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Women in Bondage (Mongram, 1943) |
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Two-Man Submarine (Columbia, 1943) |
Two-Man Submarine (Columbia, 1944) is a low-budget wartime spy thriller revolving around a secret drug and a remote South Pacific island behind Japanese lines. At a time when the war in the Pacific still raged, the slide graphics make for wonderful propaganda with the battling hero (Tom Neal) punching out a Japanese soldier while the text shouts out "JAP ATROCITIES AVENGED BY TWO YANKS BENT ON REVENGE." Given a graphic design that includes an exploding submarine, floating wreckage, and a bound and gagged Ann Savage, clearly those yanks have the right to be fighting mad.
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None Shall Escape (Columbia, 1944) |
While wartime slides typically go sensationally over-the-top, these slides from Charles Potter display their own distinctive graphic style. Each features a photo-montage of critical elements, the most prominent of which being bound women or women in peril (with obvious and undeniable subtext). The typographical design elements are also consistent, with diagonal film titles in two or three-color block letters proximately associated with wonderfully sensational rhetoric. These elements, in combination with a consistent color palate, make make the Potter slides easy to distinguish from other manufacturers of the period.
Regardless of the films promoted, these wartime slides stand on their own as delightfully graphic propaganda pieces. Women in chains! Nazis with whips! "Jap Atrocities!" Shocking Stories! Even if patrons never returned to see the advertised film, audiences viewing these slides undoubtedly got the message.
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