DESIGN

X-rated movie poster designs are imaginative and diverse. Though their execution can be primitive, this simply adds to their charm. When coupled with risqué and often witty taglines, the posters are a winning mixture of the amusing and the stylish.

Nearly all X-rated posters from this era were designed by unknown artists, although similarities in technique and approach can often be identified. One exception is Emmanuelle, where the distributors hired designer Steve Frankfurt – the genius behind countless movie posters and the writer of some of cinema's most memorable taglines. Emmanuelle's simply reads: 'X was never like this'. This award-winning poster came to embody ‘porno chic’.

The posters were frequently vague and misleading to audiences. Director Radley Metzger, for example, imported foreign movies such as Days Of Sin And Nights Of Nymphomania (Mellem Venner – Holland, 1963) and The Weird Love Makers (Kyonetsu No Kisetsu – Japan, 1964) but then marketed them as American films to ensure their appeal to a wider audience. The poster for The Weird Love Makers uses simple graphics with an intriguing tagline: 'They do everything'. Such slogans promised far more than the movies themselves could ever deliver.

The Weird Love Makers / Kyonetsu No Kisetsu (Japan) (1963)
US 41 x 27 in. (104 x 69 cm)