A tale of two Dark Shadows posters

One of the highlights of my year was being asked to design the poster for Dark Shadows: Behind the Screams, one of the events at the annual Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival. I wasn't abel to attend the event, which sucked ... but I'm deeply honored to have been asked to participate and hope to make the pilgrimage next year.

The poster you saw wasn't my first idea, though. At the time I'd been riffing on the great James Bama's 1966 promotional painting for Star Trek, which you can see here. I was having fun with that kind of macho-adventure collage, even applying it to Gregory Walcott's character in Plan 9 from Outer Space, promoting his buffoonish character to a level of heroism he doesn't really deserve. I mention all of this just to illustrate where my head was when the offer arrived from the kind people at Sleepy Hollow.

Here's how the first poster looked, seconds before I scrapped it.



There were two significant problems with this version. Sleepy Hollow's Dark Shadows: Behind the Screams featured a visual retrospective of the classic Dark Shadows television series, a Q&A with cast member Kathryn Leigh Scott, as well as a screening of 1970's House of Dark Shadows" Scott appears in both versions of the poster, but there remained a significant problem with the first draft. House of Dark Shadows was shot in Sleepy Hollow and nearby Tarrytown, which needed to feature predominantly in the marketing. I considered a version of this poster with the Lyndhurst Estate (the mansion that served as Collinwood in "House") in place of Seaview Terrace (Collinwood from the television series) but the overall concept of this poster was so inextricably tied to the second year of the series that it no longer made sense. Below is my second effort, and the poster that was ultimately used in the marketing. I'm very happy with how both of them turned out.

Prints of both posters are available from HereticTees Studios HERE.