{"product_id":"rare-vintage-1973-shanghai-joe-belgium-movie-poster","title":"Vintage Shanghai Joe Belgium Movie Poster 🥋 1973 Kung Fu Spaghetti Western, Chen Lee, Cosmopolis Films","description":"\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ERXUdT09-eg\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize: 14 x 22 inches, portrait ~\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🥋 The Belgian Sheet for Shanghai Joe\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the Belgian release poster for \u003cstrong\u003eShanghai Joe\u003c\/strong\u003e — \u003cem\u003eIl mio nome è Shanghai Joe\u003c\/em\u003e in the original Italian — put out by the Brussels distributor \u003cstrong\u003eCosmopolis Films\u003c\/strong\u003e. It's part of a whole Cosmopolis archive I picked up back in 2007 specifically because Belgian posters kept turning up with their own artwork, their own compact upright shape, nothing like what you'd find from the same film's American or Italian campaign. That pattern is a big part of why I went after the archive in the first place rather than let it get scattered — Belgium is its own little pocket of film-poster history that most collectors outside Europe never see.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🖼️ What's Printed on It\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's a painted action montage, portrait format, blank on the back. Top left reads \u003cstrong\u003eCOSMOPOLIS FILMS presente\u003c\/strong\u003e; top right, \u003cstrong\u003eCHEN LEE\u003c\/strong\u003e. A black-haired fighter in a blue tunic comes flying fist-first through a wall of shattering stone across the top of the sheet, reaching toward a huge sun-browned hand gripping a lever-action rifle at the right edge, with a second hand caught mid-gesture just below it. Lower down, a man in a conical straw hat and blue tunic is going down mid-fall, and in the bottom left corner a mustached man with a topknot levels a revolver straight out at you against a slash of red. The title runs in big red letters at the bottom — and Belgium spelled it with the diaeresis, \u003cstrong\u003eSHANGHAÏ\u003c\/strong\u003e. \u003cstrong\u003eTECHNICOLOR · TECHNISCOPE\u003c\/strong\u003e is printed along the foot, and tucked into the bottom left corner is the print shop's own line, \u003cstrong\u003eImp. Wagram, Brussels\u003c\/strong\u003e, with its own old telephone number under it. Everything on the sheet is in French — no Flemish half-title the way some Belgian sheets carry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎬 The Film\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShanghai Joe went out internationally as \u003cem\u003eThe Fighting Fist of Shanghai Joe\u003c\/em\u003e, also released as \u003cem\u003eTo Kill or to Die\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Dragon Strikes Back\u003c\/em\u003e — a 1973 kung-fu spaghetti western, directed by \u003cstrong\u003eMario Caiano\u003c\/strong\u003e, who wrote the script with Fabrizio Trifone Trecca, with a score by Bruno Nicolai. It opened 28 December 1973. Chen Lee plays Chin Hao, the immigrant who becomes Shanghai Joe: he lands in Texas looking for honest work, runs straight into raw racism, and ends up taking on the slave trader Spencer, played by Piero Lulli, freeing the Mexican slaves Spencer is running. Klaus Kinski plays Scalper Jack — one of his nastier supporting turns, and worth the price of admission on its own. Gordon Mitchell plays Buryin' Sam, Robert Hundar plays Pedro the Cannibal, and Katsutoshi Mikuriya plays Mikuja, and Carla Romanelli is Cristina, the one who catches Joe's eye.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere's a coda worth knowing: a 1975 follow-up, \u003cem\u003eReturn of Shanghai Joe\u003c\/em\u003e, directed by Bitto Albertini, brought Kinski back — but only because Scalper Jack doesn't survive this first film, so he came back playing somebody else entirely. It's a sequel in billing only, not in story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏢 Cosmopolis Films, Brussels\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCosmopolis Films was a real working distributor out of 4 rue des Palais in Schaerbeek, sitting right in the middle of the Brussels film-distribution district alongside houses like Belga Films and Columbia Films on the same few streets. Belgian censorship records put the company active from December 1947 through October 1987 — the better part of forty years — moving everything from postwar Italian and French dramas through the peplum boom, spy pictures, spaghetti westerns, Japanese kaiju, and Hong Kong martial arts imports. This is a genuine, long-running house, not a name slapped on for one release.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese sheets were never sold to the public — they were trade material, shipped to cinemas, put up for a run, and thrown out afterward, which is the fate almost every one of them met. What I'm holding is archive stock that simply never got thrown out: it stayed together as one collection from the now-defunct Cosmopolis Films, kept that way since 2007, rather than going up on a wall and coming back down in the trash.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📦 Condition\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI hold a stack of these from that same Cosmopolis run, so think of condition as a range across the stack rather than a grade on one sheet — unused, never hung, with the ordinary handling that comes of half a century as trade stock. Everything here has been kept dark, under 40% humidity, at a steady 72°F since it came into my hands, so nothing has been quietly aging on a shelf — it reaches you in the same shape it arrived in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA genuinely obscure corner of movie-poster collecting — a Belgian sheet for a film most people only know, if they know it at all, because Klaus Kinski is in it. Good company for anything spaghetti-western, kung-fu, or just gleefully strange on the wall.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-johnny-yuma-belgian-movie-poster-1966-spaghetti-western\"\u003eVintage Johnny Yuma Belgium Movie Poster 🤠 1966 Spaghetti Western, Mark Damon, Cosmopolis Films\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/rare-1972-freres-appeles-trinita-belgium-movie-poster-unleashed-vintage\"\u003eVintage 2 Freres Appeles Trinita Belgium Movie Poster 🤠 1972 Comedy Spaghetti Western, Cosmopolis Films\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/rare-vintage-1971-shoot-joe-again-dakota-belgium-movie-poster-treasures\"\u003eVintage Joe Dakota Belgium Movie Poster 🤠 1971 Spaghetti Western, Richard Harrison, Cosmopolis Films\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43500517654760,"sku":"VAG-7880581710056","price":44.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.4083806617_t7o8.jpg?v=1785357428","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/rare-vintage-1973-shanghai-joe-belgium-movie-poster","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}