These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art.

Sometimes to find the most interesting movie posters, it’s useful to look well beyond the boundaries of the U.S. Where the Hollywood default is to keep posters as safe as possible, usually by communicating little more than the identity of the star who likely represents one of the heftiest single investments in any production. In particular, the movie posters produced in Poland over the decades inspire marvel. Even when the poster is similarly centered on the a movie star, there’s a clear effort to build some interesting design into the image. Except for a few telling details, and a whole lot of explanatory text, the U.S. poster for The Terminator looks like any number of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. The polish poster, in contrast, doesn’t actually stray that far from the foundation design, yet it’s more striking by a large magnitude. As a bonus, the Polish title translates as Electronic Killer. That’s not a better title, but it sure does promise high entertainment.

Other entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Art of the Sell” tag.