" The art of the movie poster is to reduce into one image what the director achieved in 350,000 " — Stanley Kubrick

Welcome to our gloomy gallery dedicated to the official French posters of American horror cinema!

If you're an avid horror movie fan or just curious about the genre's most fascinating visuals, you've come to the right place. We have carefully selected the most unique posters released in France. These true works of art have played a major role in the fame and reputation of the films they represent. They also served as a visual storytelling medium, the premise of essential marketing. Here, you will have the opportunity to discover, in chronological order, some of the most striking and memorable visuals of the genre.

Delve into cinematic memories, you'll discover how horror has influenced our collective imagination and fueled our fascination with terrifying and haunting images.

1. Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Rosemary's Baby presents an iconic and disconcerting poster, a true work in its own right. Mia Farrow's face, similar to a setting sun, is the central element that dominates almost all of the space. Graphic designers Philip Gips and Stephen Frankfurt worked on a distortion of scale by creating a metaphysical and innovative visual far removed from the conventions of the time. Authors of a true icon, they have designed an evocative and atmospheric visual. Quite just, this poster does not represent a specific scene of the film, but rather a symbolic interpretation of its themes : motherhood, paranoia and fear. This approach, controversial at the time, influenced the art of the movie poster. At the same time, the choice of a perched pram, suggesting a shift into the void, makes it an image that is both subversive and timeless.

Entering the heritage of cinema, the poster of Rosemary's Baby is a symbol and a graphic reference of psychological horror, like the dense heritage of the feature film. It is important to note that at the French release, another poster created by Michel Landi was deployed. It is highly sought after by collectors.

2. Jaws (1975)

You probably know that the first modern blockbuster is an adaptation of a bestseller by journalist Peter Benchley. Also, he borrows his thalassophobic cover.

During the seventies, book covers became a breeding ground for experimentation for graphic arts and marketing. In order to accompany a possible success and monopolize the attention of the media, the publishing house Doubleday looked for a haunting illustration. After months of unsuccessful sketching, the publisher called on Paul Bacon, who would become a pioneer of minimalism. A funeral and refined cover is then revealed, in a striking black and white. A swimmer in a swimsuit floats in a black ocean, prey to a great white shark. The shock in the collective imagination is immediate.

Together, and as the first prints are made, Universal studios will then acquire the rights. Steven Spielberg will require a plot centered on the figure of the monster, a key element of suspense. From then on, it was decided to take up the visual to reexploit its iconographic potential. Artist Roger Kastel will be inspired by NMNH's life-size models of great white sharks. The result is stunning terror and precision. Above all, the illustrator decides to free himself from the darkness to create a threat to daylight, immediately becoming the new cover.

Another founding element is the apparent nudity of the bather. The outrage of Roger Kastel's visual storytelling will be banned from the first publications of the new edition of the novel. In fact, it will serve as a promotional experiment to finally become the official poster of the film. A visual so influential and impactful that it will have regrettable repercussions. Indeed, it will contribute to creating an irrational fear that will influence the protection of sharks. This raises the question of the power of marketing in popular culture, a collateral effect recognized and deplored by Spielberg and Benchley.

3. Alien, the Eighth Passenger (1979)

Eleven years later, after propelling contemporary iconic culture with the poster of Roman Polanski's horror masterpiece, Philip Gips and Steve Frankfurt sought to reuse a key element of the narrative: the Xenomorph's egg. While preserving the metaphysical character of their work, the graphic designers chose to focus on the egg that symbolizes both birth and death. In fact, in the space darkness that surrounds it, it becomes the origin of the threat. The evocation subtly dots the visual with a sunken nest similar to the seats of a cinema, associated with an incantatory slogan. The illustration thus suggests an immersive and claustrophobic collective experience.

It should be noted that the poster contributed to the global success of the film, thanks in particular to the decision not to reveal the creature, an omnipresent intention in Ridley Scott's footage. In addition, the graphic designers wanted to introduce the surrealist and biomechanical universe of H.R. Giger, who largely influenced the film's staggering aesthetic by conceptualizing the creature and many of the sets. The primal fears of humanity are omnipresent in Alien, the eighth passenger and the illustration invokes them meticulously, from the fear of the great outdoors to that of the dark and the unknown. In the end, the poster remains a model of transmitting the essence of a film to a global audience.

4. Freddy 3: Claws of the Nightmare (1987)

Designed by French poster artist Laurent Melki, the illustration is fully in line with the singular and dreamlike imagery of bogeyman Freddy Krueger. Across the Atlantic, it is the artist Matthew Joseph Peak, to whom we owe the five posters of the eighties, who is at the origin of the graphic style. Yet Melki's work is second to none.At the junction of the franchise's supernatural visual footprint, Peak's iconic watercolors and featuring the relief claws of the first hexagonal visual, the illustration sports a brilliant alloy with piercing colors. In fact, by combining the iconic visual codes of the franchise with a phantasmagorical and unruly touch, Laurent Melki's poster is a work of craftsmanship that goes to the heart of Elm Street's baroque imagination.

At the bottom of the poster, we can discern a bed surrounded by a reddish mist, where a teenager is captive, torn apart by the monster of bad dreams. This macabre and hallucinated glimpse is an allegory of youthful fantasies between dream and reality. Melki revealed that he had placed himself on the bed by lending his features to the young man. His use of vanishing points, giving depth to the background, creates a captivating image that recalls the bogeyman's stranglehold on the dreams of his victims.Melki's work resonates in the world of movie posters, especially in the colorful decade of horror cinema. In fact, Claws of the Nightmare will be the franchise's biggest success in France.

5. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The iconic poster for the horror thriller The Silence of the Lambs was developed by Dawn Baillie just before she co-founded one of entertainment's largest marketing agencies, BLT Communications. The totally new approach to illustration has propelled the career of its creator. Based on the script, the illustration, depicting Jodie Foster's pale face with her mouth covered with a moth, evokes the mystery of the human soul and the unspoken. The illustrator knew how to work on the essence of the film, having only the script in her possession, creating an iconic and haunting portrait. A look that invites you to jump into the unknown like the film exploring psychological manipulation, the complexity of affects, impulses and traumas. In fact, it is one of the most enigmatic posters across the Atlantic because of its ease in the construction of its symbolism, attracting the eye and initiating a psychological confrontation with the viewer, a confrontation at the center of the plot.

Similarly, Dawn Bailli managed to circumvent censorship by creating an impressive hand-painted optical illusion, with surreal women's bodies assembled to form a skull thatrepresents the serial killer's obsessions. The orange butterfly, borrowed from the National Museum of Natural History, stands out from the reddish gradient of the actress' bright eyes to the typography of the title. The impact of the poster on the public in the early 90s was immense, creating a real obsession. This illustration is one of the last to have been thought by a single person, the artists then enjoying a great artistic freedom on the part of the studios. However, with the democratization of marketing teams in the industry, visual innovation has become increasingly difficult and competitive.

To go further…

https://vimeo.com/551757357#t=2684s

Poster House and the Clio Entertainment Awards team up to explore cinema's most iconic posters, featuring Dawn Baillie.