Screen capture from a 1080p Blu-ray

1997’s Dante’s Peak features Pierce Brosnan in full let-me-be-your-stepdad mode, but he’s handling hot stuff much better here than in that Mrs. Doubtfire restaurant. Albertus is used for the opening and ending credits. It’s set tightly everywhere, with the exception of the title, which animates from extremely wide letterspacing to tight spacing, while orange smoke and flames undulate inside the letterforms.

Univers also makes a brief appearance after the cold open, where it’s softened by a black outline and solid drop shadow.

Screen capture from a 1080p Blu-ray

Screen capture from a 1080p Blu-ray

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Fire Sale is a 1977 screwball comedy film based on a novel by Robert Klane (1941–2023) and directed by Alan Arkin (1934–2023). I haven’t watched it, and judging from the scathing reviews quoted on Wikipedia, it looks like I didn’t miss out. I’m posting it here because the opening titles use Filmotype Newton. I haven’t seen a full glyph set for this early 1960s phototype design yet, and the titles feature a whole lot more text than other uses. Apart from a few biform alternates for a e i, Newton didn’t include lowercase characters. The text in lowercase is added in the stylistically related Ad Lib.

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Title sequence by Pacific Title for the 1984 American crime thriller film Tightrope, starring Clint Eastwood and written and directed by Richard Tuggle. Aside from the film's title, which may be custom lettering or an unidentified type, all credits from this sequence are set in a more solid variant of Earth with shadow.

Film’s title, possibly custom lettering or an unidentified type. Similar to the logo seen on the film’s poster, designed by Bill Gold.

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Stan Davis is best known as the designer of the amorphous 1960s face Amelia. In the early 1970s, he drew a series of squarish display faces with many alternates for VGC, all carrying his first name: Stan Control, Stan Compromise, the fully angular Stan Conform, and the rounded Stan Free.

Stan Control was used for the trailer as well as the opening and end titles of Stranger Days, a 1995 science fiction thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and Tom Sizemore. See also the post about the typography of the movie posters on Fonts In Use, and Alexander Ulloa and Lola Landekic’s article about the single-take opening sequence for Art of the Title.

[More info on IMDb]

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Opening titles

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End titles

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The movie opens with text set in Times New Roman, quoting two definitions of “pulp” according to the American Heritage Dictionary.

Outrageously violent, time-twisting, and in love with language, Pulp Fiction was widely considered the most influential American movie of the 1990s. Director and co-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino synthesized such seemingly disparate traditions as the syncopated language of David Mamet; the serious violence of American gangster movies, crime movies, and films noirs mixed up with the wacky violence of cartoons, video games, and Japanese animation(...) — allmovie.com

In Pulp Fiction, Tarantino and co-scriptwriter Roger Avary split multiple story lines and rearrange them out of chronological order, using gangster Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) to connect the separate parts and characters.

The opening scene and titles bring together many of the movie’s characteristics: casual conversations, violence and references to the 1950s to 1970s. Two idlers discuss the business opportunities of a robbery in an all-american diner, give each other a kiss and pull their guns. He shouts that this is a robbery, she shouts: “Any of you fucking pricks move, and I'll execute every motherfuckin’ last one of you!”. The movie freezes and Dick Dale’s 1963 surf hit “Misirlou” kicks in while the title sequence starts rolling with two titles set in ITC Busorama (1970).

Unlike the film scenes, which jump back and forth through time, the title sequences are slow, symmetric and static. While the film logo set in Aachen (1969) becomes smaller and smaller at the slowest possible pace, it is covered by names of actors, producers etc. set in ITC Benguiat (1977) with enlarged and lowered initial caps. Halfway through the titles, someone seems to be looking for new music on the radio, bored with Dick Dale who is replaced with Kool & the Gang’s pounding disco funk: “Jungle Boogie” (1973).

During the film new storylines are introduced with simple intertitles: a black screen shows center-aligned all-caps text using ITC Bookman.

The end credits follow the classic model: a long row of text scrolls upwards, again using Bookman. Like all typography in Pulp Fiction, the end titles show a penchant for meticulously executed quirkiness. The type is compressed just enough to evoke the right kind of nostalgic amateurism. Things like the (faux) small cap A in “LaMarr” show an attention for typographic detail.

Tom Carnase’s ITC Busorama, with several of the original alternates for S, T, and, most notably, A.

Colin Brignall’s Aachen Bold for “Pulp Fiction”, ITC Benguiat for the names.

