Invisible Cinema owner Nick Shaw shows off alternative posters for the 1988 film Bloodsport and the 1994 film Stargate.
Centretown’s Invisible Cinema is hosting a gallery show and sale featuring alternative movie posters created by the local art-production company Skuzzles.
A launch party was to be held this weekat the Wurm Gallery inside Invisible Cinema, at the corner of Bank and Lisgar streets, where the co-creators of Skuzzles will be discussing their business and unveiling new posters.
Skuzzles is the brainchild of Brock Higgins, 30, and Chris Martin, 28, two friends from Ottawa who found a distinctive niche in the world of vintage movie art.
They met each other through a mutual friend and found they both had an interest in collecting posters, which led them into starting the business together.
“This is going to be the first showing of our posters anywhere,” says Higgins. "We’ve been doing this for a couple of years but we didn’t want to show our stuff prematurely, when we didn’t have a good repertoire of art to show.”
Higgins and Martin acquire the film rights from movie production companies that allow them to reproduce and sell alternative poster art.
“We work directly with the production companies to come to an agreement to have access to specific titles,” says Higgins. “Everything is legal, and a lot of other companies don’t do this. That isn’t how we want to work.”
Skuzzles has produced posters for movies such as The Amityville Horror, Maximum Overdrive, Toxic Crusaders and Teen Wolf. They tend to re-invent posters from 1980s’ films, which hold a high value for both poster collectors and people who want a piece of merchandise of their favorite old film.
There is no one style to the Skuzzles movie posters, except that a large number of them fall into the horror genre category.
Toronto artist Gary Pullin designed the Teen Wolf poster, which has sold out in one version.
“I was really excited when they hired me to do Teen Wolf because it references horror films but it’s also a comedy,” says Pullin.
Pullin is a freelancer who has worked with artists such as Daniel Horne and Clive Barker, two well-known artists that also specialize in horror art.
“I am a huge fan of horror,” says Pullin.
Says Higgins: “Horror movies in general have the best posters. They have a cult aspect and the characters are so extreme.”
Nick Shaw, owner of Invisible Cinema and curator of the Wurm Gallery, says the production of the posters takes many steps, which will be discussed at the show.
“They try to pair an artist with a specific film, and then they are produced in Seattle at DL screenprinting,” says Shaw. “DL ships them to Ottawa, and they ship them world-wide.”
Licences from production companies allow Skuzzles to only produce a certain number of prints for every film, making each poster a limited edition artwork.