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the one that scared me just to look at it, for The Nightwalker, not with barbara Stanwyck or Robert Taylor, but with an incredibly fiendish satyr sitting atop a sleeping woman surrounded by grotesque phantasms leering and cackling.


THE NIGHT WALKER certainly had a memorable poster (probably more memorable than the actual movie!). For those not familiar with it, here it is:



I first recall seeing this as a kid in an old issue of Castle of Frankenstein magazine.

I didn't find any movie posters with the additional "leering faces," but I did find them included on the cover to the soundtrack album:



Later I learned what many already knew – that the striking imagery had been borrowed from the famous Henri Fuseli painting “The Nightmare” (sometimes called “The Incubus”).

Well, actually two paintings. Fuseli painted this subject twice. Here’s the 1781 original:



And here’s the 1790 version:



This imagery was also used in posters for Ken Russell’s GOTHIC: