A striking design for this Polish B1 poster for the release of the cult sci-fi horror Critters (1986) in which a sleepy farming town is attacked by a group of small, furry aliens with oversized teeth. Often thought to have been made as a response to the runaway success of Joe Dante’s Gremlins, the director Stephen Herek has since argued that the script for Critters existed before Dante’s film was released and that effort was made to differentiate Critters’ script as much as possible. The film begins on a prison located on an asteroid from which the malevolent ‘Krites’ manage to escape by killing some guards and commandeering a space craft.

Two shape-shifting bounty hunters are sent after the ship which ends up crash-landing near the farm of the Brown family in rural Kansas. As the Krites begin to attack livestock and then people, the son of the family Brad (Scott Grimes) sets out to try and stop them with the help of the town drunk Charlie (Don Keith Opper) and the two bounty hunters. The film is never less than entertaining and was enough of a hit to see the release of three sequels of decreasing quality.

The person responsible for the design of this poster is Mieczysław Wasilewski who was born in 1942 in Warsaw and went on to study at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts from 1960 to 1966. Whilst working on book covers and film posters he would also take a up a position at the Academy in 1971, eventually being appointed as a professor in 1990. Wasilewski worked on posters for both Polish and international productions, including Back to the Future, Big Trouble in Little China and The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Three pages of his posters can be seen on Polishposter.com. The short entry about the artist on Wikipedia notes that he has won four awards for poster design at different stages in his career. More of his posters can be viewed on Poster.pl.

A striking design by Waldemar Świerzy on this B1 poster for the domestic release of the Polish film What a Lady You Are… (released in Poland as Cózes ty za pani…). The film was directed by Tadeusz Kijanski and was one of only three films he helmed. According to IMDb, his directorial career ended a year later in 1980. 

The film’s plot is described on the Polish site filmweb (Google translated)

The film is set during the First World War. Jacob lives in a village on the border of two partitions: an Austrian and Russian. Here marries Magda. When war breaks out, Jacob goes to the front. He must fight not only the enemy, but also Poles from another partition.

The full film is available to watch on Youtube, should you wish.

The late Waldemar Świerzy is considered to be one of the most important Polish designers and artists and it’s estimated he’s worked on over 2500 posters during his career. He was born in Katowice in 1931 and graduated from the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts in 1952. He later became professor in the University of Fine Arts in Poznań from 1965 and Professor in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1994. The artist was one of the key figures in the influential Polish School of Posters a movement to push the level of quality of Polish posters forward which was active for over 30 years, starting in the 1950s. Świerzy won multiple awards during his career and had several exhibitions of his work held over the years. He sadly passed away in 2003.

Polishposter.com has several pages of his work and this biography on culture.pl goes into great detail about his life and work. Poster.com.pl has another gallery of his work.