Girly With An Axe!

Eh, more properly a hatchet, I suppose...

Back in the spring, I did a couple of picture posts featuring Sexy Women With Axes. Some of these pictures were movie posters and, if I'd had this Girly poster (and a couple of variations thereof) at that time, I'd surely have included them there.


I could hold onto the pics in some file, I suppose, for a theoretical future third installment. I think they're quite glorious enough to merit a post of their own though; not only is the topmost poster aesthetically appealing in a Salome-esque sort of way, it has a bit of an interesting backstory all its own.

From the indispensable IMDB --

The original poster art for the film was an eerie black and white family portrait of "The Family," dressed in traditional British attire (six form uniforms for Girly and Sonny, a maid's outfit for Nanny, and a World War II era dress for Mumsy). Though this iconography would have struck a chord with British viewers, it was deemed that US audiences wouldn't understand the image. For the US release, the distributor commissioned a poster of an anonymous girl standing in for Vanessa Howard, wearing a cutoff skirt and clutching a... bloody ax.

Sadly, even a sexy anonymous girl with an axe didn't do the trick, and this Freddie Francis-directed horror died a death at the box office, becoming so obscure that, until released on DVD earlier this year, it was well nigh impossible to find.


And while I mention Freddie Francis, would anyone mind if I snuck another of his horror flick posters into this post? It really is such a great one, that of his film just prior to Girly - the mostly decent Dracula Has Risen From The Grave.