"The Desperate Hours", Original 1966 Japanese Re-Release Movie Poster, Rare, STB Size (51x145cm) I364

"The Desperate Hours", Original 1966 Japanese Re-Release Movie Poster, STB Size (51x145cm) I364
Japanese title: 「必死の逃亡者」 (Hisshi no Tōbōsha — “The Desperate Fugitive”)
Size: STB / 20¼ × 57¼ in (51.5 × 145.6 cm)
Country / Studio: Japan / Paramount Pictures (Tokyo Daiichi Film re-release presentation)

William Wyler’s pressure-cooker adaptation of Joseph Hayes’s novel and Broadway play is a landmark of American suspense: Humphrey Bogart, in one of his final screen roles, faces Fredric March in a brutal psychological contest inside an ordinary suburban home. Bogart’s escaped convict Glenn Griffin and his accomplices hold the Hilliard family hostage while awaiting money for their escape, turning domestic security into sustained terror.

This 1966 Japanese re-release STB is among the most powerful poster treatments created for the film. Nearly five feet tall and complete in two sheets, it presents Bogart not as a conventional star portrait but as a looming, full-length threat—pistol in one hand, cigarette in the other, his exhausted face carrying the moral weight of the entire composition. For collectors of Bogart, William Wyler, film noir and Japanese graphic design, it is a genuine holy-grail format.

Design highlights
This is Japanese re-release design at its most forceful. The upper section is saturated in scorched sepia, rust and blood-red: escaped convicts struggle beneath an inferno while a lone armed policeman stands against the blaze. Below, a jagged torn-paper transition exposes the terrified Hilliard family and Bogart’s haunted close-up, creating the impression that violence has physically ripped through the safety of the home.

The lower sheet is dominated by an extraordinary towering full-body image of Bogart, his gun projecting directly toward the viewer. The enormous vermilion title characters—必死の逃亡者—descend beside him in angular, fractured strokes resembling warning signs, shattered metal or flashes of gunfire. The narrow blue tagline on the right balances the red typography while extending uninterrupted through the vertical format.

The right-hand copy reads in essence:

“Master filmmaker Wyler’s searing masterpiece, closing in on the terrifying final fate of vicious escaped convicts!!”

The upper credits announce:

“From the master of Wuthering Heights and The Big Country: directed by William Wyler, starring Humphrey Bogart.”

Supporting billing names Fredric March, Arthur Kennedy and Martha Scott. The left margin credits Joseph Hayes for the original work and screenplay, Gail Kubik for the music, and identifies the film as an American production presented in Japan by Tokyo Daiichi Film.

Cultural impact
The Desperate Hours helped move American crime cinema away from shadowy streets and nightclubs and into the supposedly secure family home. Wyler transforms everyday rooms into psychological traps, while Bogart and March embody opposing forms of authority: one based on violence and fear, the other on restraint, endurance and responsibility.

Bogart’s performance also reverses the charisma of his earlier gangster roles. Glenn Griffin is dangerous but cornered, increasingly desperate and stripped of romantic glamour. That late-career severity gives the film much of its lasting power and makes the poster’s monumental, weathered image of Bogart especially appropriate.

The artwork is also an exceptional example of how Japanese distributors reimagined classic Hollywood films for a 1960s audience. Rather than simply reproduce American campaign art, the designer rebuilt the film as a modern vertical collage—combining photographic realism, Pop-era scale, torn-paper montage and aggressive Japanese typography. The result is arguably more immediate and visually sophisticated than the original U.S. material.

Condition
Excellent+, complete in its two original sheets and unrestored. Previously folded and now stored flat. The rich red, sepia, black and blue printing remains exceptionally strong, with clean white areas and excellent definition throughout Bogart’s full-length image.

There are light original fold lines, minor handling creases and very limited age-related edge wear consistent with thin-stock theatrical paper of this period. The visible horizontal division is the original join between the two STB panels, not a defect. The backs remain clean, with normal image show-through from the strongly printed fronts. A remarkably well-preserved example in this imposing format. Please see the detailed front-and-back imagery provided.

Authentication
Guaranteed original; Certificate of Authenticity included. The period Tokyo Daiichi Film emblem and Eirin approval mark no. 41297 remain printed at the lower corners.

About STB (Tatekan) posters
STBs are tall, two-sheet Japanese vertical posters measuring approximately 51.5 × 145.6 cm. The two panels were displayed one above the other on purpose-built tatekan signboards outside cinemas, in theatre entrances and along busy pedestrian or transit approaches.

Effectively functioning as miniature billboards, they were printed on relatively thin paper and intended for short-term commercial use. Most were folded, pasted, exposed to handling or weather and discarded when the engagement ended. Complete survivors are therefore scarce, particularly for classic Hollywood re-release campaigns, which were produced in smaller numbers and are often far less documented than standard Japanese B2 posters.

In the case of The Desperate Hours, the towering Bogart figure and uninterrupted vertical typography were conceived specifically to exploit the format. The STB is not merely a larger version of the design—it is the definitive expression of this remarkable Japanese campaign.