Vintage Belgian Movie Poster Super Riders 🤖 1976 Les 3 Fantastiques Supermen Kamen Rider Tokusatsu

🤖 What Happens When Taiwan Makes Its Own Kamen Rider?

You get the blazing sheet in these photographs — an original Belgian theatrical poster for the 1976 tokusatsu action film Super Riders. The Belgian printing gives it the format's full multi-title treatment: the French headline LES 3 FANTASTIQUES SUPERMEN in bold white, the original title "SUPER RIDERS" set in quotation marks beside it, and the Flemish 3 FANTASTISCHE SUPERMEN across the very bottom, with SCOPE and COULEURS credits. It carries the round logo of its Belgian distributor, Les Films du Dragon, and an Edicolor, Bruxelles printer imprint in the base corner. Everything here is read straight off the paper and the film's own history; nothing is invented.

As with the rest of this group, this exact sheet was preserved in one place — the archive of Cosmopolis Films, held together as a single collection since 2007. More on that below.

🎬 The Film: a Taiwanese Kamen Rider, 1976

Behind the European titles is a piece of tokusatsu history. In the mid-1970s Japan's Toei Company licensed its hugely popular Kamen Rider property — costumes, footage and all — to the Taiwanese studio Tong Hsing Film Co., which produced a short run of feature-film adaptations, released around 1975-1976, that recut and restaged Kamen Rider material for cinema audiences. The Super Riders the Belgian sheet advertises is one of these Taiwanese Kamen Rider features, and its artwork is unmistakable: masked, insect-eyed riders on motorcycles, a bare-knuckle hero mid-fight, and walls of flame.

For the Belgian release, the distributor borrowed the ready-made appeal of a "fantastic supermen" title — hence Les 3 Fantastiques Supermen and 3 Fantastische Supermen — while keeping the film's own "Super Riders" name in quotes right on the sheet. It is a fascinating little artifact of how Japanese superhero television crossed into Taiwanese cinema and then into European theaters, gathering a new title at every border.

🏍️ Kamen Rider, Tokusatsu, and a Global Craze

Kamen Rider is one of the cornerstones of Japanese tokusatsu — the special-effects tradition of costumed heroes, transformation sequences and practical stunt spectacle that also gave the world its long line of masked and armored crusaders. Its motorcycle-riding, insect-masked heroes were a phenomenon, and their appeal jumped borders fast; the Taiwanese Super Riders features are one of the clearest signs of that reach, remaking a Japanese sensation for another country's screens. For collectors, that cross-cultural pedigree is a big part of the draw: a Japanese property, remade in Taiwan, retitled for Belgium — the whole journey printed on one poster.

The artwork captures exactly why these heroes traveled so well: it is all motion and fire and iconography, the masked riders and their machines rendered in bold, saturated color, pure kinetic spectacle aimed straight at a young audience anywhere in the world.

🇧🇪 Why the Belgian Poster Stands Apart

This sheet is its own object, unlike any other territory's. Belgium printed a dedicated affiche format — compact, here about 22 by 14 inches — and set its own layout and titling, worded for a bilingual country in French and Flemish together, and here keeping the original title too. The painted-and-photographic composition is a riot: a young hero in a white shirt fighting amid a great burst of flame at the center, masked riders and their motorcycles ranged around the edges, the whole thing ablaze in reds and golds — the flamboyant Belgian register applied to a film almost no Western viewer ever saw on a big screen.

For a collector, that makes the Belgian Super Riders / Les 3 Fantastiques Supermen a distinct catalog entry, and one carrying the format's signature multi-language look. The affiche has its own dedicated following for exactly these reasons.

🗄️ Distributor Archive Stock, Preserved Since 2007

The logo on the sheet is Les Films du Dragon, the Belgian distributor that released the film here, and the base corner is signed by the Brussels printer Edicolor. This poster is unused distributor stock — surplus that stayed in the trade's own hands rather than being posted in a lobby and thrown away — surviving because it was kept, not circulated. It was preserved in the archive of Cosmopolis Films, a Belgian distributor now long gone, and held together as one collection since 2007, saved before that paper could be scattered the way distributor stock usually is.

Plainly: sheets like this were never released to the public. They are archive stock, and effectively there is a single surviving source for them. That is the honest shape of their rarity. The copies of a title like this with any future ahead of them are the ones collectors take home; owning one keeps a genuine piece of film history from quietly disappearing.

