The issue of authenticating and dating movie posters having recently been
shown to be problematic in some (possibly many) cases I would like to
invite discussion on another British film, *The Wicker Man, 1973*. I am
indebted for much of the information on this to the excellent book, *Inside
The Wicker Man : How Not To Make A Cult Classic* by Allan Brown.
The original British one sheet with the Lion International imprint seems to
be above reproach, but that is not the case with the USA one sheets. There
appear to be three different one sheet posters, 1 from Warner Bros
depicting the wicker man and 2 showing the Nuada sun god image, both the
latter having different taglines. One is a Summerisle imprint and one an
Abraxas imprint. Auction houses have treated and dated the posters
differently, and often there is no consistency even within the same
company. Heritage, for example, over the years have sometimes listed the
Warner poster as National General, though they went bankrupt before they
could release the movie, with a 1973 and a 1974 dating, and dated the
Abraxas one as both 1979 and 1980. More interestingly, emovieposter have
listed the Summerisle one as an original 1974 release. (I have been in
touch with them and they have promised to research the matter and
communicate their findings with previous purchasers.) I bought a Summerisle
one from MoviePosterBid where it was listed as being a 1975 release (not
complaining, Rich, I’m happy with the poster).
Having consulted Brown’s extensively researched book the following are my
best calculations of the various posters’ actual dates.
Original U.S. release – Warner Bros., image of wicker man, ‘Flesh to touch
. . .Flesh to burn!’ – 1974.
Summerisle re-release – Nuada sun god image, ‘The residents of Summerisle
invited Sergeant Howie to their traditional May Day festival. He didn’t
expect to meet . . .’ - film due to open in November, 1978, but postponed
until January, 1979. However, Brown states that prior to scheduled original
release date ‘Summerisle Films had collaborated with Craig Millar . . . on
a publicity campaign involving posters, badges and a lavish press kit’, so
poster seems to actually date from 1978.
Abraxas re-release – Nuada sun god, ‘Pure, brilliant, spine-tingling fun’ –
opened 26th March, 1980, so poster date of 1980 seems reasonable.
By coincidence, both HA and EMP had Summerisle posters listed in the same
week very recently. Heritage had a folded, fine- , dated 1980, which sold
for $50, and EMP had a rolled, good to very good, dated 1974, which sold
for $300. It is a fact that the Summerisle poster is the rarest, which
brings me to a question I had asked previously in discussions about the*
Third Man poster*, though I was not referring to that poster specifically
but in general. It is this - is a rare re-release poster worth more than an
original release poster which is fairly easily obtainable? Just something
else for MOPOers to think about.
Tommy
Tommy
Tommy
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