It’s that man Saul Bass. A man, and on closer inspection a woman, are spiralling into the eye of a vortex. The man is in solid black, while the woman really does look like a police chalk outline. The use of the vortex is brilliant: the viewer is sucked into the spiral with the man and woman, and will be taken on a ride that feels very precarious. The lettering only adds to this feeling of unavoidable danger: jagged and toppling, the letters seem about to fall over themselves. Vertigo indeed.

It’s hard to find fault with this original cinematic release poster. We’ve got Michael Caine dressed to the nines in gangster chic sitting on a lovely leather chair. He is well relaxed and he is very English: holding a nice cup of tea in one gloved hand, and a tommy gun in the other. To his left and with her back to us is a sexy lady, and on her back is some kind of map. Well, The Italian Job is obviously going to be some kind of heist, isn’t it? And we love a heist. Particularly one that, if we look closely, involves Noel Coward. How bloody good is that?

An odd poster when you look at it very closely. It’s not a photograph, it’s a painting. We see the Taxi Driver standing in front of his cab. It is late at night and he looks very alone. He also looks a bit fearful, edgy. Even paranoid. What are his eyes darting around looking for? What is he scared of? The dim lit street behind looks ghostlike, like an Edward Hopper painting: the alienated American alone in the naked city. He expects trouble, this Taxi Driver. I think I’ll book a ride and see what happens.

Superb use of high impact photography. Dustin Hoffman was big news in 1971, and the poster pushes him hard: His face dominates, and his name dominates. But curiously, it isn’t Hoffman that the viewer is thinking about when he walks away from the poster. He's thinking about the broken glass lens: how did it get smashed? And what is Hoffman looking at? And like the equally enigmatic Reservoir Dogs, what the hell is a Straw Dog? Whatever it is we expect extreme violence from the movie with this punch-in-the-face of a poster.

Another classic from the Tarantino stable. Cool is a rotten word, because people and things that try to be cool so seldom are. This poster, however, simply is. The mystery of the men in black suits with skinny ties: very mod, very hip, very rare in 1992. The retro feel of the brown paper and smeared red ink. There are now dozens of different versions of this poster, but this original cinema release is the simplest, and the best. If you want to buy it it’ll cost you over £500.

Tarantino really hit paydirt with this awesome poster: just look at the detail. From the well-worn look of a well-thumbed paperback novel to the 10cent price-tag, the poster is a tribute to all that is Pulp. Perfect choice of typeface, spot-on lighting – even Uma Thurman’s haircut, nails and artfully held cigarette – all are just right. The poster is cool and I think the film will be too, so I’ll go and see it. That’s how it should work, and that’s how it does work with this gem. And Chanel’s Rouge Noir nail polish and lipstick sold out after the film was released. Fact.

This Fifties rom-com was nothing special: a Billy Wilder romance with a solid cast and stylish sets and wardrobes. The poster (sorry: it’s Saul Bass again) however, is ace. The little hand pulling the blind down is a woman’s: fancy that, maybe the woman is the naughty character in this movie. And what the bloody hell is going on behind the blind? In the middle of the afternoon? Some kind of illicit affair, no doubt. But it’s the way the blind looks as though it is raised from the surface of the poster that really grabs the eye: most posters are flat. Bass had made one stand-out in 3D relief.

Jaws. If you think about it that is actually a pretty funny name for a movie about a Great White Shark. Almost comical. The reason it isn’t comical is that the film has smashed any preconceptions out of the water: it’s such a big movie that nobody is in any doubt that it isn’t about a funny shark with a funny name. The poster rocks: Black border: serious shit. Deep blue water with a hellacious big shark torpedoing for the surface, where a tiny, fragile woman is swimming. White sky, blood red legend. "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water" wasn’t on the original poster, in case you were wondering.

Another elegant Bill Gold production. The brilliance of this poster lies in the amount of information you get from just a few simple graphic signs. The words Cool Hand Luke don’t actually mean anything. Just a name, and an odd name at that. But then you get the fact that Luke just did not conform. You get the tiny graphic showing the bloodhounds running across the top with armed guards close behind. You get the star, Paul Newman, large, with the edgy orange-and-yellow graphic. And you get Newman with his feet up, relaxed and cheeky even though he is in leg-irons. You’re in.

Saul Bass, designer of this classic piece of graphic art (and the Vertigo poster also featured) was one of the most innovative and versatile graphic designers of the 20th century. Bass worked closely with Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock. For Preminger’s Anatomy of Murder, Bass is at his simple, elegant, effective best. Bold colour plates of red and orange split the poster in two: at the top, the childlike graphic of a body, echoing the chalk outline of a police murder scene. At the bottom, the cast. Confident, uncomplicated, brilliant.

One sign of greatness is, of course, imitation and parody. The Alien tagline In Space No One Can Hear You Scream is now a stand-by for any lazy journalist larking about anywhere except Space. The poster (another Bill Gold production!) gives hint at the menace in the film: what is inside the egg that is seen cracking open? What is the weird net thing in the foreground? Well, it must all be bad because whatever the Hell it is it is going to make you scream, and no one will hear you when you do. And the green-lit crack in the egg also looks a lot like a very evil grin.

Simple genius. Alex DeLarge in all his bowler-hatted, fake-eyelashed glory, pointed knife to the fore. You’re given a good taste of what’s to come with this poster – Alex looks well happy with his impending act of the old ultra-violence. And in case you were in doubt, his principal interests of rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven are spelled out in words. Highbrow and lowbrow mixing happily years before the Modern Review. Designed by the legendary Bill Gold, the graphic designer who made thousands of movie posters between 1941 and 2004, including classics like Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Bonnie and Clyde, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Alien – ah, the man’s a legend.