🎨 Reading the Artwork

The composition is pure kinetic energy. At the center a young man in a white shirt and pale trousers throws a punch mid-leap, a great fan of orange flame bursting up beneath him; around the edges, masked riders with the iconic insect-eyed helmets pose and ride, their motorcycles fanned across the lower frame; and the whole field burns in reds, golds and blacks. The French title bands in white across a red panel near the foot, the original "Super Riders" in quotes beside it, and the Flemish 3 Fantastische Supermen anchors the very bottom. It is loud, hot, and completely committed to the action.

🖼️ Ways to Live With It

• 🖼️ Frame it behind glass and let that fiery red-and-gold action art carry a wall.
• 🏍️ Hang it with other tokusatsu, Kamen Rider or Japanese-hero collectibles.
• 🌍 Group it with other international cult and action posters for a genre display.
• 🌊 Show it beside other Belgian affiches to display the multi-language format at a glance.
• 🎁 Give it to the tokusatsu or Kamen Rider fan who will recognize those masks on sight.

🎁 Who Collects These

This one lands with a few particular people. The tokusatsu and Kamen Rider fan, who tracks the property's many spin-offs and licensed adaptations and knows how unusual a Taiwanese feature release is. The collector of world action and cult cinema, drawn to a film that crossed three countries. And the Belgian-poster specialist, drawn to the affiche format, the multi-language titling and the local art. For all of them, an obscure cross-cultural title in a scarce format is exactly the intersection they hunt.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

What film is this really?

A Taiwanese Kamen Rider adaptation from around 1976, made by Tong Hsing Film Co. under license from Japan's Toei, released in Belgium as Les 3 Fantastiques Supermen / 3 Fantastische Supermen, with its original title "Super Riders" kept on the sheet.

Is this the same as the Italian "Three Fantastic Supermen" films?

No — despite the shared "fantastic supermen" title the Belgian distributor used, this is a Taiwanese Kamen Rider feature, not the Italian Supermen series. The artwork and the quoted original title "Super Riders" on the sheet make that clear.

Is this original or a reproduction?

An original vintage Belgian theatrical poster from the release — unused distributor archive stock, not a modern reprint.

Why does it have several titles?

Belgium prints its own dedicated affiche in both national languages — the French Les 3 Fantastiques Supermen and Flemish 3 Fantastische Supermen — while keeping the film's original "Super Riders" name. Multi-language titling is the hallmark of a genuine Belgian sheet.

Where did it come from?

Distributed in Belgium by Les Films du Dragon, printed in Brussels by Edicolor, and preserved in the Cosmopolis Films archive as one collection since 2007. These were never released to the public — archive stock, effectively from a single surviving source.

What is Kamen Rider?

A landmark Japanese tokusatsu franchise of motorcycle-riding, insect-masked superheroes, created by Toei — hugely popular and widely licensed, which is how a Taiwanese studio came to make features like this one.

🗺️ The Wider World of Belgian Film Posters

It is worth stepping back to see the tradition this sheet belongs to. In a small country wedged between France, the Netherlands and Germany, with two official languages and a dense network of local cinemas, Belgium developed one of Europe's most distinctive film-advertising cultures. Rather than import a foreign one-sheet whole, its distributors leaned on local commercial artists and printing houses, who reworked each film into a compact, punchy sheet that had to speak to French- and Flemish-reading audiences at once. The result, over the decades, was a body of posters with a look all their own — bolder, denser and more graphically inventive than many of their neighbors' — and today the affiche belge is a recognized collecting field in its own right, prized precisely because a Belgian sheet is never simply a translation of someone else's poster. A piece like this is one small, genuine survivor of that culture.

Living with it is refreshingly simple. Flat, light and unmounted, it frames cleanly, and the affiche proportions suit a slim moulding with a neutral mat. As with any vintage paper, a few courtesies keep it exactly as it is: acid-free framing materials, UV-protective glass, a spot out of direct sunlight, and handling by the edges. Given that ordinary care, a genuine period Belgian poster will stay just as striking for the next keeper as it is today.

✨ Why It Matters

Some posters are worth having because the film is famous; this one is worth having because it is a genuinely obscure piece of tokusatsu history — a Taiwanese Kamen Rider, retitled for Belgium — in the Belgian affiche format, with its own blazing art and its own several titles, out of a distributor's archive rather than the open market. It claims no invented pedigree: the sheet names its titles, its format credits, its distributor and its printer itself, and its history is exactly what it appears to be. The whole surviving supply sits together in one place, and the copies with a future are the ones people take home. Take this one, and you are keeping a small, cross-cultural piece of superhero film history alive.