Vintage Belgian Movie Poster Laserblast 👽 1978 Rayon Laser Charles Band SciFi Cult Classic

Size: 14 x 22 in ~ Unused archive stock, little to no wear. They vary a little one to the next. Everything here is stored in the dark, under 40% relative humidity, at a steady 72°F, climate controlled - whatever age a sheet shows, it had before it came to me.

👽 A Teenager, an Alien Laser Cannon, and a Belgian Print Shop

I love this one. It's an original Belgian theatrical poster - an affiche - for Laserblast: Rayon Laser in bold blue French lettering across the top, the film's own jagged green LASERBLAST logo worked right into the art, and Laserstraal anchoring the bottom in red Flemish. A wide-eyed kid grips a chrome laser cannon strapped to his forearm, its beam blasting straight at you; two reptilian aliens watch from a rooftop; a spaceship streaks overhead trailing light; and a whole street burns behind him while people run for it. It's everything a late-'70s drive-in sci-fi poster should be, and then some.

Belgium is the only country in the world to use posters of this size, and they were very flamboyant compared to their counterparts across the globe. Between the size, the graphics and how few of them survive, these are a favorite among collectors - this one included.

🎬 The Movie This Poster Is Selling

Laserblast hit theaters March 1, 1978, directed by Michael Rae and produced by Charles Band, written by Frank Ray Perilli and Franne Schacht. The story: bullied teenager Billy Duncan (Kim Milford) finds an alien laser cannon, straps it to his arm, and starts turning it on the people who've wronged him - which is a problem, because the aliens who lost it want it back. Cheryl Smith plays his girlfriend, Kathy Farley; Gianni Russo is the local heavy, Tony Craig; and the poster's two "real actor" names, Roddy McDowall and Keenan Wynn, show up as Dr. Mellon and Colonel Farley. Dennis Burkley rounds out the cast as Deputy Pete Ungar. (Keenan Wynn turns up again on this lot's Tire Django sheet, if anyone's keeping track.)

David W. Allen built the stop-motion aliens, and they're the one thing even the film's harshest critics tend to admit holds up. The score is Joel Goldsmith and Richard Band's first film credit, written together in five days flat.

Critics did not like this movie. It sits on IMDb's own Bottom 100. And yet - Mystery Science Theater 3000 gave it the full riff treatment as episode 706, which aired May 18, 1996. That was the show's last original episode on Comedy Central before it moved to the Sci-Fi Channel. So this scrappy little movie about a kid with a laser arm ended up closing out an era of television. I find that genuinely funny, and it's exactly the kind of backstory that makes a "bad" movie worth owning a poster for.

🇧🇪 Printed for Belgium

This sheet was printed for Belgium, in its own compact format, laid out for a country that reads its films in French and Flemish both. That's why you get three titles doing the work of one: Rayon Laser up top, the film's own Laserblast logo kept intact in the middle of the art, and Laserstraal at the bottom. It was printed in Belgium - "Imprimé en Belgique" runs along the foot of the sheet - by Edicolor in Brussels, whose mark sits in the corner.

🗄️ Where It's Been Since

This one comes from the archive of the now-defunct Cosmopolis Films, kept together as one collection since 2007. It's Belgian distributor stock that was never posted up in a cinema lobby and thrown away when the run ended - it sat in the trade's own hands instead, which is the only reason it's still around to sell today. The round logo on the sheet belongs to Les Films du Dragon, the Belgian outfit that actually released the film there; their documented run in Belgium stretches from 1975 to 1988, so this sheet was printed sometime in that window - tied to Laserblast's 1978 release, but not necessarily struck the very same year. I haven't seen another copy of this Belgian printing offered anywhere, so it's a rare one - and once these are gone, they're gone.

🎨 What's on the Sheet

Dead center: a young man, pale and wide-eyed, gripping a chrome laser cannon on his forearm, its green beam firing straight down the page and out past the border. Upper left, two lizard-skinned aliens watch from the top of a burning building. Upper right, a spaceship with long light-trails cuts across a dark sky. Below, a couple runs for it past an overturned, flaming car. The credit block reads "A Charles Band Production," "Color by Technicolor®," and the full cast list, with the round Les Films du Dragon emblem set beside it.