Exploitation Poster Art [Anglais] [Broché]

With 10 film poster anthologies already under their belts, editors Nourmand and Marsh turn to "the one genre defined not by content but by attitude": exploitation films. White slavery, motorcycle psychos, crazed beatnik dope fiends and "the seemingly widespread menace of gorillas having sex with young white women"—with enough exclamation points to fill a DD cup, the posters promise it all and ultimately deliver more than did the films themselves. "Teenage killers taking their thrills unashamed!" "The shock by shock confessions of a Sorority Girl." From Fast and Loose to Curse of a Teenage Nazi, High School Hellcats, The Love Wanga and beyond, the huckster's allure of these posters' salacious images takes us back to some oddly quaint times. Accompanying the posters is a well-written minihistory of the genre's dance with the Hays Code, as well as brief insights into the films, their directors and the poster artists themselves. The large format book covers films from the 1910s through the mid-'70s, after which the genre fell off the map. As film critic Dave Kehr writes in the foreword: "Now that nothing was forbidden, there was nothing left to exploit—the audience's expectations, once so artfully teased, could now be bluntly and banally fulfilled." (Apr. 1)
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“Nourmand and Marsh bring their discerning eye, knowledge of history, and, most important, sense of fun to this collection.”

This collection presents the crème de la crème of schlocky movie posters—from Sexploitation to Blaxploitation, High School Hellcats to Fritz the Cat. The movies may be tacky, but the posters are masterpieces of innuendo—vivid, often comic reminders of the taboos of yesteryear.

Sex, drugs, delinquency, Black Power, rock ‘n’ roll: these are just a few of the themes that have inspired B-movie makers over the past 80 years. A few of the films have become cult classics, but not many of us would want to sit through two hours of Hot Rod Rumble. The posters created to promote these movies, on the other hand, are fantastic period pieces that evoke all the taboos of bygone eras. Before the Hayes Code of 1934, Hollywood had few inhibitions: the poster for Girl Without a Room, for example, left little doubt as to how the young woman would find accommodation. In the 50s, Beats and juvenile delinquents attracted teens to the drive-ins; in the 60s and 70s came Blaxploitation films like Shaft and the first of Russ Meyer’s mammary- obsessed epics, Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill. The posters for these films—from Albert Vargas’ venture into the genre for Ladies They Talk About to Alan Aldridge’s photomontage for Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls—are masterpieces of visual innuendo, offering, in most cases, far more than the movies themselves actually delivered.

Tony Nourmand is co-owner of the Reel Poster Gallery in London and a poster consultant for Christie’s; Graham Marsh is a designer and art director. Together, they have also produced Horror Poster Art, Science Fiction Poster Art, and Film Posters of the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.