recalls underground poster art and Warholian contrast.  The design rejects Hollywood gloss, positioning the film as gritty, unfiltered, and urban.  The blunt typography mirrors the hardboiled cynicism of the post–Dirty Harry crime wave.  This is an aesthetic rebellion, authenticity marketed through visual ugliness as a badge of honor.

Scarecrow (1973) 

Gene Hackman and Al Pacino are road-weary drifters, sketched inside a beige circle like a faded snapshot.  The color wash evokes dustbowl despair.  The scarecrow arm suggests a spectral hitchhiker.  This is a quintessential New Hollywood humanist poster.  Everything feels understated, emotional, and anti-commercial - a reflection of the early 1970s art-film marketing that trusted mood over spectacle.

The Exorcist (1973) 

This is possibly the most iconic horror poster of the 1970s.  The poster presents a dark silhouette of Father Merrin standing beneath a streetlamp.  It conveys mystery, dread, and stillness.  The beam of white light emerging from Regan's window evokes a supernatural presence.  The image is based on the famous Magritte painting Empire of Light, giving the poster a surreal quality.  The poster conveys fear through atmosphere, not through sensationalism.  It became instantly iconic because it suggests horror without illustrating it.

The studios tested different styles of posters for The Long Goodbye (1973).

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) 

The poster has a stark, minimalist design that foregrounds Jack Nicholson's presence and the film's institutional setting.  Nicholson looks upward with a mischievous smile, suggesting that his character is rebellious, hopeful and nonconformist.  Nicholson's charisma is the poster's primary selling tool.  The chain-link fence motif suggests confinement.  The minimal color (mostly blacks and whites) fits the psychiatric-institution tone.

 

Taxi Driver (1976) 

The poster features Travis Bickle walking alone in Times Square, surrounded by signs for porn theaters and trash-filled sidewalks. The poster conveys a bleakness and alienation, perfectly mirroring the film's urban malaise. It's a quiet poster, not an action poster, even though the film contains violence.  The background is cluttered and chaotic, but Travis is centered and isolated, suggesting his loneliness in the crowd.  The desaturated, almost monochrome color evokes documentary realism.  Blue tones amplify Bickle's nocturnal isolation.  The tagline -

 "On every street in every city in this country, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody." - invites viewers to identify uncomfortably with Travis.

Alien (1979) 

The poster is minimalist, ominous, and atmospheric.  It may be one of the most iconic horror-sci-fi posters ever created.  The single egg in a void of blackness suggests a threat without showing the killer alien.  The green glow and crack suggest the birth of something horribly freakish.  The tagine -  "In space no one can hear you scream." - is perfect: stark, cold, unforgettable.  The vast field of alien rock formations beneath the egg creates strangeness and unease.  The poster sells dread and isolation.

Being There (1979)

The poster features Peter Sellers floating ethereally above a snowy, manicured estate, umbrella and suitcase in hand.  It is a dreamlike image reflecting the film's ambiguity and innocence. This is a surreal, quiet, literary poster befitting Hal Ashby's tone. It is reflective rather than comedic.  The muted colors, winter trees, formal symmetry suggest calmness and stillness, contrasting with the strange levitation.  The painterly style evokes a book cover or fine-art illustration rather than a movie poster.  It communicates gently absurdist, philosophical comedy.

Norma Rae (1979) 

Sally Field's triumphant arms-wide pose dominates, encircled by rave reviews.  The striped tee and jeans ground her as everywoman, with the title's cursive flair adding a personal warmth.  The poster makes it clear that the film is character-driven and showcases the victory of an underdog.  

The Jerk (1979) 

The poster is loud, silly and intentionally stupid - just like Steve Martin's character.   The title is handwritten and messy, reinforcing the character's chaotic, naïve persona.  The poster sells Martin as an absurdist man-child.