Topic on User talk:The H-Man

One specific example that sort of defies typical classification: this export The X from Outer Space poster, which @Kaiju No. 14 uploaded to the gallery as an "American poster".

Toho, Shochiku, Daiei, and virtually all of the major Japanese studios also prepared English advertisements for certain films. It's usually assumed the purpose of this was to give foreign distributors advertising art (or even the posters themselves) to use for their release. American companies, however, almost always created their own art and posters.

A clue that a poster is an export/international poster is in the credits: in this case, for example, no American personnel or companies are credited anywhere. (And there isn't an NSS code.) The Shochiku wordmark and logo is another clue -- although American posters would usually credit the Japanese studio, you generally never saw the Japanese company logos.

We also know this isn't an American poster because this film was picked up by AIP and went straight to TV. Posters historically were used by theaters, so a film which bypassed American theaters 99% of the time won't have an "American poster."

What makes this difficult to classify, however, is the "Recommended for Adult Entertainment" snipe. Snipes are described here as "a piece of paper stuck on to a movie poster after it was originally printed." I don't know the origin of this specific snipe, but note that you can find identical snipes on various movie posters in this Google Image search. I think it might have been a regional Canadian thing; Canada's current rating system only dates to the late '90s, but films released in Canada had to have been censored and passed by some entity.

Unfortunately, given the lack of information online, it's hard to say why an export poster of The X from Outer Space had this snipe slapped on it. However, despite the snipe, it's definitely an export/international poster (one without the snipe sold in January), so I think that's the best way to classify it.