The exhibit It's Alive: Classic Horror And Sci-Fi Art From The Kirk Hammett Collection is at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA featuring 135 works owned by Metallica guitarist Kirk hammett, including some Hammett says have inspired his music. It runs through November 26th. Following is an excerpt from a report by WPXI.com

"My collection takes me to a place where I need to be," Hammett said in a statement. "Among the monsters, where I'm most comfortable and creative. That's where the magic has happened for me all these years and it's something I've come to trust. From the moment I first encountered these characters, I could see that these guys had just as much difficulty in coping as I did."

Daniel Finamore, who curated the show said although the posters may have played a supporting role to the films, they give the mummies and zombies top billing and "deliver on the promise of fear."

"These are rare works of art, but they're under-recognized as such," he said.

There are posters of the undead and unnatural, including ones from the 1931 film Dracula and the 1932 film The Mummy, which depicts the monster with arms crossed over his chest as he casts a predatory gaze toward a woman wearing a sleek, floor-length red dress. Some three decades later, another poster shows a young, scantily-clad Jane Fonda in the 1968 film Barbarella. In the poster, Fonda is seen grasping weapons, standing on a planet with space aliens in the backdrop. The exhibit also features some collectible electric guitars, monster masks and sculptures.

One of the stars of the show is the lone-surviving, three-sheet poster for the 1931 film Frankenstein. It was found in the boarded up projection room of an old movie theater. There also is one of the only surviving standing cardboard cutouts for the 1933 flick King Kong.

"These posters are part of our cultural history, and they play to many of the same fears and anxieties we still have today as a society," Finamore said.

Read more and check out a photo gallery from the exhibition here.