Poster Exploits

Vintage “Exploitation” movie posters

As we are constantly reminding everyone, there is nothing we like more than “Exploitation” movie posters from past decades. Whether it’s 1950s drug panic films or blaxploitation from the 1970s, the exploitation genres rely on what serves low budget film advertising best: sensationalism. When you take that trait and apply it to a relatively cheap advertising medium (such as one-sheets), movie poster magic can result. More importantly, exploitation posters are a prime example of an advertising campaign overcoming the limitations and quality of the films they are selling. This “saved by advertising” approach is something that Hollywood still tries to replicate to this day.

The Reel Gallery is continuing their movie poster book series with the Exploitation Poster Art book by Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh, along with an accompanying auction of vintage exploitation one-sheets at Christie’s. From the Exploitation Poster Art website:

Sex, drugs, delinquency, Black power, alternative culture and, of course, rock and roll: these are just some of the themes which have attracted the attention of the cinema’s bottom-feeders over the past eighty years. A few of the resulting films have become cult classics, but most were simply tacky — few would probably now want to sit through two hours of High School Hellcats or Prison Girls. The posters produced to promote them, on the other hand, are wonderful period pieces that vividly evoke the social fears, temptations and taboos of bygone eras.