One of these James Bond posters is an original, the other is a reprint. Can you tell which one is which?

I bought these 2 posters together from a shop in Singapore, when I was living there. It was very unusual to find any places selling movie posters there, so when I saw these I snapped them up, even though I wasn’t sure at the time whether they were originals or not.   

The poster for Live And Let Die is I think one of the very best from the Bond series. The film’s blaxploitation overtones don’t sit at all well today (pimps in Harlem, voodoo ceremonies etc), but it remains one of the more memorable of the Roger Moore Bonds.  For You Only Live Twice, I used to own a UK quad with a similar image of Bond in the ‘Little Nelly’ helicopter, and I always thought it was rather silly the way he’s sat in mid-air holding a gun.

So, can you tell which is the original and which is the reprint? The answer is that Live and Let Die is original (the ‘East hemisphere’ notification at the bottom gives it away). The You Only Live Twice poster is a reprint from the 1980s.  Several of the Connery Bond posters were reprinted then (which inevitably has created a lot of confusion in the market). One relatively easy way to tell is the movie title printed in red at the bottom right, which the original would not have. Plus, for some reason, the printing for this particular poster does not seem to have been from the original plates, but from what looks like a damaged copy of the original poster. (There are marks in the sky down the left hand side, which further confirm its a reprint.)

It is these days something of a minefield trying to buy original Bond posters, especially if you are shopping on eBay or Catawiki. I’ve seen many times sellers being economical with the truth – eg offering something as ‘an original cinema poster for this 1964 release’, which while being technically true neglects to mention that it was actually for a re-release in the 1970s.

The same is even more true of European posters for the same films – I’ve seen reprints or reissues of French and Italian posters offered as ‘original release’ posters many times. A couple of ‘clues’ to look out for are the distributor logo (United Artists changed the look of this many times over the years, so this can easily date the poster), plus if that doesn’t help checking on the name of the printer can also be a give-away, especially for French posters. It certainly pays to be careful out there as I’m sure a lot of people have paid way over the odds for reprints bought online!