Intertitle card, partially underlined: “Vincent Vega & Marsellus Wallace’s Wife”

Ed Benguiat’s ITC Bookman, slightly condensed, with its default swashy Q.

The opening titles of Valdez Is Coming don’t pick up the typographic choices introduced in the movie posters and the trailer, nor do they reference the book cover of the original novel.

The titles are set in Hunter, an upright, largely connected script made by Filmotype in the early 1950s. VGC later offered it as A-38. Filmotype Hunter apparently came with a number of alternate glyphs, most notably the s (compare “Lancaster” and “Susan”).

Berthold Wolpe’s Albertus typeface played a recurring role for credits in a variety of John Carpenter’s films.

Long before you see the dogs transmuted into vicious, physically indeterminate fiends, or Kurt Russell’s monocular anti-hero, named “Snake,” surfing in the submerged city grid of a future dystopian Los Angeles, the essence of most any John Carpenter film is evident in its opening moments, even before his name is seen keystoned atop some spare and ominous title. First there are the antecedent notes of one of his minimalist synthesizer scores (educated as a musician, Carpenter composed the scores to sixteen of his films) which are soon followed by the title credits set in Albertus.

This has come to be one of Carpenter’s visual signifiers, emblazoning the credits of eight of his films: Escape from New York, 1981; The Thing, 1982; Christine, 1983; Starman, 1984; Big Trouble in Little China, 1986; Prince of Darkness, 1987; They Live, 1988; Escape From L.A., 1996.

Topically these range between spare survivalist parables and paranoid thrillers, all of them with macabre flourishes in which characters will perish in spectacularly messy ways. Even his most tender film, Starman, features an agonizing transformation sequence that rivals anything in a werewolf movie. All of these films are broad conceptions of genre that are fun even when they’re scary, heartfelt even while they’re sardonic, and focused even when they’re about the obliteration of mankind. Somehow Carpenter’s use of Albertus encompasses all of this.

It’s difficult to precisely describe why this is so, but for measure compare Carpenter to any other filmmaker whose work possesses some typographic signature and the appraisal seems more apt. Doubtless the most known instance of this is Woody Allen, who ornaments each of his films (over forty of them) in Windsor, whose old-fashioned cherubic forms demonstrably complement his film’s wry tones and aesthetics replete in tweed and horn-rimmed spectacles. Or consider Stanley Kubrick, whose stringently precise compositions are presaged in Futura’s geometric letterforms.

Carpenter is harder to characterize than the others mentioned here, principally because his signature is more tonal than it is aesthetic, and this tone is ably evoked by the films’ typography. And it’s unclear how particular he was with Albertus, despite its reiteration in his work. Escape from L.A.’s title designer Nina Saxon responded to this in an interview, when asked if Albertus was the first choice in the film’s title credits: “No. We showed many and they chose it anyway.”

Nevertheless, and regardless of whether Carpenter’s films feature capitalistic aliens, anthropomorphized cars, subterranean monsters or extraterrestrial paramours, they’re all clearly of a piece with one another, a concept initialized in the credits’ sharp, alert serifs and generously spaced capitals, as though etched upon a crypt that foredoomingly leads to another realm.

Below are images of the director’s credit for each of Carpenter’s films that use Albertus, with links and note on the subtle evolution in usage from movie to movie. Thanks to Toshi Omagari for his input.

Escape from New York (1981) was the first of Carpenter’s films to use Albertus. The titles, credited to Pacific Title, made use of some of the typefaces alternate glyphs, including both descending and non-descending forms of ‘J’. More info/images here. See also the Escape from New York movie posters.

The Thing (1982) used Albertus again, for both opening and end credits. Oddly, the type was horizontally stretched for the opening credits but not for the end credits. The descending ‘J’ is also clipped for some reason (perhaps they wanted the non-descending ‘J’ but didn’t have a font that included one). More info/images here.

Christine (1983) once again used Albertus, this time with the non-descending ‘J’. More info/images here.

Starman (1984), like The Thing, starts with Carpenter’s name in Albertus on a field of stars. More info/images here.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986) broke away from the existing formula slightly for its opening credits, overlaying Albertus through an extended sequence of shots and incorporating lowercase characters differently. Carpenter’s directorial credit doesn’t show until about six minutes in. More info/images here.

Prince of Darkness (1987) continues to evolve the previous approaches, cutting between black title frames and an extended intro sequence. This time, Carpenter’s directorial credit doesn’t show until more than 10 minutes in. More info/images here.

They Live (1988) brings Albertus back on top of the intro shots, as with Big Trouble, but returns to a shorter time span. More info/images here.

