Yellow has been a popular color in the marketing of horror films since the beginning of filmmaking. Even when the genre was firmly in the black and white era before color film was widely used, poster art for horror films featured yellow as both a way for the art to stand out and to signify deeper meaning within the films themselves.
In the 1930s and 1940s when many horror movies were still shot in black and white both for budgetary reasons and because the medium allowed for a darker mood in horror, poster art took a decidedly colorful feel. Yellow stood out. It could be set against darker colors and be noticeable from a distance. The perfect way to draw in moviegoers as they went past the movie theater.
Many horror films of that era featured monsters of some sort whether it be an internal struggle or juxtaposing a perceived monster with their creator. In Frankenstein, the true monster was Dr. Frankenstein for his hubris in creating something that shouldn’t exist. The monster on the poster is electrified by yellow light showing his innocent, child like demeanor and his loneliness. Tom Browning’s Freaks showed his circus performer’s true humanity while the “normal” people were truly ugly even if it was only on the inside. The text in red above two normal people who are set against a yellow background signifies the moral decay within those two characters. In The Wolf Man poster, the yellow text signifies the monster within the man himself. Three perfect examples of how the color yellow in poster art can reflect the tropes within the film.
Hitchcock and Yellow in Posters
Alfred Hitchcock utilized the color in many poster designs regardless of whether his film was black and white or color. Hitchcock was the Master of Suspense and known for making a good thriller, but several of his films were bonafide horror movies. Psycho, The Birds, and Rebecca are great examples of how great Hitchcock was at creating a horrifying scene. In the poster for The Birds, he used yellow to highlight the green in Tippi Hedren’s dress which was intentionally designed to make her look like Barbie. By the end of that film, her character is attacked and driven a bit mad by the birds and she’s no longer the perfect specimen we met at the beginning of the film.
Even in films that veered more into comedy, like Rear Window, he was able to create a suspenseful conclusion. For that poster, yellow was utilized as an outline to show the voyeurism exhibited by the protagonist. Spying on your neighbors isn’t great, especially when you might not have seen what you think you saw. Rope was filmed almost entirely in one room, so this film relied heavily on the performances of its cast to keep it interesting. Yellow was used for Hitchcock’s name in this poster so it stood out against the dark undertones the rope itself implied. Regardless of what genre his films landed in, the yellow aspect of his posters remained as a way for them to stand out and to give insight to the underlying meaning of his films.
Roger Corman’s Poe Adaptations
Roger Corman used yellow in the posters for his films as well. He and Vincent Price teamed up for a series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations between 1960 and 1965. These stories featured the internal decay and rot of the characters on screen, and the poster art mimicked that tone. You can read further on Roger Corman’s use of yellow within his films in a previous installment of this blog series.
Giallo – Italian Horror of the 60s & 70s
Giallo is the Italian word for yellow. More specifically for this blog’s purposes, it is a term used for Italian horror movies made in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. The word was meant to describe the color of thriller and crime books of that era – it was the color of the pages as they aged but also a color featured on the book covers – that gave inspiration for many a horror films made by Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and many others. As you can imagine, yellow was routinely featured in the poster art and marketing as an homage to those old book covers that featured the same color.
The Giallo era of Italian films was made of suspenseful crime thrillers that included horror elements, often utilizing gore and horrific deaths at the hands of a serial killer. The killers wore black gloves and nylon over their faces so you didn’t know who the killer was. There was always an investigative aspect to these films which included law enforcement trying to find the killer. These whodunits were based on books inspired by the Agatha Christie’s of storytelling and featured bright blues and reds set against dark stories within the films. Think noir but make it colorful gore and include some sexploitation along the way. While most of the films themselves didn’t utilize yellow as often as other colors, the poster art did.
Mario Bava was one of the first directors in the 1960s to move into the Giallo style. Before he did so, he directed one of my favorite films starring Barbara Steele. Black Sunday was filmed in black and white to go with the gothic theme of the movie, but the poster featured yellow to show the witchcraft themes in the film. While not considered a Giallo film, it does feature a lot of the gory practical effects the subgenre is known for. By 1963, Bava was soundly in his Giallo era with The Evil Eye and 1964’s Blood and Black Lace.
