| Hollywoodland | Jan 29 2021 |
Always be careful what you say to a tabloid.
This National Enquirer published today in 1963 features the free-floating head of U.S. actress Shirley Bonne with a quote where she calls herself a “dimwit.” Enquirer often splashed shocking, sexual, or confessional quotes from stars across its covers. We have little doubt Bonne was just joshing around, if she ever said it, which we tend to doubt. She isn't well known today. Though she amassed hundreds of magazine covers, as an actress she had zero credited cinematic roles. All her credits, including movies, were on television, where she appeared on shows such as Bonanza, That Girl, Medical Center, starred in the sitcom My Sister Eileen, and was in the all-time dog of a television horror flick It's Alive. Her zenith, at least in terms being appreciated by a fandom, is having guest starred in one of the best Star Trek episodes ever—1966's “Shore Leave.” That's the one where the Enterprise crew land on a planet that makes anything they think about come true. Kirk thinks about a long lost love and Shirley Bonne appears—head, body, and all. Pretty smart thinking.
National EnquirerStar TrekBonanzaThat GirlMedical CenterMy Sister EileenIt's AliveShirley Bonnetelevisiontabloid
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 28 2021 |
5,000 volts, amps, ohms—whatever. The point is I'm gonna blow your mind.
Volts, joules, watts, kilowatts, jigawatts—we get units of energy mixed up. But this cover is electric however you measure it. William (undoubtedly a pseudonym) Bentley's 1964 thriller Amore a 5000 volts is another example of Edizioni MA-GA's Il Cerchio Rosso series, which has produced consistently excellent cover art. This one is uinsigned, but probably by Franco Picchioni. Click the keywords below and you'll see what we mean.
Edit: the art is confirmed by Picchioni, plus we found the original.
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 27 2021 |
Hepburn has to overcome blindness, bad guys, and the script.
Above are three beautiful posters for the suspense film Gli occhi della notte, which is better known as the Audrey Hepburn classic Wait Until Dark. You've doubtless heard of it. Hepburn plays a blind woman terrorized by a sociopath. The film also starred Richard Crenna and Alan Arkin, and was directed by Terence Young, who had previously helmed the James Bond movies Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Thunderball, so there's plenty of star power here, in front of and behind the camera.
And as often happens when a movie supposedly can't miss, this one goes wide of the mark. The main problem is recurring plot unbelievability, perhaps best exemplified by the fact that Hepburn, who lives in a building where there are other apartments, and has an ally who lives in one of those flats, doesn't simply hole up at the neighbor's when the crazy man targets her. She can get there without being seen, but she doesn't take the easy escape available to her.
In real life people don't always see the best solution to a problem, but in a movie, if the filmmakers want the audience to be fully invested, the heroine or hero should make smart choices, which ratchets up the fear when those choices still fail. We wrote an essay touching on that theme a while back. Hepburn's lack of survival instinct is a pretty big issue, but okay, she's great in the film, of course, and if you really immerse yourself it will still scare you once or twice. Just don't let anyone tell you it's perfect. After opening in the U.S. in 1967 Wait Until Dark premiered in Italy today in 1968.
ItalyGli occhi della notteWait Until DarkAudrey HepburnAlan ArkinRichard CrennaTerence Youngposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 27 2021 |
Bond. James Bond. Not sure who you are, but stick close anyway.
French illustrator Boris Grinsson outdid himself with this promo for James Bond 007 contre Dr. No, aka Dr. No. This is a framable classic, appropriate for a film that reshaped the spy genre. Its only flaw is that while the Sean Connery figure is a good likeness, the representation of Ursula Andress is not very close. We get it though—her perfect, unlined face doesn't give you much to work with. To get Connery close, you just need to make sure you include his bushy eyebrows and the deep facial lines bracketing his mouth. But Andress is a true test of skill. It's still a great poster. Perhaps even our favorite from the Bond franchise. The movie premiered in France today in 1963.
FranceUnited ArtistsJames Bond 007 contre Dr. NoDr. NoJames BondSean ConneryUrsula AndressBoris Grinssonposter artcinema
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 26 2021 |
You play with fire you're bound to get burned.
We're in reliable literary territory today—Thompson territory. A Hell of a Woman was originally published in 1954, with this Pyramid edition coming in 1962. The story resembles James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, as an amoral opportunist is driven by lust to plan a murder. Who is the “hell of a woman” from the title? There are two candidates. The main character Frank “Dolly” Dillon love-hates his wife, so maybe it's her. But on the other hand, it's for his young mistress that he plots to kill an old lady and steal her stash of $100,000, so it's probably her. $100,000 is an unlikely amount of money ($967,000 in today's dollars) to be stashed in a spinster's house, and of course there's a reason for that, but you'll have to read the book to find out. That will involve descending into the troubled and self-destructive mind of yet another Thompson anti-hero, but you won't regret it—this is a nice effort from one of the kings of pulp.
| Mondo Bizarro | Jan 24 2021 |
Jealousy leads to near-fatal attack. But hey, that's marriage for you.
You know the adage curiosity killed the marriage? An interesting story came across the wire from Sonora, Mexico that falls into the mondo bizarro category. Leonora N. (whose real name has been withheld by authorities) stabbed her husband Juan N. (real name also withheld) multiple times after finding photos on his phone of him with a younger woman. The problem is the younger woman was her. Not-his-real-name, in an act of love that could bring tears to your eyes, scanned and uploaded some old photos of Not-her-real-name to keep on his phone, but she, in an act of anger that would definitely bring tears to your eyes, found the photos, went straight for the knife drawer, and came out cutting. Not-his-real-name was saved only thanks to a neighbor who heard his screams and rescued him.