Escape from L.A. (1996) was the first (and last?) return of Albertus to the titles of a Carpenter film following several non-Albertus releases in the 1990s. It is more graphic than previous approaches, incorporating animated scan-lines and crosshair motifs. More info/images here.

Incidentally, the City of London Corporation uses a modified version of Albertus for branding including street signs, and has a John Carpenter Street set in the typeface. This Carpenter was a 14th century figure and has no connection with the director, and the films precede the Albertus branding of the Corporation. It is nevertheless a perfect typographic coincidence.

John Carpenter teamed up with Kurt Russell and Debra Hill again to return to his old character, Snake Plissken from Escape From New York, apparently pushed by Russell who enjoyed playing Snake. Albertus is used in the opening and ending credit, although the type choice gets more ecletic elsewhere, using Skia and Eurostile essentially for the same purpose, to tell time.

They Live is among the best films that use typography for storytelling. The aliens are invading the earth, constantly sending subliminal messages to humans hidden in advertisements. Aliens themselves are taking over the planet on site, disguised as humans. The protagonists learn the truth after wearing a special pair of sunglasses that reveals the disguise.

The hidden messages are done in bold sans serif. Lettering in matte paintings are done by hand but props are using typefaces, either Tempo or Twentieth Century (despite one might think of Futura as primary example of geometric sans, it seems to never appear), or several unidentified condensed grotesques. The typography seems to reflect corporate advertising of the ’70s and ’80s, where strong bold sans was a common sight, and brilliantly ties into Carpenter’s commentary on consumerism.

The film opens and ends with Albertus, John Carpenter’s staple typeface. Titles and opticals by Pacific Title.

Twentieth Century Ultrabold.

Twentieth Century

STAY ASLEEP is set in Tempo. OBEY is unidentified. Fonts In Use reader Robie notes that Classroom JNL by Jeff Levine is a match. This font wasn’t released before 2009, though.

Tempo

John Carpenter is known to cast the same actors repeatedly, and Kurt Russell is a notable example. That includes his typeface choices. Interestingly enough, when Russell stars in Carpenter films, the opening credit is almost always typeset in Albertus, apart from Elvis (1979). Carpenter, Russell, and Albertus became the hidden ingredients for cult success recipe.

Carpenter uses Albertus again in Big Trouble In Little China. The title logo is custom-lettered, but otherwise the film uses Albertus throughout, including the ending credit.

The strength of Albertus is well demonstrated here. The text is quite blurry even in the high definition format, but the robust design of the typeface makes sure that its feature survives. Especially in the days of VHS when fine details might disappear easily, typefaces like Albertus and Optima would have been good substitutes for a conventional roman.

Title designed by Dan Curry, titles by Cinema Research Corporation, and opticals by Pacific Title (the same company who did Escape From New York).

The ‘J’ in JOHN is a titling form, which is now an alternate but originally the only form in the first release of Albertus (1936). Two years later, the lowercase was added as well as ‘J’ and ‘Q’ with descender, which have become the default.

In John Carpenter’s films, the typeface choice in the opening sequence is quite consistent. Albertus seems to be his favourite, appearing more than any other typefaces in his filmography. Escape From New York seems to be the first and most playful of all.

Carpenter, or whoever was going to be his long-time credit typesetter colleague, knew there were some alternate capital letters, and made spontaneous use of them in Escape From New York.

According to the credits, the titles are done by the company called Pacific Title.

Notice the alternate M in the first line, while all other M’s are the standard one.

Second appearance of his name uses the descending J.

During the film, this reverse stress lettering is prominent. It is unidentified at the time of writing.

The film ends with Helvetica.

The opening titles for cult TV-show Twin Peaks is almost as famous as the cherry pie from the RR Diner. Designed by Pacific Title for the original run of the series, it takes is due time with a calm pace reflecting the new age signature by Angelo Badalamenti. Sublime landscapes of northwestern americana lull the viewer into that decidedly Peaksian state of mind.

The condensed weights of ITC Avant Garde Gothic are set forest brown with a paranormally green outline. The signature gesture would be repeated for the 2017 revival of the show.

Series co-creator Mark Frost recalls the creation of the sequence:

I can remember watching the first day of dailies and thinking, ‘This is going to work.’ There was just something about it. It had a sense of gravity that was very real. Even the credit sequence. [Lynch] and Angelo [Badalamenti] had written the theme. We’d shot a bunch of second unit stuff for the credit sequence and laying it against that music, your jaw dropped.

Opening titles from season 3 (2017)

Opening titles from season 3 (2017)