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The Strangest Movie Posters You'll Ever See

by Elisabeth Rappe Oct 1st 2009 // 12:15PM

Filed under: Fandom, Movie Marketing, Images, Posters


It's only the first of October and many horror offerings await, but this collection of movie posters might just be some of the scariest images you'll see all month. They all hail from anonymous artists from Ghana, and came about in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to Ghana's "mobile cinemas." VHS technology made it possible for local theater owners to bring films to remote places of the country, where film hungry locals would line up to watch movies played on a television screens powered by a portable generator.

Naturally, these portable theaters lacked movie marketing materials. So the theater owners hired artists to promote the films with hand painted posters. The artists were given complete creative freedom, and usually hadn't seen the movie they were trying to depict. The results are funny, fascinating, and frightening. I hope I don't sound glib, because they really are remarkable works of modern art, and it's a testament to someone's love of film that they survived. These posters were usually painted on feed sacks, rolled up, and carried around with the mobile cinema. Nevertheless, you can't help but laugh at how one artist chose to portray Cujo. That's a very thoughtful killer dog.

If you want more, there's an entire book devoted to them called Extreme Canvas: Movie Poster Paintings From Ghana. The following have been taken from the blog ephemera assemblyman. If you're looking for more posters, info (or even places to buy them) pop over for a visit.

Gallery: Movie Posters From Ghana



[via Cinema Retro]

2 Comments

Tags: Children of the Corn 3, ChildrenOfTheCorn3, Cujo, Evil Dead 2, EvilDead2, Ghana, House Party, HouseParty, Movie posters from ghana, MoviePostersFromGhana, Poltergeist 2, Poltergeist2, Terminator

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