MovieChat Forums > Jaws (1975) Discussion > The Greatest Movie Poster of All Time

The Greatest Movie Poster of All Time

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
5 replies | jump to latest

By way of preface, I would like to say that I think the LOGO for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is the greatest movie logo of all time.

Hitchcock "lifted" that logo directly from the cover of Robert Bloch's novel, Psycho. He paid $9,000 for the rights to the novel AND an equal $9,000 for the rights to the logo(designed by NYC artist Tony Palladino.)

The PSYCHO logo showed that big word literally SLASHED horizontally across the entire word and vertically down the C. The slashed word suggested how victims of the psycho killer were slashed to death by her knife; the slashed word also suggested the split personality of the killer. No greater logo has ever been on a poster.

But the original 1960 Psycho poster was rather odd otherwise. No shot of the famous Psycho house on the hill. Or of the Bates Motel. Just cheesecake/beefcake photos of Janet Leigh and John Gavin undressed and of Anthony Perkins with his hand over his mouth, and Vera Miles screaming.

Cut 15 years to JAWS.

The Jaws logo was fairly solid and formidable and cool -- the BIG word JAWS in big red letters(suggesting blood), but that logo couldn't match the "slasher visual" of PSYCHO.

What was better was the rest of the poster:

That great image: a nude woman(her vital parts hidden in the water) swimming across the surface of the water at the top of the poster...the GIGANTIC, phallic, bullet headed shark zooming straight up at her...jaws wide open.

That was the movie in a nutshell ...and the TERROR of the movie in a nutshell, and it SOLD that movie and made us all want to go see it RIGHT NOW.

There was a twist, of course: the movie indeed opens with the naked young woman getting grabbed, thrashed about and eaten by the shark...but we never SEE the shark.

ONLY in the poster did we see that shark, so we IMAGINED him in the movie based on the poster.

Interestingly, again as with Psycho, the contours of the poster were on the cover of the hardcover novel, too: the swimming young woman, the shark coming up at her.

But the sketches of the woman and the shark on the book cover were more sketchy, small scale "just sketched in."

The MOVIE poster used heightened reality to give us a REAL looking shark and a REAL looking woman. (There was a tag line with one of these posters: "Amity Island on the Fourth of July. The perfect feeding ground.")

All through the summer of 1975 and beyond, that poster became political cartoons(the shark was political parties coming up at opponents, etc.) The 1975 comedy release "Return of the Pink Panther" turned the woman into Inspector Clouseau and the shark into the Pink Panther.

And the trailer for the movie ENDED with the camera pulling out FROM the poster...making it part of the trailer itself.

The billing for the movie was well designed around the shark coming at the gal, too, above the painting: Roy Scheider(left low), Robert Shaw(center, high), Richard Dreyfuss(right low.) The three men and their three characters became indeliably "linked" to the woman and the shark. They will avenge her. They will kill the shark.

The greatest movie poster of all time.

PS. I had that poster on my wall. So does a character in Love Actually (2003.)

[–] seagal72 (2008) 2 years ago

Nice write-up...What do you think of the JAWS 2 poster?
I know the original is more 'iconic' (but personally, I think the poster for the sequel is even scarier)
Of course, being a sequel, every thing about it is (naturally) 'bigger' this time round...the shark looks bigger (not to mention meaner) and the poster girl looks even more blissfully unaware.

I used to have both posters on my bedroom wall as a kid...Nowadays, the pair of them freak me out a little, primarily because (as you said) they're really detailed, amazing paintings...an art form that's rarely utilized in modern cinema.

But (personally) I think JAWS 2 just edges it...largely because the shark looks so mean?
Odd too, that Universal basically re-cycled the original shark drawing/design for subsequent sequel posters?

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Thank you.

--

What do you think of the JAWS 2 poster?
I know the original is more 'iconic' (but personally, I think the poster for the sequel is even scarier)
Of course, being a sequel, every thing about it is (naturally) 'bigger' this time round...the shark looks bigger (not to mention meaner) and the poster girl looks even more blissfully unaware.

