A wildly enjoyable and engaging response to the social and political turmoil that arose in 2020. Davis F. Walker responded to the breakdowns and breakthroughs of 2020 by creating posters for films that do not exist.
These posters are for a very particular type of film that anyone who can remember browsing in video hire shops will have encountered. The covers of the video boxes had fantastic posters that promised in the loudest way that the film was a feast of violence and sex. They never were, the films were terrible, not just bad but actively terrible. None of the promise of the poster made it to the screen. The posters were and are magnificent, armed with the limitless budget of paper and print, the film producers could finally create the images they had no hope of ever capturing on screen.
David F. Walker has taken these posters and reinvented them in a glorious colours and exclamations. The posters in the book, like the film names, Barefoot Vegan in the Anarchist Jurisdiction is one of my favourite examples, are little masterpieces. They capture the rage, frustration and anxiety that boiled up across the year. They have the astonishing action shots, the lurid set ups, the wild promises of the films with a twist.
The twist is not subtle, it is loud and assertive, and it works on both levels, as posters for films that I would almost like to see and as a shout of defiance.
The book goes the extra mile by providing synopses of the films and trivia about the films written by Jason Lamb. They are little masterpieces of straight-faced write ups. They could be placed into a lot of straight books about exploitation films and they would blend in perfectly. My flat-out favourite is Robo-Camel Riders of the Rebellion in the Anarchist Jurisdiction which is listed as “…may be the worst movie ever made”. The gap between the poster and the product is beautifully explained in an utterly plausible way.
David F. Walker has taken great posters for, mostly, terrible films and re-imagined them in an extraordinary way that captures the shockwaves of 2020 with intensity, wit and anger. This is a joy of a book; I love the promise of film posters, I enjoy reading about films that I will never see to share in the writer’s enjoyment. 2020: Hard Times in The Anarchist Jurisdiction delivers on both with style.
