Ahoj! I think everything is said with the title.
In fact, I’m writing questions for some quiz and I randomly stumbled upon some movies posters from the iron curtain countries, and some were so off from the “official” ones that i thought i’d ask people what movie it is supposed to be. There’s so many nice ones but I’ll ask about [this one](https://ghostbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Ghostbusters_(movie)/Krotitel%C3%A9_duch%C5%AF?file=GB1PosterFromCzech.png), which is Ghostbusters. Only thing I need to know is: was this poster used for an official release of the movie or was it made to illustrate underground copies from the west like they would do in USSR for example?
Anyway, if you have any stories to tell us about that, don’t hesitate, people would be glad to discover them.
Předem děkuji a přeji hezký den!
4 comments
Some movies was in official distribution (With couple of years delay), some movies were smuggled in on VHS and distributed with single voice over.
Ghostbusters was in cinemas.
no, it wasn’t easy. Ghostbusters was released in 1984 and your best chance to watch it was on ORF if you lived close enough to the border. The love was eventually released in CSSR but I believe it was a couple of years later. As your link is not working it is just hard to comment on the poster.
As someone who lived in that decade, it is hard to answer. I lived close to Austrian borders so we watched its TV easily. People who had access to Western (Bavarian & Austrian) did taped it on VHS and there was a huge underground market. In mid-late 1980s, VCR were getting common. We had one, so did my grandparents. Officially, it was not that easy. Western movies would have to be purchased, dabbed or titled, and approved for distribution. This would take several years. In late 80s, there was significant thawing of the control, especially from 1988 onward.
Some movies were originally approved but sometimes the regional censorship complained and this cause movies to be withdrawn. But this was still an admin process, so some movies to be copied. Some movies like Jaws I had seen 40 years ago. Others that were depicting negatively West like Fort Apache the Bronx were on TV. There were a lot of Italian, French, British dramas, comedies, fairy tales on Czechoslovak TV in the 80s. However, nudity and sex scenes were cut or censored.
In the late 80’s it was quite common to have a video player or to have friends who had a video player. The black market with VHS tapes was quite widespread.
Some Western movies went to official distribution. Mostly non-political adventure movies or comedies. Also movies somehow “critical” of Western society. E.g. Oliver Stone’s Platoon was released in cinemas. A number of movies went to cinemas very late, e.g. 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop was released in Czechoslovakia in 1987, 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1989, etc.
Here is an [interesting thesis on the subject](https://is.muni.cz/th/a4tj6/Hollywood_a_normalizace.doc) (in Czech)