Dario Argento is probably the most well known of the Giallo directors. His films became more vivid color wise as his career moved through the 1970s. Many of his posters used vibrant yellow text as to stand out from the films’ dark tones. His 1977 film Suspiria is the most talked about film in his filmography and was remade for American audiences but Luca Guadagnino in 2018. Starring Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton, the film is a testament to Argento’s legacy as it uses much of the gore and body horror from the original Giallo era even if the color scheme is limited to red set against more muted tones in the remake.
Lucio Fulci directed more obscure and offbeat Giallo films like Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Don’t Torture a Duckling. The former features psychedelic nightmares about debauched sex orgies and using LSD. If that tells you anything about the visuals associated with Giallo horror, Lucio was known for being a little more toned down when compared to Argento and Bava.
Alice, Sweet Alice, released in 1976, is considered a great example of American Giallo featuring psychological mystery and a marked killer. This film also features a yellow raincoat which I covered in my first installment of this blog series. The loss of innocence is a heavy aspect of this film and you can read up on it in the other blog.
Black Christmas is another example of American Giallo horror. It featured John Saxon as a police officer. He later portrayed the father in A Nightmare on Elm Street and starred in Mario Bava’s The Evil Eye and Argento’s Tenebrae. Margot Kidder gives one of her best performances in Black Christmas as does Olivia Hussey. I watch it every year during the holiday season. I love it for its style and its bleak ending.
These Italian films had a lasting effect on horror. Today, films like Malignant, Last Night in SoHo, and Strange Darling have the same suspenseful tone with psychological horror elements and law enforcement investigating the case. Bright colors too. Last Night in SoHo in particular uses bright colors throughout the film to highlight the protagonist’s descent into a darker place. Each of these films feature a protagonist who suffers mentally at some point, so using yellow or red in the poster art stays in line with art from the original Giallo era.
Television Horror
The 1990s gave us Tales From the Crypt. Much like the comic, the art for the DVD covers features yellow text that, like so many films, aligned with the moral decay featured in each episode. This show and the comic book it was based on featured some of the best and most twisted plot lines that made The Twilight Zone look like a children’s show.
Evil is one of those shows that brings together a priest, a tech expert, and a skeptical psychological analyst to investigate paranormal events for the Catholic Church. More moral decay highlighted in the color of the text, and a filter to make it look tarnished adding to the effect are a perfect way to depict the show.
American Horror Story used this artwork for one of the later installments of the show, Season 7, Cult. Using the beehive as a person’s brain as it drips with sickly looking honey is the embodiment of how being in a cult does to your mind.
Yellow, Now and Then
In modern times, yellow is frequently used to market films through poster art and covers for DVDs, blu rays, and 4K editions of movies. This is also used as the cover art on streaming sites as studios try to make their films stand out among a sea of every growing content.Nia DaCosta’s Candyman sequel used the poster art to show both the lore of the Candyman urban legend by repeating his name and the descent of the protagonist into something awful. The repetition of saying his name mimics the repeating of history as the villain has had many reincarnations.
Possessor is my favorite entry of the modern era. The yellow hue of the poster paired with the visuals associated with the film’s plot are a perfect example of how yellow is used to show mental decay. In a film about taking over someone else’s body without their knowledge and living their life while trying to get close enough to assassinate someone else is exactly the type of film I’d expect to see a character descend into confusion and a bit of madness. The poster portrays this beautifully without giving anything away. The poster is what made me want to see the movie. If that isn’t great marketing, I don’t know what is.
For the marketing art of Doctor Sleep, they chose to have Danny looking through the blank space that mimics what his father looked through when finding his mother in the bathroom of the Overlook. Yellow surrounds him, making it look like Danny is finally seeing things clearly in life. That he is done hiding. It was one of the main themes of Mike Flanagan’s adaptation, so I love they made this art for it. It also pays homage to the original poster art for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Art comes full circle for both films revolve around flawed men who deal with a lot of mental decay.
Take a moment and glance through your movie collection. Or pay closer attention to the streaming service you use when scrolling. Yellow, especially paired with reds, greens, and blacks, is a common occurrence in horror themed marketing. The meaning is often associated with the movie’s story or deeper themes as well as a great way for the art to stand out against other films when on a shelf.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
Chapter 9
Yellow has been a popular color in the marketing of horror films since the beginning of filmmaking. Even when the genre was firmly in the black and white era before color film was widely used, poster art for horror films featured yellow as both a way for the art to stand out and to signify deeper meaning within the films themselves.
