Many will be familiar with Simon Dwyer’s 1959 ex-Lancashire Constabulary MGA traffic car (click here to read about it).
It is a vehicle of such innate dignity that it transports the Clerk of the Course at the Goodwood Revival.
But this automotive embodiment of law and order shares space with Simon’s collection of film posters – many of which promote speed, smoking, bad dancing and excessive use of hair pomade.
Historic motorsport fans might know Simon Dwyer’s MGA from its starring role at Goodwood Revival
Simon says: “Cars always came first. When I passed my test in 1978, I told my father I was going to buy my first car.
“He initially said no, but agreed to my buying an old MGB roadster as a project. In other words, it was a ruse.
“After university, my routine was to have three cars at any one time as part of a rolling collection.”
Until Simon turned 40, his principal interest was classics, but then he began buying the odd film poster as an entertaining reward for successfully completing a work project.
The legendary Jaws artwork
As he says: “I discovered eBay!”
Today the collection amounts to more than 2000 posters: “I’m a big fan of the aesthetics of the B-movies, especially American second features of the 1950s and ’60s, and ‘Grindhouse’ pictures of the 1970s.”
Simon is less interested in the content of such B-features than in how the job of a poster was to lure the public into the cinema.
“I love promotions for ‘creature features’,” he explains, “plus low-budget sci-fi and Roger Corman’s works for American International Pictures.”
Posters often oversold the film they were promoting
These were such masterpieces as Attack of the Crab Monsters and Hot Rod Gang; a lost realm of a leading lady pouting à la Marilyn Monroe and a chain-smoking hero with an improbable pompadour.
There might also be the bonus of a stunningly implausible illustration of a car with a bonnet approximately 20ft long.
Simon describes such films not as B-pictures but ‘See-pictures’, due to their promotional copy.
Who could not thrill to ‘See The Terrifying Juvenile Delinquents, Some of Whom Are Even Aged Under 35!’ or ‘See – The 100 Foot Alien Invader Consume Die-Cast Model Oldsmobile 88s!’?
A flash of Chevrolet Corvette on the poster for 1958 film Dragstrip Riot
Simon regrets the comparative lack of memorable taglines in modern film PR.
What 2026 movie could hope to match 1959’s Daddy-O – ‘Daring to Live… Daring to Love!’?
Such sentiments reflected fears of the latest youth folk devils.
Simon is particularly fond of the poster for 1936’s Reefer Madness, featuring a gentleman resembling Christopher Lee as Dracula on a bad day.
The 1957 Dragstrip Girl was apparently ‘Car Crazy!… Speed Crazy!… Boy Crazy!…’, and a year later the poster for Dragstrip Riot showed clashes between ’bikers and irate Chevrolet Corvette C1 drivers.
There’s not space to display all 2000 film artworks at the same time
Simon finds that 1950s British B-film posters, with their illustrations of grim-faced detectives and highly inaccurate depictions of Wolseley squad cars, lack the appeal of the American art.
“When British cinema began using Italian poster artists in the 1960s, it became of interest to me,” he says. “Aesthetically, post-war Italian film-poster art is the greatest in the world.”
Simon describes his policy on collecting as having no narrative.
“Many collectors focus on a specific era or genre,” he explains, “but my approach is purely visceral. If I like it, I will buy it.”
This method has resulted in one of the finest and most offbeat collections of film artworks in the UK, including the rare poster for the 1968 ‘swinging London’ picture Joanna, – ‘She’s Top Banana’ – featuring a young Canadian actor named Donald Sutherland.
Images: Jack Harrison
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