Hi Tommy,
Designer Craig Miller may still be on this forum - I asked him about it
once - so he may wish to provide some info first-hand, but what you have
appears to be broadly correct. I'd got the Abraxas release of the restored cut
at around 1979, but if you've found a firm release date in 1980, that
sounds fair enough.
The couple behind Summerisle, Ron Weinberg and Micheline Charet, seem to
be interesting characters worthy of being residents of Summerisle itself:
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/apr/16/local/me-charest16
Your question about re-releases is tricky. I guess it ultimately depends
on what the market perceives, but different (better?) artwork plays a big
part. The Hustler, Easy Rider and North By Northwest re-release one sheets,
and the Getaway re-release quad, are fairly well documented, but I don't
know the true extent of their comparative rarity. There are certainly others
on this forum who are better qualified to comment on that than me. I'm sure
people can come up with other examples too. I suppose limited edition
Mondo posters almost come under this category!
Paul
_www.movieposterstudio.com_ (http://www.movieposterstudio.com)
In a message dated 27/06/2015 16:49:55 GMT Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:
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
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