In the 1930s and 1940s when many horror movies were still shot in black and white both for budgetary reasons and because the medium allowed for a darker mood in horror, poster art took a decidedly colorful feel. Yellow stood out. It could be set against darker colors and be noticeable from a distance. The perfect way to draw in moviegoers as they went past the movie theater.
Many horror films of that era featured monsters of some sort whether it be an internal struggle or juxtaposing a perceived monster with their creator. In Frankenstein, the true monster was Dr. Frankenstein for his hubris in creating something that shouldn’t exist. The monster on the poster is electrified by yellow light showing his innocent, child like demeanor and his loneliness. Tom Browning’s Freaks showed his circus performer’s true humanity while the “normal” people were truly ugly even if it was only on the inside. The text in red above two normal people who are set against a yellow background signifies the moral decay within those two characters. In The Wolf Man poster, the yellow text signifies the monster within the man himself. Three perfect examples of how the color yellow in poster art can reflect the tropes within the film.
Hitchcock and Yellow in Posters
Alfred Hitchcock utilized the color in many poster designs regardless of whether his film was black and white or color. Hitchcock was the Master of Suspense and known for making a good thriller, but several of his films were bonafide horror movies. Psycho, The Birds, and Rebecca are great examples of how great Hitchcock was at creating a horrifying scene. In the poster for The Birds, he used yellow to highlight the green in Tippi Hedren’s dress which was intentionally designed to make her look like Barbie. By the end of that film, her character is attacked and driven a bit mad by the birds and she’s no longer the perfect specimen we met at the beginning of the film.
Even in films that veered more into comedy, like Rear Window, he was able to create a suspenseful conclusion. For that poster, yellow was utilized as an outline to show the voyeurism exhibited by the protagonist. Spying on your neighbors isn’t great, especially when you might not have seen what you think you saw. Rope was filmed almost entirely in one room, so this film relied heavily on the performances of its cast to keep it interesting. Yellow was used for Hitchcock’s name in this poster so it stood out against the dark undertones the rope itself implied. Regardless of what genre his films landed in, the yellow aspect of his posters remained as a way for them to stand out and to give insight to the underlying meaning of his films.
Roger Corman’s Poe Adaptations
Roger Corman used yellow in the posters for his films as well. He and Vincent Price teamed up for a series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations between 1960 and 1965. These stories featured the internal decay and rot of the characters on screen, and the poster art mimicked that tone. You can read further on Roger Corman’s use of yellow within his films in a previous installment of this blog series.
Giallo – Italian Horror of the 60s & 70s
Giallo is the Italian word for yellow. More specifically for this blog’s purposes, it is a term used for Italian horror movies made in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. The word was meant to describe the color of thriller and crime books of that era – it was the color of the pages as they aged but also a color featured on the book covers – that gave inspiration for many a horror films made by Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and many others. As you can imagine, yellow was routinely featured in the poster art and marketing as an homage to those old book covers that featured the same color.
The Giallo era of Italian films was made of suspenseful crime thrillers that included horror elements, often utilizing gore and horrific deaths at the hands of a serial killer. The killers wore black gloves and nylon over their faces so you didn’t know who the killer was. There was always an investigative aspect to these films which included law enforcement trying to find the killer. These whodunits were based on books inspired by the Agatha Christie’s of storytelling and featured bright blues and reds set against dark stories within the films. Think noir but make it colorful gore and include some sexploitation along the way. While most of the films themselves didn’t utilize yellow as often as other colors, the poster art did.
Mario Bava was one of the first directors in the 1960s to move into the Giallo style. Before he did so, he directed one of my favorite films starring Barbara Steele. Black Sunday was filmed in black and white to go with the gothic theme of the movie, but the poster featured yellow to show the witchcraft themes in the film. While not considered a Giallo film, it does feature a lot of the gory practical effects the subgenre is known for. By 1963, Bava was soundly in his Giallo era with The Evil Eye and 1964’s Blood and Black Lace.
