WHEN SMUT MEETS ART 

Before ad campaigns for movies became virtually identical everywhere around the world, Japan held a unique position as a country where even the sleaziest of films could have a poster worthy of advertising an art exhibition. 

Sex, horror, action, science fiction - no matter what the subject matter, Japanese graphic designers put their hearts into creating wonderfully crazy and colourful posters, which spoke to an intended (mostly male) target audience but were also very often made with a high level of artistic skill. When the US and Europe still advertised their films with hand-drawn illustrations, Japanese artists used the most compelling and often outrageous images of the promoted films to design stunning photo collages that are without a doubt among the most impressive examples of modern advertising. 

BANZAI! JAPANESE CULT MOVIE POSTERS is a book for everyone with an interest in exploitation cinema, movie posters or popular culture in general. It celebrates a time when genre cinema was wild and crazy, and poster design was still an art.