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Jason's Top Five favourite movie posters

Regular listeners to the show will know our Top Five segment that pops up from time to time. Every Top Five features five things Shawn and I like or don't like about film or film-related things. Think theatre experiences, geek Christmas presents, kills. And given our long and storied history with movies, Shawn and I have little trouble finding five things to talk about.

Today Top Five finds its way to the site, and I'm kicking it off by highlighting five of my favourite movie posters. Just five? It was hard to narrow the list down -- and ask me in two days and the list could change -- but these are five posters that have always stuck with me. Hell, several of them were on my bedroom wall as a kid.

You'll notice right away that there's one similarity between them -- they are hand drawn. Back in the day movie posters were art. And all five of these are works of art.

Here they are, in no particular order:

Leviathan

Shit movie, awesome poster. Simple, effect and creepy. Underwater horror never really took off, but it wasn't for a lack of trying. This followed Deepstar Six and preceded The Abyss . . . and was instantly forgotten. Peter Weller and Amanda Pays deserved better than this.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Scary movie, scary poster. Seeing the small, black and white version of this in the newspaper gave me nightmares. This is one of the most effective movie posters ever and it doesn't even try to be picture perfect. But it captures the crazed nightmare vibe of Wes Craven's film perfectly. Creepy.

Last Action Hero

Arnold has never looked so good. The movie might be a missed opportunity, but this poster is gorgeous. And it does convey everything Last Action Hero is about in one, dynamite image. If the film was as good as this poster, it would have been a hit. But it wasn't. 'Nuff said.

John Carpenter's Halloween

This is just as simple and effective as Carpenter's classic. Sure, there are better posters out there, but this has everything it needs to entice you into seeing the movie. Knife? Check. Jack o Lantern? Check. Creep factor? Check. I gotta get me a version of this for The Basement.

The Empire Strikes Back

Sure, the Star Wars poster is cool. But this is beautiful. You've got Hoth, the Han and Leia romance, spaceships and Lord Vader bigger than life and twice as awesome. This is the coolest of all the Star Wars posters, and rightly so as it's still my favourite film of the bunch.

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