Thanks Harry
Sim has done an excellent job of summarising what we now know and where we're at with this investigation, which I'm posting with his permission:
There are two versions of the (November 1982) Evil Dead quad - full-size 30x40 with a white border, and trimmed 28¾ x 38¼ without. It seems likely - though not yet certain - that both are from the same initial print-run. The white-border versions are exceptionally rare, with less than 10 copies currently known to exist. Given that Graham (in the Film on Paper interview) suggests a likely initial run of c.500 copies, we can speculate that only a handful (perhaps 5% or so) escaped the guillotine.
We can assume this for two reasons: (1) Posters printed 'bleed' HAVE to be printed on oversize paper initially (then trimmed to size), so even the "small" versions would have needed to be printed at 30x40 originally, and (2) The tiny number of surviving 30x40 originals IN ITSELF suggests that the majority of the run was later trimmed. It just isn't economical to print less than 500 copies of anything on a large-format litho press.
So, the question then becomes, WHY was the majority of the run subsequently trimmed? At the moment we don't know. Graham himself isn't sure, despite being present during early stages of printing 'to ensure good colour adjustment'. It seems possible that Palace's original Publicity Manager Paul Webster might have an idea about this, but we're not confident of getting hold of him to find out. That's how things stand at the moment - not much further forward than they were to begin with unfortunately.....