Now you may think this is pretty clear cut, so to speak. Good man, evil woman. Pulp in its most basic form. But in our view, you can't really fault a wife for failing to recognize her younger self, because men who've been married for a long time no longer recognize their wives either. Inside we mean. Many great minds have observed that, over time women are guaranteed to change, while men are guaranteed to try like bloody hell not to. If there's phone checking going on, Not-his-real-name should check Not-her-real-name's phone. You know what he'd find? Love poems. And he'd think she'd been hooking up with some young stud, before realizing with a shock that they're his old poems she painstakingly texted into her own phone. Because she doesn't recognize him anymore either. That guy's long gone.
So we think Not-his-real-name needs to forgive Not-her-real-name because, ultimately, it was his fault. If the guy who wrote poetry were still around maybe the young minx he married would still be around too, and none of this would have happened. We know what you're thinking. She stabbed him. That's unforgivable. Well maybe. But wives are always thinking of stabbing their husbands, at least a little. We don't mean a little as in time spent thinking about it. We mean they are constantly thinking of stabbing their husbands, but lightly. Hourly, but non-fatally. So we come down firmly on the side of Not-her-real-name. Hubby fucked up. And our opinion has nothing to do with the fact that the Pulp Intl. girlfriends read our site.
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 24 2021 |
Chase is on in his blockbuster debut.
This 1961 Panther Books edition of James Hadley Chase's debut novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish labels it a bestseller that exploded into world headlines. That's quite a claim, but it's true. The book provoked a strong response when first published in 1939 due to its sexual frankness. Written in spare, hard hitting fashion, it's the multi-layered, uncompromising tale of the kidnapping of and search for the titular Miss Blandish, whose first name is never given despite her presence from beginning to end. There's violence, drugs, sexual content, and a lot of very low characters. Since we're pulp fans but not literary historians, we went into the book with no idea what it was about or that it was in any way significant, and came away immensely entertained and impressed. The highest compliment we can give it is that we were never sure who would win, or who would survive. Pair that with propulsive plotting and you end up with a must-read. World headlines? We believe it. Mitchell Hooks cover art? All the better.
| Femmes Fatales | Jan 24 2021 |
It's my way or I'll pump you fulla holes. I know that doesn't rhyme, but you get the idea.
Above, a promo photo of British actress Viviane Ventura, who appeared in such films as Docteur Caraïbes and A High Wind in Jamaica, and television shows such as I Spy and The Man from U.N.CL.E. This shot was made when she was co-starring in Battle Beneath the Earth in 1967.
BritainBattle Beneath the EarthA High Wind in JamaicaI SpyThe Man from U.N.C.L.E.Docteur CaraïbesViviane Ventura
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 23 2021 |
They say revenge is a dish best served cold. You have no choice about that when you spend twelve years in prison.
This is a nicely evocative poster for the British crime drama The Long Memory. The couple embracing against a backdrop of flames gets the mood across perfectly, because the film is, in fact about a couple, and especially one man, trying to hold onto something good amidst a moral conflagration. The story involves him being wrongly imprisoned, being released twelve years later, and immediately going on a mission to take revenge on the people who lied at his trial. We just talked about revenge yesterday, and here we go again with a character who has murderous impulses but who's basically a good person. Can he really go through with killing his persecutors?
We were surprised by this one. We watched it based solely on the poster and feel well rewarded for expending the time. Probably the newness of the movie's setting in 1950s London and the outlying areas along the River Thames helped a bit, but it's an effective tale on its own merits. John Mills stars, and is accompanied by John McCallum, Elizabeth Sellars, Geoffrey Keen, and beautiful Norwegian obscurity Eva Bergh. In the end the film asks a simple question: Is revenge worth it? Well, we can't say, but the movie is worth it, in our opinion. The Long Memory premiered in England today in 1953.
EnglandNorwayLondonThe Long MemoryJohn MillsJohn McCallumElizabeth SellarsEva BerghGeoffrey Keenposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 22 2021 |
Competition for mates gets vicious in the Hollywood jungle.
This poster really catches the eye. It was made for The Female Animal, Hedy Lamarr's last motion picture, filmed when she was forty-four. It's the story of an aging star who finds herself a younger man, but watches him immediately become the target of her sexpot daughter.The age issues strain credulity a bit. The younger man is played by George Nader, who's only seven years Lamarr's junior, while twenty-nine year old Jane Powell plays Lamarr's adopted daughter. But okay, they were the ones cast, so we have to go with it. And really, who's going to complain? Nader is a muscular uberhunk who'd fill out a Marvel superhero costume no problem, and Powell is dangerously cute straining the seams of a form fitting swimsuit.
And incidentally, speaking of casting weirdness, Powell—yeah, that's her in the polka dots—had three children of her own by the time she played this troublesome stepdaughter role. Yes, three. There's no substitute for lucky genes, an adage doubly proved by the fact that Powell is still kicking around today at age 90.
Moving on to the performances, Lamarr does fine in a sort of detached way, and Nader is solid enough, but it's Powell who's asked to spark the movie as the daughter determined to steal her mom's man. She's required at turns to be blind drunk, violently angry, coquettish, sexually predatory, and disconsolate. She mostly hauls that heavy load, but in the end the movie is still pretty lightweight. Probably part of the problem is the scripting by Robert Hill. Some of his other screenplays include Sex Kittens Go to College and The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, so his insights into the female animal are negligible. You may want to seek your own, though frankly, we personally have never figured them out and have abandoned any expectations that we ever will. To be fair, they probably feel the same way about us. The Female Animal premiered in New York City today in 1958.
The Female AnimalSex Kittens Go to CollegeThe Private Lives of Adam and EveHedy LamarrJane PowellJan SterlingGeorge Naderposter artcinemamovie review
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