“Once You Kiss a Stranger / Shikeidai ni Seppun (死刑台に接吻)”, Original Release Japanese B2 Theatrical Poster 1970, Rare Carol Lynley Pop-Art Key Visual, B2 Poster Size (c.51.5 × 72.8cm) S98
This is an original, very rare Japanese B2 theatrical poster for the 1969 American psychological thriller Once You Kiss a Stranger, released theatrically in Japan on 20 June 1970 under the dramatically reworked Japanese title Shikeidai ni Seppun (死刑台に接吻), approximately “Kiss on the Scaffold” or “A Kiss at the Execution Stand.” The film was directed by Robert Sparr and stars Carol Lynley, Paul Burke and Martha Hyer. This is the original Japanese first-release B2 key visual from the film’s 1970 Japanese theatrical campaign. The standard Japanese B2 format measures approximately 51.5 × 72.8 cm (20.3 × 28.7 inches).
Film background
Once You Kiss a Stranger is a dark psychological crime thriller built around the dangerously seductive Diana, played by Carol Lynley, and professional golfer Jerry, played by Paul Burke. Diana proposes an apparently simple exchange: she will murder Jerry’s rival if he will kill the psychiatrist who wants to have her institutionalised. What initially seems like an outrageous proposition rapidly becomes a nightmare when Diana actually carries out her side of the bargain.
The film is a loose reworking of the murder-exchange premise from Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, famously adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951, but here the dangerous instigator is transformed into a glamorous and highly unstable young woman. The screenplay was written by Norman Katkov and Frank Tarloff, with Highsmith’s novel acknowledged as the underlying inspiration.
Creator / artist background
This sheet does not carry a separate standalone Japanese poster-illustrator credit, and its visual identity instead comes from the extraordinary graphic treatment applied to the film’s photographic publicity material. Director Robert Sparr worked extensively in American television as well as cinema, and Once You Kiss a Stranger became his final completed feature film. The production was made for Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, with Harold A. Goldstein producing.
Poster design
Printed in the classic Japanese B2 cinema-poster format, this is an extraordinary example of late-1960s / early-1970s Japanese pop-art exploitation design. Rather than following the comparatively conventional American campaign, the Japanese artwork pushes the film’s combination of sexuality, danger and psychological instability to an almost surreal extreme.
The left half is dominated by the enormous hand-painted blood-red title 死刑台に接吻, stacked vertically against an almost stark white background. Its rough, calligraphic brushwork gives the title an aggressive, violent quality that immediately contrasts with the polished photographic imagery beside it.
At the centre stands Carol Lynley as Diana, isolated in full colour wearing a green bikini and holding a large speargun, with her diving equipment dangling casually from her other hand. The image is both glamorous and threatening — precisely the contradiction on which the Japanese campaign is built. Her comparatively naturalistic colour photograph sits almost like a cut-out collage against the much more abstract background.
The right half shifts completely into pink, black and blue psychedelic photomontage. A dramatically enlarged intimate embrace occupies most of the field, while a pair of black sunglasses floats ominously above, their blue lenses containing reflected photographic imagery. The result feels closer to contemporary underground graphic design, magazine collage or Pop Art than to a conventional Hollywood thriller poster.
At lower left, a tiny additional montage showing a young girl and an overturned toy vehicle further intensifies the poster’s deliberately disorientating tone, while the small original English title ONCE YOU KISS A STRANGER appears almost inconspicuously underneath.
The sensational Japanese promotional copy reads:
ねらった男はかならず殺す！
ハダカをエサに猟奇殺人を
たのしむ毒蛇のような女！
Approximately: “She always kills the man she sets her sights on! A venomous-snake of a woman who uses her naked body as bait and delights in bizarre murder!”
It is an extraordinary piece of period marketing — far more provocative, graphic and visually adventurous than the film’s standard American advertising — and a superb example of the freedom Japanese poster designers often exercised when repositioning Western films for domestic audiences.
This poster is in Very Good+ condition. It was originally folded and has subsequently been stored flat. The original horizontal and vertical fold lines remain visible, as expected for a theatrical poster of this period. There is a small tear at the upper edge around the central vertical division / pink border, together with minor age-related handling and light creasing.
Importantly, the extraordinary colours remain extremely attractive: the blood-red typography, saturated pink photographic field, blue sunglasses and green of Carol Lynley’s costume retain tremendous visual impact. The imperfections are overwhelmingly associated with the folds and margins rather than the key imagery.
Please refer to the imagery (front, detail and verso), as this is the exact poster that is for sale. It has previously been folded and subsequently stored flat, and once framed it will display excellently.
It is over 56 years old.
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.
