Monster Evil Protact

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 • Horrorthon Posts

This is some great stuff. Apparently movie posters in Ghana in the 1980s were not the same as elsewhere (i.e. not supplied by the distributor). Instead, a local artist sees the movie and then paints the poster:

In the 1980s video cassette technology made it possible for “mobile cinema” operators in Ghana to travel from town to town and village to village creating temporary cinemas. The touring film group would create a theatre by hooking up a TV and VCR onto a portable generator and playing the films for the people to see.

In order to promote these showings, artists were hired to paint large posters of the films (usually on used canvas flour sacks). The artists were given the artistic freedom to paint the posters as they desired – often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies. When the posters were finished they were rolled up and taken on the road (note the heavy damages). The “mobile cinema” began to decline in the mid-nineties due to greater availability of television and video; as a result the painted film posters were substituted for less interesting/artistic posters produced on photocopied paper.

The artistic freedom that these artists were given allowed for the creation of some very interesting and sometimes bizarre posters that, as screenwriter Walter Hill wrote, were quite often “more interesting than the films.”

Click here for more, including not just “Monster Evil Protact” and “Cujo The Killer Dog” but “Terminator,” “Evil Dead II,” “Poltergeist II.” “The Spy Who Love me” [sic] and more. It’s cool because, far from making fun of other cultures, it’s more like it’s just amazing what happens as stuff travels around the world and through the hands and minds of so many different societies and groups.