Dario Argento is probably the most well known of the Giallo directors. His films became more vivid color wise as his career moved through the 1970s. Many of his posters used vibrant yellow text as to stand out from the films’ dark tones. His 1977 film Suspiria is the most talked about film in his filmography and was remade for American audiences but Luca Guadagnino in 2018. Starring Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton, the film is a testament to Argento’s legacy as it uses much of the gore and body horror from the original Giallo era even if the color scheme is limited to red set against more muted tones in the remake.
Lucio Fulci directed more obscure and offbeat Giallo films like Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Don’t Torture a Duckling. The former features psychedelic nightmares about debauched sex orgies and using LSD. If that tells you anything about the visuals associated with Giallo horror, Lucio was known for being a little more toned down when compared to Argento and Bava.
Alice, Sweet Alice, released in 1976, is considered a great example of American Giallo featuring psychological mystery and a marked killer. This film also features a yellow raincoat which I covered in my first installment of this blog series. The loss of innocence is a heavy aspect of this film and you can read up on it in the other blog.
Black Christmas is another example of American Giallo horror. It featured John Saxon as a police officer. He later portrayed the father in A Nightmare on Elm Street and starred in Mario Bava’s The Evil Eye and Argento’s Tenebrae. Margot Kidder gives one of her best performances in Black Christmas as does Olivia Hussey. I watch it every year during the holiday season. I love it for its style and its bleak ending.
These Italian films had a lasting effect on horror. Today, films like Malignant, Last Night in SoHo, and Strange Darling have the same suspenseful tone with psychological horror elements and law enforcement investigating the case. Bright colors too. Last Night in SoHo in particular uses bright colors throughout the film to highlight the protagonist’s descent into a darker place. Each of these films feature a protagonist who suffers mentally at some point, so using yellow or red in the poster art stays in line with art from the original Giallo era.
Television Horror
The 1990s gave us Tales From the Crypt. Much like the comic, the art for the DVD covers features yellow text that, like so many films, aligned with the moral decay featured in each episode. This show and the comic book it was based on featured some of the best and most twisted plot lines that made The Twilight Zone look like a children’s show.
Evil is one of those shows that brings together a priest, a tech expert, and a skeptical psychological analyst to investigate paranormal events for the Catholic Church. More moral decay highlighted in the color of the text, and a filter to make it look tarnished adding to the effect are a perfect way to depict the show.
American Horror Story used this artwork for one of the later installments of the show, Season 7, Cult. Using the beehive as a person’s brain as it drips with sickly looking honey is the embodiment of how being in a cult does to your mind.
Yellow, Now and Then
In modern times, yellow is frequently used to market films through poster art and covers for DVDs, blu rays, and 4K editions of movies. This is also used as the cover art on streaming sites as studios try to make their films stand out among a sea of every growing content. Nia DaCosta’s Candyman sequel used the poster art to show both the lore of the Candyman urban legend by repeating his name and the descent of the protagonist into something awful. The repetition of saying his name mimics the repeating of history as the villain has had many reincarnations.
Possessor is my favorite entry of the modern era. The yellow hue of the poster paired with the visuals associated with the film’s plot are a perfect example of how yellow is used to show mental decay. In a film about taking over someone else’s body without their knowledge and living their life while trying to get close enough to assassinate someone else is exactly the type of film I’d expect to see a character descend into confusion and a bit of madness. The poster portrays this beautifully without giving anything away. The poster is what made me want to see the movie. If that isn’t great marketing, I don’t know what is.
For the marketing art of Doctor Sleep, they chose to have Danny looking through the blank space that mimics what his father looked through when finding his mother in the bathroom of the Overlook. Yellow surrounds him, making it look like Danny is finally seeing things clearly in life. That he is done hiding. It was one of the main themes of Mike Flanagan’s adaptation, so I love they made this art for it. It also pays homage to the original poster art for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Art comes full circle for both films revolve around flawed men who deal with a lot of mental decay.
Take a moment and glance through your movie collection. Or pay closer attention to the streaming service you use when scrolling. Yellow, especially paired with reds, greens, and blacks, is a common occurrence in horror themed marketing. The meaning is often associated with the movie’s story or deeper themes as well as a great way for the art to stand out against other films when on a shelf.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Share this: