Attack of the Killer Tomatoes movie poster
Contributed by Patrick Concannon on Oct 31st, 2023. Artwork published in
.
Source: movieposters.ha.com License: All Rights Reserved.
US One Sheet poster
From Wikipedia:
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is a 1978 American parody film produced by J. Stephen Peace and John DeBello, and directed by John DeBello based upon an original idea by Costa Dillon. The screenplay was written by Dillon, Peace, and DeBello. The film spoofs B movies and was made on a budget of less than US$ 100,000. The story involves tomatoes becoming sentient by unknown means and revolting against humanity.
The film’s title is set in or based upon Company (1978), with elements appearing hand-lettered and the O’s in “Tomatoes” drawn to resemble the titular Killer Tomatoes. The tagline and credit block are set in Gill Sans.
Poster art by David Weisman.
2 Comments on “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes movie poster”
I don’t think I’ve seen that cut of Gill before. Any info on it?
The smaller type at the bottom is (a phototype version of) Monotype’s Extra Bold. The “Aaargh!…” at the top basically follows the Extra Bold as well, but has more weight and a few different details.
In the phototype era, various manufacturers expanded classic designs into larger series of numerous weights. For example, Castcraft carried a “Gill Sans Blast”, which is similar in weight, but not a match. “neo-Gill Sans Black” as shown by Headliners in 1978 is a likely candidate, but I haven’t seen a specimen that is complete enough to confirm the ID. It has the right weight and that flat-top A. Another such extension is Gill Serial by Typeshop. Its style no. 7 is a match in terms of weight and also has the right a, g and r. Again, I don’t have a complete glyph set to consult. It strikes me as a less plausible option, because to my knowledge, Typeshop’s distribution was limited to Western Europe.