What may have been considered risque or pornographic during a certain era may very easily become universally acceptable or even kitschy and cute by today’s standards.  We’ve run across a unique collection of rare hard to find, and yes, often kitschy exploitation / sexploitation movie posters, many of which have come from the Cozy Theatre located in sun-drenched Southern California.  The posters date from the 1950’s, 1960’s and the early 1970’s.  Referred to as “nudies” back-in- the-day, many of the films used suggestive and campy titles like The Girl With Hungry Eyes or The Arousers and used taglines like “What’s your Arousal Quotient? Take The Sexual Stimulation Test and See!” or this tagline for the film Take Me Naked “Raw Sex Begins With A Rainy Day On Skid Row!”  The film Suburban Pagans has my favorite tag line of the lot, “Stare at the Orgies…Listen to the Screams of pleasure and Pain and try to imagine that these barbarians may live next door”.  Not sure if anybody wants to live on that block.  On the other side of the spectrum, one of the cutest exploitation film poster, The Ruined Bruin, includes the tag lines “Bearest Movie Yet Produced … in SUN-KISSED Eastman Color in the Girlsquecapade of the year!”

These posters have an interesting historical context as theatre owners would often censor many of the posters by covering up certain body parts with tape or black markers or changing the title to make the film more palpable to the audience, as in the poster for the German film, Call Girls, which the theatre owner changed to Call of the Flesh.  Sometimes the theater owners would cover up portions of a poster to make it look more explicit than the poster really was.  Many of the posters in this collection contain this type of censorship.  While most other types of film posters would not be collectable if they were covered with tape or covered over with a marker, we feel that these posters are actually enhanced by the censorship as they are illustrative of the public and social morals of the time.  Through the poster art, we also see how much more daring the films became and how more explicit the art became from the 60’s into the 70’s.  By the 1970’s when X-Rated movies were attracting sizeable audiences, the posters were more sensational, glossy and slick, with the artwork on par with that of major Hollywood releases making many of these posters a lost forgotten art.

Click here to enjoy the entire collection of exploitation posters.

Limited Runs, one of the largest independent online sellers of Original & Vintage Posters, Print Art and Photography, continues to add new items to the site every day and each week we feature some of our latest additions of original vintage film, advertising and rock posters, art prints and photography.

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For lovers of Vintage Posters, Photography and Art — Limited Runs!

Limited Runs, the premier destination for discovering and buying the best in original vintage posters, print art and fine art photography, continues to add new items to the site every day and each week we feature some of our latest additions of original vintage film, advertising and rock posters, art prints and photography.

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