HAPPY HANKOWEEN! My Latest Henry Mancini Work of Art...

Earlier this year, I had several works of art – including this blog – as official displays in the T.A.L.E.N.T. Art Gallery at QVC Studio Park. This gallery is set up to display employees’ artwork – all of which share a common theme of a particular exhibit. This “Talent” group has been doing this for a few years now and their most popular exhibit every year is the Halloween-themed exhibit.

This year, the prompt for participating employees was a “horror movie poster” of your own design. The ‘movie’ could be an existing horror movie or your very own idea for a horror movie. For my entry, I kinda did both. I took several horror, thriller and menacing movies in the Top 100 Henry Mancini Films and created new movie posters for each of them. Then, I took those posters and made a collage poster for a film showcase of all these Mancini Monster Movies (and more). I called my new film “Hankoween – Monster Movies and More with a Henry Mancini Score.”

Here's the final piece as it is in the exhibit:

All the ‘new’ posters were designed with the online Canva program, and I limited myself to using free art (in the app) only. It was fun taking older movies and putting them in a modern poster context. The posters are fastened to the TALENT-supplied wooden board with refrigerator tape and adorned with 16mm filmstock of my sci-fi and horror films I made at UArts in the 1990s. 

I’d like to share some of my Canva-made Henry Mancini poster designs here. These were some of my favorites….

 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS (1953) 

The interesting thing about this project was translating movie posters with hand illustrations, tons of slogans, and the other trappings of 1950s posters into the minimalist designs of today. On one hand, very easy: just punch the info into a Canva template, and voila! instant poster. However, the flavor of the poster (or, in some cases, the film) could be lost. I used that to my advantage on clunker films like this one. Mars has a great title, and a good premise but slip shoddy presentation.  At least this poster looks cool.

 FEAR (1990) 

Many of the Canva movie poster templates center on one or two photographic elements. In those cases, I try to remember a striking prop or visual from my screening. For Fear, that visual was police sirens in the opening titles. But I couldn’t find a good free image on Canva of police lights, so I revisited the trailer and saw the epic Ferris wheel scene. This image doesn’t match the film’s carnival ride exactly, but it was close enough.

 WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS OF EUROPE? (1978) 

Great movie, a lousy original movie poster. I wanted to change all that. And I wanted to design a poster with laurels. I love this design even though it’s an odd shape – which ultimately relegated it to the parameter of my overall HANKOWEEN design. Still, very happy with this new poster.

 THE MONOLITH MONSTERS (1957) 

The linear design of this poster caught my eye and pairing The Monolith Monsters to this template was happenstance. The element that came out from frame right to cross the black line was originally a human arm. I went with cartoony illustrations in only two designs in the overall project – this being one of them with these vibrant Power Rangers-like crystals.

 

 LIFEFORCE (1985) 

One of my least favorite Mancini movies, Lifeforce already has some enticing movie posters. I wanted to attack this one and move on quickly. This template was very layered, but I changed all that. The original DVD cover has the side view of an eye peering at Earth. I went 90 degrees and combined the eye/Earth motif. It’s pretty good, I think. No, nowhere near as sexy as the original, but it's good enough for me.

 WAIT UNTIL DARK (1967) 

More of a thriller than a horror pic, Wait Until Dark just had to be in this project. With a creepy-looking doll being central to the plot of Dark, I wanted that image and was tickled pink when I found this peek-a-boo doll peering out of a cardboard box. This design is my absolute favorite in this project – and weirded out my kids a good bit.

 FRANCIS AND THE HAUNTED HOUSE (1956) 

The film is the worst in the Francis the Talking Mule series. Let that sink in for a moment. It did not rank in the Top 100 Henry Mancini Films, but it did get mentioned in another film that landed between #30-21. And yet, my family LOVED this design and asked a lot about the movie because of this poster. We may watch it…if I can bear another viewing.

 

 NIGHTWING (1979) 

I like Nightwing and really wanted to make a great poster for it. However, this was the first poster I designed for this project, and I didn’t quite know what I was doing with each title. It’s also an unusual shape for a poster – so it got place on the parameter for the whole 16mm border thing to work.

 

 CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) 

Imagine if M. Night Shyamalan directed Creature from the Black Lagoon? That’s what this poster says to me. Once I found the resort beach image, I darkened it up a good bit and it played perfectly behind the text template preset. 

 IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) 

It definitely has a “Lost in Space” vibe, and I love it. Again, a simple title design is sometimes all you need.

 

 THE NIGHT VISITOR (1971) 

Truth be told: I did very little here. On Canva, this background and text were already selected in the template. I just keyed in The Night Visitor’s corresponding information – which was deliciously offkey for this film but served my interest in letting the viewer know who was in this film that made it worth watching. The Canva template simply screamed this film which involves a killer who can stealthily escape an asylum to commit heinous acts on a rural property nearby.

And that’s our HANKOWEEN film breakdown…of some of the posters involved in the collage. 

Thanks to the T.A.L.E.N.T. Art Affinity Group for creating this exhibit at QVC Studio Park and displaying my ode to Mancini. QVC employees, on-air guests, and LIVE Audience members can see this exhibit for FREE at Studio Park in West Chester, PA.