12

Aliens (Poland)

Movie Poster DB

First let's clear something up: It doesn't say "ORGY" up there, it says "OBCY" (the Polish name for the Alien franchise), so you can stop searching for a working torrent of this movie. And now that that's out of the way -- what the bleeding fuck are we looking at, here? The first Alien movie had been out in Poland for several years at this point (we know this because we've seen the equally insane poster for it), so it's not like the poster-makers had an excuse for having no idea what the Xenomorphs look like. Apparently their memory had been slightly impaired by the triple dosage of LSD they had for breakfast that morning, leading to a conversation like this:

"Hey, just double-checking: How many eyes do the aliens have, again?"

"All of them. All of the eyes."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

11

The Birds (Czech Republic)

Movie Poster DB

10

Slither (Guyana)

Whosay
The dog is Nathan Fillion.

Admittedly there are a lot of weird things going on in the 2006 worm apocalypse movie Slither, but a grinning dog isn't one of them. We also can't seem to remember the scene where a young child shrugs and sticks out her tongue while a giant worm horrifically comes out of her forehead. And finally, Michael Rooker (Merle from The Walking Dead) looks like a more pleasant and civilized worm monster in the Guyanese version. When reached for comment, the artist behind this poster said "You mean this is a horror movie?!"

Then again, Slither's director, James Gunn, himself claims this poster "captures exactly what I was trying to say with this film," so what the hell do we know? Besides that we now fear James Gunn, that is.

9

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Czech Republic)

Zdenek Ziegler

8

An American Werewolf in London (Japan)

Movie Poster DB
This looks unusually appropriate for Japan.

The '80s horror-comedy An American Werewolf in Paris is actually more horror than comedy (that transformation scene is closer to The Thing than to Animal House) and was marketed as such in most places ... except in Japan, where it was apparently seen as a wacky romp for the whole family, judging by this poster. OK, maybe not the whole family, since they put the wolf giving oral sex to a nurse in there, although Japanese kids probably see worse in their Saturday morning animes. This part may have also given birth to the whole furry porn genre.

Naturally, the only real part of the movie that caught the attention of the Japanese marketers was the one where the protagonist steals a boy's balloons in the zoo to cover his genitals -- which is understandable, considering they have a word for "naked zoo balloon thief" in Japan.

7

The Omen (Czech Republic)

Movie Poster DB
We choose to interpret this as Satan with Gregory Peck's face for a crotch.

The Omen is a distant prequel of The X-Men where Gregory Peck has a creepy son with the mutant power of being the Antichrist. This Czech poster solves one of the movie's most longstanding mysteries: How the heck did Satan (who never appears in the film, by the way) convince a human woman to have sex with him? The answer, of course, is that he's totally ripped. Check out those perfectly oiled (Gregory) pecs. Also, he has a light bulb growing out of his head. Damn. Who could resist that? Even Mr. Peck's interest seems piqued, and he's the 16th most heterosexual man in history. He had to turn away and bite his lip or he'd lose control.

Considering the tragic events surrounding this movie, we have to assume that the genius who painted this poster died after accidentally sitting on a lightning rod and becoming impaled. It was all worth it.

6

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Poland)

Movie Poster DB
This poster alone has better pacing than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

5

To Kill A Mockingbird (Croatia)

Movie Poster DB

In To Kill a Mockingbird, a white lawyer in 1930s Alabama must defend an African-American man in court. The lawyer claims that his client couldn't possibly have committed the crime they're accusing him of, because he's actually a disembodied hand with a face. Or at least that's the impression Croatian audiences must have gotten from this poster, which looks like the result of the cast pictures getting misplaced and the artist scrambling to replicate them with shadow puppets. Luckily he gave up after one character.

Maybe in Croatia there's a whole genre of films about the hardships that disembodied, face-having hands must endure, and the marketing people thought that would be more relatable than good ol' Southern racism. That, or all Croatia knows about black Americans is that they love high-fives.

4

Star Wars: A New Hope (Russia)

Movie Poster DB

3

Christine (Poland)

Movie Poster DB
Finally, something for the legions of automotive vagina dentata fetishists.

"OK, so this movie is based on a Stephen King book about an evil car that kills people, so we're thinking there should be a car on the poster, and ..."

"Right, so it's like Jaws. Gotcha."

"What? No, this is a 1958 Plymouth Fury car that magically repairs itself and possesses its owner, and ..."

"And it eats people on the beach. I got this, man."

"No, it's a car! Do you know what a car is?"

"Yeah, those huge animals with giant mouths."

"That's a shark."

"Oh. Well, I already finished the poster while we were talking, so ..."

"Fuck it, we'll use that."

2

Peter Pan (Lithuania)

Movie Poster DB

1

Terms of Endearment (Poland)

Movie Poster DB

Terms of Endearment is that movie where Jack Nicholson plays an alcoholic retired astronaut who hooks up with an older woman, because it had been a few years since anyone handed him any Academy Awards and he was starting to get itchy. Somehow, the real poster for the movie (which mostly concerns the love lives of a mother and her daughter) got mixed up with a surrealist ad for a Polish call girl service.

Alternatively, this gives the impression that the viewer is in for some Naked Lunch-level insanity, what with the humanoid phones and all, not a heartbreaking story about family and relationships. On the other hand, the poster does look more like something Jack Nicholson would star in.

R.H.T. Lawson writes novellas on dirty napkins and has a love of music, which he documents on his music blog

Related Reading: Want more ridiculous foreign versions of movie posters? We've got you covered, with a little help from Uganda. Keep the poorly translated ball rolling with these insanely manly foreign movie posters. Sultan Rahi's face alone is enough to make you spurt a quarter pound of chest hair. Next, cool your blood with Russia's outright terrifying poster for Return of the Jedi.