For the most successful horror franchise of all time, the SAW movies, Lionsgate smartly promotes the film with a Halloween blood drive that benefits The Red Cross.
Now a tradition, each year for the SAW “Give ‘Til It Hurts” blood drive, the studio creates an ad campaign poster featuring a sexy nurse. The posters, unlike the movies, are getting better each year.
I have the just released posters for this year's annual blood drive which coincides with the release of SAW VI, as well as all the posters from the past SAW blood drives for you.
This year’s ad campaign was created by Ignition Print and was photographed by Co-President of Marketing Tim Palen.
Far More stylized than previous years, this years' poster features a nurse uniform corset crafted of syringes ceated by NY fashion darlings The Blonds, the corset kings who have outfitted the likes of Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Rihanna.
Please click on each of the posters below to enlarge
For SAW VI:
Photographer Tim Palen shot all of the posters for the blood drives associated with SAW III, IV, V and VI. If you know who shot and designed the posters for the blood drives associated with SAW and SAW II, please let me know and I'll be sure to amend the post to include them.
For SAW V:
For SAW IV:
For SAW III (there were five posters for the first year of the blood drive):
For SAW II & SAW: (despite the fact that the press release says this is the fourth annual blood drive, I did find posters, courtesy of poster wire for the SAW and SAW II blood drives):
from the Lionsgate press release:
The SAW "Give Til It Hurts" blood drive has become a key element of the SAW franchise, as much a part of the horror hit's annual rituals as its Halloween premiere date. Since the first SAW blood drive in 2004, SAW filmgoers have donated nearly 38,000 pints of blood to help save as many as 112,500 lives. Collection totals have doubled year after year: during the 2004 inaugural drive, 4,200 pints were collected, in 2005, 10,000 pints were collected, and in 2006, 23,493 pints were collected, resulting in tens of thousands of lifesaving blood transfusions.
Producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules of Twisted Pictures remarked, "We are very proud of the continued growth and success of the SAW blood drives and would like to thank Lionsgate for their boundless creativity and the incredibly loyal SAW fans who bleed for us, literally."
SAW star Tobin Bell, who portrays the terrifying Jigsaw, will be featured in several PSA's advertising the SAW IV blood drive. For the fourth year, the campaign's graphic elements will be created by Lionsgate's Palen, an award-winning fine art photographer whose sleek, witty images of the beautiful SAW nurses have played a major role in driving traffic to previous blood drives.
above: Saw VI teaser poster by Ignition Print
The SAW series is the most successful horror franchise of all time, with a worldwide box office of over $400 million. The most recent entry, SAW III, opened at #1 domestically on October 27, 2006, and opened at #1 in eleven additional countries, including the U.K. and Australia; it was the year's top-grossing horror film, taking in over $80 million domestically and over $100 internationally. The DVD, released on January 23, 2007, repeated the success of its two predecessors as it debuted as the week's #1 new home entertainment release, selling 2.5 million units in the U.S. and Canada in its first week alone.
The SAW IV blood drive will begin approximately two months before the film's premiere and will continue through the first week of its release. Lionsgate and the American Red Cross will host blood drives on college campuses and other locations across the country, tapping into the desire among young people to give back in a tangible way.
The American Red Cross
Lionsgate Films
Official SAW VI movie site