Posters We Don’t Own #14
The Lodger (John Brahm, 1944) |
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School Of Fear (Alfred Vohrer, 1969) |
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Cannibal Girls (Ivan Reitman, 1973) |
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Night of Bloody Horror (Joy N. Houck Jr., 1969) |
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Revenge of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1958) |
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The Lodger (John Brahm, 1944) |
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School Of Fear (Alfred Vohrer, 1969) |
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Cannibal Girls (Ivan Reitman, 1973) |
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Night of Bloody Horror (Joy N. Houck Jr., 1969) |
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Revenge of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1958) |
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Still fooling with the German posters site. Burt gets a bunch of interesting ones: |
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The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952) |
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The Sweet Smell Of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) |
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The Kentuckian (Burt Lancaster, 1955) |
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South Sea Woman (Arthur Lubin, 1953) |
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His Majesty O’Keefe (Byron Haskin, 1954) |
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I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948) |
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Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947) |
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Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949) |
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The Rainmaker (Joseph Anthony, 1956) |
I’ve been looking over a lot of German film posters lately. There’s some really remarkable ones, mostly in a good way, from the 30s through the 50s. They frequently take different approaches from the American marketing materials. Lots of watercolor paintings, often moody/anguished subjects. Similar to the oft-used Italian approach, but the tension tends less toward violence and passion, more toward unease. At least to my eye.
Browse at your leisure at Filmposter-Archiv |
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The Rains of Ranchipur (Jean Negulesco, 1955) |
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The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950) |
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I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock, 1953) |
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Moulin Rouge (John Huston, 1952) |
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The Last Time I Saw Paris (Richard Brooks, 1954) |
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Pickup On South Street (Sam Fuller, 1953) |
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Land Of The Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955) |
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Tarantula (Jack Arnold, 1955) |
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Tarzan’s New York Adventure (Richard Thorpe, 1942) |
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From Here To Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) |
Lori and I were discussing the bedrock layer of misogyny that runs through ours and pretty much every society of the world. It shows up in things as mundane as movie posters of course, in ways both subtle and blatant. In horror and exploitation of the 60s/70s/80s, poster depiction of violence against women was so commonplace as to be hardly noticeable, such as below: |
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It’s so endemic to the genre as to make little impression beyond macabre comedy.
It’s common enough that when someone takes it in a direction like Black Snake Moan, we recognize it for the counter-provocation it is: |
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I can just hear you saying, “No shit, Sherlock.” And indeed, as you say, no shit. Sometimes, however, you see it jumping out from other corners of cinema, in ways that can take a person (well, me) off-guard: |
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This is your calculated marketing? You think we want to see America’s pal, Dean Martin, smacking down a broad? Just who are you selling this to? What kind of a guy was looking at this poster thinking, “yep, that’s the cinema of choice for me!” |
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More major stars intimidating/hurting chicks. These are the heroes! These are fairly mainstream movies. |
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Above is the poster for Rocco And His Brothers. Are you ready for the spoiler? Rocco’s brother can’t accept that his girlfriend broke up with him awhile back, so he catches her out in a field, wrestles her down, and knifes her in the belly. Great, let’s sell with that! And let that be a warning to you, ladies! Never leave us, if you know what’s good for you. We’ll make a poster out of our bloody revenge. |
Then there’s this great subspecies, the spanking poster. All these little fillies need are some swats on the bottom, that’ll set ’em straight! |
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Hey Marge! This movie looks hilarious! Let’s go, and maybe I’ll hysterically spank some sense into you later! Remember, I’m not just your husband, I’m your owner! |
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This is a French poster for a movie actually named The Second Greatest Sex. So take that, ladies! |
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Lastly, Bluebeard. If any of these posters has an excuse it’s this one, since the whole point of it is he kills women, in different and creative ways. Still, I don’t see a whole lot of stars signing up for this sort of thing these days. |
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Smile notwithstanding, Sandy Duncan seems uncharacteristically crabby. Or at least seriously passive-aggressive.
Apocalypse Now
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Dames Don’t Care (Bernard Borderie, 1954)
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A Thousand And One Nights (Fernando Cortes,1958)
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The Bride Wore Black (Francois Truffaut, 1968)![]() |
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Is this trend over yet? Because that would be great. |
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The Boss (Byron Haskin, 1956)
Consider the motorcycle: |
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Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975)
Black Shampoo (Greydon Clark, 1976)
LouiseBrooks theme byThemocracy