Quick answer, nostalgia, boobies. Long answer…
I first became aware of posters in the back seat of our family car, stuck in various traffic jams in Bristol, UK, in the late 70’s. I can tell you more or less exactly because I was looking at dozens of posters flyposted on vacant buildings and walls alongside tour posters for bands. Mott the Hoople was one of the bands and Vanishing Point (1971) one of the movie posters. Can you imagine, dozens and dozens of UK Quads blithely pasted up exposed to the elements until they in turn get pasted over? Shudder. I think the next time I passed it was covered by Decameron (1971) and I watched them change weekly right up until Puppet on A Chain (1971) then I must have stopped paying attention. So 1971, definitely. I was 11 and I decided I wanted some of those for my bedroom. I just didn’t know where to get them from.
In a department store building now long bulldozed, Fairfax House if you are on old Bristolian, the bookstore had on its shelves The House of Hammer. This book was published 1973 (I just reached up for it to scan the front for you, it still smells of my lost youth…) when Hammer was theoretically still going strong. The cover caught my eye and I would later realize it was the art from Twins of Evil (1973). That cover, that poster and the many others reproduced in the book along with the glorious Hammer cleavage of the day would get me fully hooked. Thanks to a listing in the back of the short lived World of Horror magazine in 1974, I purchased three quads for Twins of Evil / Hands of the Ripper, The Vampire Lovers / Angels From Hell and Dracula Has Risen From The Grave, which were pinned straight on to my bedroom wall. At 15 Pounds for all three that cleaned my piggy bank out.
(http://www.britposters.com/images/Mike%20Vaughan%20Twins%20of%20Evil%20on%20House%20of%20Horror.jpg)
I always meant to buy more but I discovered there was more to being a teenager than Hammer no matter how much biting of Veronica Carlson went on. I got into music, beer and one expected to put a down payment on a girlfriend.
The poster thing was still in there, but I started literally ripping off the Band posters after they had just been glued up instead. Movie posters had stopped being flyposted by then. I had quite a collection of crusty music posters for a while, only a few have survived, which is a pity.
It all went dormant until Ebay, then I thought hang on, all the posters I wanted I can finally afford, I have job now! And then I discovered how much Hammer posters were now trading for…
I have tried to stick with quads and generally I like anything that is sensational, lurid or nostalgic. Every genre I seem to get into, everyone else does too and the prices shoot up. Sigh. I am currently into dodgy dubbed sand and sandal epics (“Son, do you like gladiator movies?”), peplums I have learned they are called. There’s Christians eating lions, manly men, wonderbra women with vast and wondrous scenes I am sure the actual movies never had the special effects budget for.
It bugs me I can wipeout my budget in a bidding war for a poster this week, only to see the same poster sell next week for a fraction. It amuses me that some poster’s show up again every other week optimistically described as “rare”. I self centeredly believe that posters for obscure films that were neither loved by the masses, nor the critics, still go for ridiculous amounts of money, apparently just because I want them. I have series I am still trying to complete, nostalgia bombs I can’t seem to win the bids on (Vanishing Point is still on my wish list) and posters I don’t actually like but still need to own just because they remind me of a significant time in my life. I still know very little about the posters, unless it’s signed or in Sim Branaghan’s excellent “British Film Posters” I couldn’t guess who did them. When I write about them on my webpage I am mostly just waffling about what you can plainly see for your self. I am trying to learn more, here, at LAMP, emovieposter and other forums.
They come into this house but they never leave, I have duplicates I could never consider selling. It’s a crazy hobby, but I love them all.
Mark