Armin Junge — Son of Banzai! More Cult Movie Posters from Japan (Book)

In this epic volume, the follow-up to Armin Junge’s much-acclaimed Banzai! Japanese Cult Movie Posters, the writer once again takes us into Japanese cinema poster heaven.

Broken down into different sections, Son of Banzai features almost 300 pages of colour reproductions of Japanese cinema posters. The sections are broken up as follows: Glamour Girls featuring some of the best posters for classic pornographic/ exploitation cinema, including the likes of Deep Throat, Maid in Sweden, and Russ Meyer’s Supervixens, to name just a few. There are several striking images that have been reproduced to a very high standard, colours are vibrant, and images are crystal clear.

The second section is Macho Men and features some outstanding posters for classic action movies like The Cincinnati Kid starring Steve McQueen, Get Carter starring Michael Caine and a glorious poster for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. This section covers a host of different genres, including thrillers, westerns, spy thrillers, actioners and adventure epics. Once again, we are presented with some stunning visuals. I was particularly blown away by the aforementioned Cincinnati Kid poster, the Sergio Leone western posters and some of the martial arts posters.

The third section is Bizarre, which features some pretty messed up films, including the likes of Let Me Die A Woman, a host of kinky Japanese movies, and most impressively of all, a stunning Japanese poster for Witchcraft 70’. This section features a lot of low-budget Japanese movies that have never gone beyond their own shores, which is great because it allows us a vision of an as yet untapped source of weird, surreal and kinky erotica.

Next up is the Horror section, which offers up some stunning posters that I have never seen before for some of my favourite movies. There is a particularly stunning Dawn of the Dead poster, another for The House on Haunted Hill and a really weird Army of Darkness poster, which has a real Japanese pop culture flavour to it, that I love. Also featured are cans of soup with Bruce Campbell’s name on them…genius or what? There are also quite a few posters for Japanese horror titles, I really liked the Blind Woman’s Curse poster and the Shin Kaidan Shikiyoku Gedo poster from 1976, but there are so many good ones here from Phantasm to The Horrible Dr Orloff and Frankenstein’s Army.

Science Fiction is up next, and while there are some great posters for classic western movies, it’s all about the Japanese titles here. You could almost create a separate section just for Kaiju at this rate, with some glorious posters for Gamera, Ghidora, Godzilla and co. I was particularly struck by the posters for Son of Godzilla, Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster and Destroy All Monsters. There are loads of other cool stuff for the likes of Ultraman, X From Outer Space, Yatterman and Kamen Rider.

There are also some really cool posters for some older western sci-fi like The Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and a particularly brilliant Batman: The Movie poster that would look amazing on my living room wall.

The final section looks at additional advertising materials such as press sheets, lobby cards and stills. There is a stunning Conquest of the Planet of the Apes press sheet, a really nice one for John Carpenter’s The Fog and a Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 one that I would love to see used as the front cover of a Blu-ray or UHD release in the future.

Overall, Son of Banzai! Is a glorious delve into the archives of Japanese poster art, much of which I have never seen before, but now wish I owned. It can also act as an introduction to many of us Westerners to some of the less well-known Japanese movies featured within these pages. The book is beautifully presented with gorgeously evocative images. I now have a new list of films that I need to check out because of this book, and frankly, I love it.