---

I've looked at BOTH posters, and surely the Jaws 2 poster "takes the Jaws poster and does it again...bigger." I suppose my problem is that this poster for a sequel is a sequel unto itself: the Jaws 2 poster has meaning BECAUSE it looks so much like the Jaws poster . (I can't say "Jaws 1," nor will I say "Psycho 1.")

I think the Jaws 2 poster is also a little bit unbelieveable. The Jaws poster suggested a shark "coming up at a victim." The Jaws 2 poster has the shark right behind the victim - up in the air -- he's gonna FALL DOWN on her?

Still, I agree that the Jaws 2 poster is compelling. And this: its odd to see these three names -- Lorraine Gary, Roy Scheider, Murray Hamilton -- put into the positions that "Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss" had in the original poster. Suddenly, Lorraine Gary and good ol' Jaws Mayor Murray Hamilton end up as STARS. Good for them. One film only.

CONT

I used to have both posters on my bedroom wall as a kid...Nowadays, the pair of them freak me out a little, primarily because (as you said) they're really detailed, amazing paintings...an art form that's rarely utilized in modern cinema.

But (personally) I think JAWS 2 just edges it...largely because the shark looks so mean?
Odd too, that Universal basically re-cycled the original shark drawing/design for subsequent sequel posters?

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I used to have both posters on my bedroom wall as a kid...

--

I had the original Jaws poster on my wall. It had been exciting to first see the poster BEFORE I saw the movie, AFTER I saw the movie, the poster stood as a fond memory of one of my favorite movies of all time -- certainly my favorite of 1975, and tied (with The Godfather) for favorite of the 70's. The Godfather poster was basically...just the title and the puppet strings.

---

Nowadays, the pair of them freak me out a little, primarily because (as you said) they're really detailed, amazing paintings...an art form that's rarely utilized in modern cinema.

--

Those detailed paintings were a really big deal in 60's posters -- I think I've called "The Dirty Dozen" poster the greatest of all time, too. I really should make up my mind.

In the 70's, there was an artist named Richard Amsel who did detailed paintings for Murder on the Orient Express, The Yakuza, and The Shootist, among others. Take a look at those and behold a lost form.

---

But (personally) I think JAWS 2 just edges it...largely because the shark looks so mean?

---

Ha. Maybe. I'll say this: BOTH posters show why Jaws was so terrifying. Who wants to die THAT way? As FOOD! As a MEAL!

---

Odd too, that Universal basically re-cycled the original shark drawing/design for subsequent sequel posters?

--

Yeah, it became a mere symbol(the shark) in a series of lesser sequels. Steven Spielberg had no power , when he was young , to buy sequel rights to Jaws. He thought the Jaws sequels were so bad that he personally locked down sequel rights to Jurassic Park and other of his films.

And Psycho - originally a Paramount film but eventually its rights were bought by Universal -- was also turned into a series of bad sequels. Universal didn't treat two of their greatest properties with much respect.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Here is some little known trivia:

The "shark speeding up at the girl" poster became the famous poster for Jaws.

But I once saw an earlier poster design for Jaws that was, frankly...horrifying.

It was in Variety, the Hollywood trade paper. It was a painting designed to showcase "coming in 1975: Jaws."

And it was of a shark's head lifted up out of the water with a MALE swimmer -- actually trapped in the open jaws of the shark, struggling with his hands on the shark's teeth, and screaming.

Somehow I think Universal decided that image couldn't become the Jaws poster....

[–] gkleps (6) 2 years ago

You're actually completely off. The PSYCHO logo is taken from the first edition of the novel by Robert Bloch. Likewise, the poster art for the film JAWS is near identical to the artwork of the first edition of that novel as well, just with a lighter color scheme. Neither were original pieces and the artists who did the book jacket art should be credited for these posters.