Here Are the Funniest and Most Outrageous Movie Posters in Ghanian Cinema History

Remember the scene in Mrs. Doubtfire when Robin Williams speared Pierce Brosnan through the skull with a broom handle, killing him instantly? 

No? Well, then you must not be from Accra.

One of the greatest blessings of Hollywood’s international cultural dominance over the last century has been seeing how every movie market across the world chooses to localize American blockbusters to fit the tastes and idiosyncrasies of a foreign audience. And while American movie studios certainly have a history of pulling some outlandish stunts to get butts in seats over here in the homeland, the advertising campaigns for movies within the U.S. are comically tame when compared to how other countries get the attention of moviegoers. For instance, did you know that the French distributor of Cool Runnings changed the title of the film to Rasta Rocket?

Most of the time, when a foreign movie poster makes an outrageous change to an American import, the silliness comes from the translation errors that change the meaning of the film or its title for a non-English-speaking audience. As such, it came as a surprise to see that an English-speaking country would seemingly be under the impression that Ferris Bueller's Day Off culminates in a shootout between Ferris and Mr. Rooney.

The cinema discussion podcast All the Right Movies recently pored through the art exhibition “African Gaze,” which highlighted the extreme and imaginative interpretations that movie poster designers in Ghana had for the imported films they advertised. Here are some of our favorites:

Ghana’s love of outrageous and often hand-painted movie posters began with the emergence of the country’s cinema scene in the 1980s, back when Ghanian movie theaters were mobile operations consisting of a couple of guys carting around a TV, a VCR, an electricity generator and their collection of cassettes from audience to audience. These pioneering projectionists often improvised their advertisements for the next screening on wheels on sacks of flour using bright colors to grab attention of passers-by, only loosely basing the poster on the films they were screening.

While the dawn of digital print technology enabled Ghanians to acquire their own home entertainment systems in the early aughts and eliminated the need for mobile movie operations, the popularity of the fantastically and hastily drawn posters and the increase in international interest in the artwork enabled the medium to stick around as a kind of pop art. And, as the internet took notice of the imaginative practice of painting hyperbolic posters that are barely connected to the movies they advertise in the 2010s, the “African Gaze” exhibit assembled some of Ghana’s most popular posters and showcased them across Africa and Europe.

I imagine that many Ghanian film buffs were disappointed when they found that Michael Jackson did not star in E.T., but, hey, it’s not false advertising if it’s art.