Green Hornet – French Affiche

The 1974 re-packaging of The Green Hornet (also released as “Kato”), the 1966 William Beaudine & Norman Foster crime costumed superhero fantasy action thriller (“Written by Jerry Thomas”; a full-length feature version of episodes of the TV show, where Bruce Lee‘s Kato character was prominent) starring Bruce Lee (“Son of the Dragon”; as Kato), Van Williams (in the title role as The Green Hornet), Wende Wagner, Lloyd Gough, and Walter Brooke. This “feature” was made to cash in on Bruce Lee‘s recent tremendous success with “Enter the Dragon” and his Hong Kong martial arts movies, and two one-sheets were made to promote it, and one even includes an image of Bruce Lee holding nunchucks, which comes from Enter the Dragon and NOT from The Green Hornet TV series, which is the height of deceptiveness!

Artist: Rene Ferracci

Note that when this deceptive movie (see above) was released in France, it was even MORE deceptively advertised! The movie was called “The Return of the Dragon”, one of Lee’s best movies, and there was nothing about the image to suggest the viewers were not seeing that movie (although the small credits did reveal that Van Williams was in the movie, telling you it was actually the Green Hornet repackaging). But how many people were deceived by this?

Overall Condition and Pre-Restoration Defects with Quality of Restoration: good. The poster had minor fold and border wear. It had black ink transfer in the center of the title and in the yellow area above the dragon images. Overall, the poster was in good condition prior to linenbacking. The restorer backed the poster “in the European style”, meaning that they did not do restoration to the defects described above.