Movie Posters With Monster-and-Maiden Theme to Be Auctioned Librado Romero/The New York Times IT CAME FROM THE STUDIO Nicholas Lowry of Swann Auction Galleries, which will hold an auction of movie posters in December. On a recent afternoon, Nicholas D. Lowry stood in a back room at Swann Auction Galleries in Manhattan, flipping through a stack of movie posters on a conference table and keeping up a running commentary. "This is actually called "Schlock," " said Mr. Lowry, the auction house's affable president and director of vintage posters, referring to a 1973 monster movie spoof. Talk about delivering what you're advertising. Another flip: "Here we have "The King of Africa," which is both "Tarzan"- and "King Kong"-inspired. You begin to see themes. Flipping to a poster advertising a 1957 Japanese alien-invasion movie, retitled in French as "Prisonnières des Martiens," Mr. Lowry laughed and said, "This one really sums it all up." The pulpy illustration of flying saucers and terrified humans contained no fewer than eight spacemen carrying listless women, including one who appeared to be doing a zero-gravity tango. "Monsters & Maidens: A Film Poster Collection," which is being auctioned by Swann on Dec. 18, collects around 150 such posters with the common image of a beautiful, often helpless woman in the arms of a beast (or robot or sea creature or man). Included are rare works like a 1933 French "King Kong" poster and another, designed by the renowned French artist Roger Soubie, for the 1956 sci-fi classic "Forbidden Planet," along with less valuable but no less striking posters for B-movie kitsch like "Tarantula" and Roger Corman's "Attack of the Crab Monsters." But the visual trope is not confined to genre films - the auction includes a "Gone With the Wind" poster and even one for Woody Allen's "Sleeper." (Nor is it a relic of a more retrograde era. In 2008, a controversial Vogue cover echoed the scene when King Kong clutches Fay Wray, casting Gisele Bündchen and LeBron James in the roles.) Israel Perry, a professed "compulsive collector" who lives in Tel Aviv, said he was inspired by "King Kong" to seek out posters that explore the relationship between beauty and the beast, with the idea of publishing a book. He previously acquired Art Deco travel posters by the French artist Roger Broders, published a book and sold that collection through Swann. Carrying a handful of examples, Mr. Perry visited his friend Jean-Louis Capitaine and explained his idea. Mr. Capitaine, now deceased, owned Cine-Images, a poster shop in Paris, and agreed to help. "From that meeting, I started to buy like crazy any poster that would fit into the framework of the book," Mr. Perry wrote in an e-mail. There was no shortage of possibilities, from the traditional woman draped in a man's arms ("Frankenstein") to ever more-creative variations, like a woman dangling across a hook-hand ("La Chambre des Horreurs") or even a female vampire carrying a man ("The Vampires" Night Orgy"). Linda Williams, a film and media professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said she would be "hard-pressed to think of an image that's more widespread" in film advertising than the monster with maiden. "A poster has to condense a two-hour movie into one image that will sell the film," Dr. Williams said. It's very telling of cinematic culture that that image comes down to woman endangered by a brutal, monstrous man. Patricia White, a professor of film and media at Swarthmore College, sees in the posters a miscegenation theme. "It's an image of cross-race sexuality," Dr. White said. Which is cross-species in the monster context. When the "Monsters & Maidens" collection is viewed as a whole, what once was racially and sexually charged becomes almost absurd; artists seemingly tossed in endangered women at random, even when abduction had little to do with the movie's plot. That it's often impossible to tell whether the woman is being saved from, or brutalized by, the monster ("There's a combination of damsel in distress and damsel really in distress," Mr. Lowry joked) is perhaps the point. "The movies are about what we're afraid of and desire," Dr. White said. Ravish and rescue are bound up in each other. You can't separate them. It took Mr. Perry five years to amass the posters. After writing a book with Mr. Capitaine about the project, "Beauty and the Beast" (Queen Art Publishers, 2007) and turning 73 this year, he said he was ready to sell the collection. While some posters, like the 1933 "King Kong," are estimated to fetch $20,000 or more from serious collectors, many will likely sell for a few hundred dollars, making them accessible wall art. "People think auctions are highfalutin and snobby," Mr. Lowry said, flipping to a poster for a "King Kong" ripoff called "Nabonga." This is giddily and gleefully accessible stuff.