Pulp International : vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

Dec 5 2020

She helps her co-workers in whatever ways she can.

We've had this poster hanging around for a few years, but never uploaded it, hoping we'd eventually find the film and be able to talk about it, but no such luck. In fact, we couldn't even find a detailed plot summary online, so it has all the hallmarks of a lost film. Things like that happen. Anyway, here's a beautiful promo for OL nikki mitsuryô (asaru), which starred Hitomi Kozue and Junko Miyashita, and was known in English as Office Lady Diary: Poaching. It was part of the popular Office Lady series, which ran to six films in its original incarnation, before being reconstituted for a later set. Like we said a few days ago, no idea in cinema goes unrecycled for long. Especially successful ideas. We have a few more Office Lady posters here, here, and here, and another stunning promo image of Hitomi Kozue below. OL nikki mitsuryô (asaru) premiered in Japan today in 1973.

Japan Nikkatsu OL日記密猟あさる OL nikki mitsuryô (asaru)Office Lady Diary: Poaching Hitomi Kozue Junko Miyashita poster art cinema sexploitation pinku roman porno nudity

Vintage Pulp

Dec 4 2020

Excellent work! Now make them submit sexually while I get back to those mortgage bankers I'm slow roasting.

We'd been planning to read Satan Was a Lesbian for a while, but because we have plenty of experience with sleaze novels we didn't have high expectations. The good news is those expectations were surpassed. The bad news is the book still isn't good. The title alone makes it sound like a punchline in search of a publisher, but author Fred Haley—actually a pseudonym for Monica Roberts—tries to be serious as she tells the story of Charlene Duval: turned to lesbianism when barely a woman, initiated into rough practices by the violent Billie and her partner Karen, emotionally touched by her innocent young lover Cynthia, eventually case-hardened into a take-no-shit woman of the world. Is she really Satan? Come on, would Satan be named Charlene?

Think of Satan Was a Lesbian as the Thelma and Louise of vintage lesbian fiction, with the added tragedy that the book sometimes sells for as much as $350. Really? Yes. Just because of a catchy title and a piece of lurid Doug Weaver cover art? Yes, and not only that, but even refrigerator magnets and posters of this cover go for fifteen bucks, so to say everything associated with it is inflated in value is an understatement. But if you poke around and show some patience, you might not have to pay a fortune. The thing about these types of books is that eventually someone always sells them without knowing what the market is because they just want to get rid of grandpa's dog-eared old smut. Alternatively, you could buy a refrigerator magnet, stare at it, and make up your own story. It would probably be nearly as good.

Publishers Export Company Fred Haley Doug Weaver cover art literature lgbt

Vintage Pulp

Dec 4 2020

The list of sensory superlatives quickly runs short.

Here yet again is Marilyn Waltz, also known as Margaret Scott, an early Playboy centerfold and popular pin-up model we've featured a few times. This Technicolor lithograph, entitled “Visions of Beauty,” is from 1952, and as you can see below more than one image of her posing against this velvet backdrop was published. The litho below was entitled “Lovely as a Rose.” Like many women who posed nude back then, Waltz had Hollywood aspirations, but her entire cinematic output consisted of a single role in the 1954 b-flick Love Me Madly, aka Love My Way, aka The Wild Sex. The film is forgotten, if not lost, but it's notable—for us anyway—because her co-star was Georgine Darcy, perhaps better known as Miss Torso from Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. With Waltz and Darcy on the same set the filmmakers probably needed a fire brigade on standby in case the sound stage burst into flames. You can see everything we have on Waltz by clicking her keywords below.

Love Me Madly Love My Way The Wild Sex Playboy Technicolor pin-up Marilyn Waltz Margaret Scott Georgine Darcy cinema nudity

Vintage Pulp

Dec 3 2020

A favor turns fatal in MacDonald mystery.

This is just the sort of eye-catching cover any publisher would want from an illustrator, an image that makes the browser immediately curious about the book. Since so many John D. MacDonald novels were illustrated by Robert McGinnis, and the female figure here has the sort of elongation you usually see from him, you could be forgiven for assuming at a glance that this is another McGinnis, but it's actually a Stanley Zuckerberg effort, clearly signed at lower left. We've run across only a few of his pieces, namely The Strumpet City and Cat Man. This is by far the best we've seen.

The story here is interesting. It begins with a woman having drowned in a lake and a sister who disbelieves the verdict of accidental death. She's right, of course, and the detective she hires soon agrees with her. The mystery is quickly revealed to involve taxes, deception, and money—specifically money the dead woman was supposed to keep safe and which has now disappeared. In an unusual move, MacDonald unveils the killer two thirds of the way through the tale, and the detective figures it out shortly thereafter. The final section of the book details his efforts to trap the villain.

This is the last book MacDonald wrote before embarking on his famed Travis McGee franchise. It was within the McGee persona that MacDonald indulged himself in often tedious sociological musings. In The Drowner his characters ring more true, but you can see signs of what is to come in several existential soliloquies concerning the state of the world and the various frail personality types that inhabit it circa 1963. For all our misgivings about the McGee books, they're still good. But we especially recommend any novel MacDonald wrote that came earlier, including this one.

Update: We got an e-mail from Pamela, who told us, "The plot seemed familiar, and sure enough - it was an episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre back in 1964."

We had a look around for it, with no expectations of success, but lo and behold, we found the episode on Archive.org, which often has public domain films and television shows on its platform. We watched the episode, which stars Aldo Ray, Clu Gallagher, and Tina Louise, and we have to say, John. D. MacDonald was probably thrilled. The adaptation is almost exact, with only a bit of license taken with the climax. The only thing he would have hated is that he's credited as John P. MacDonald. The only thing we hated was the lo-rez quality. Oh well. You can't ask for perfection when it comes to early television.

Gold Medal Books Kraft Suspense Theatre John D. MacDonald Stanley Zuckerberg Aldo Ray Clu Gallagher Tina Louise cover art literature television

Vintage Pulp

Dec 2 2020

Unlike a normal lottery nobody wants a ticket, and against all odds you're bound to get picked eventually.

We all know that in cinema no idea lies fallow for long. They're all reused until they've given everything of value, and plenty that isn't. Part of the fun of watching movies is seeing the lineage of ideas. La decima vittima, for which you see a nice Mario de Berardinis poster above, was known in English as The 10th Victim, and resides in the sub-genre of films about humans killing humans for sport and gain. Other movies in the group include 1932's The Most Dangerous Game, 1972's The Woman Hunt, 1975's Death Race 2000, 1987's The Running Man, 2013's The Purge, and others.

In La decima vittima's near future, violence between citizens has been made legal and placed under the auspices of the Ministero della Grande Caccio, aka the Ministry of the Big Hunt. Those who hunt are given the identities of their prey, along with their locations and personal habits. Anyone can be hunted, even those who previously were hunters. The hunted can kill their hunters in self defense, but if they make a mistake and kill the wrong person—easy to do when you're paranoid and an unknown person is stalking you—that's old fashioned murder and off to prison you go. The purpose of all this slaughter? As the film explains, “Why have birth control when you can have death control?”

Ursula Andress, whose looks kill anyway, plays an adept hunter given an opportunity by a big corporation to monetize her tenth (and by law her final) murder. Marcello Mastroianni plays a one percenter who's been computer selected as her prey, and whom Andress' corporate benefactors want to film her assassinating for a tea commercial. Andress has agreed to kill Mastroianni at the Temple of Venus in Rome. Getting him there won't be easy, but the classic honeytrap, with the sun-kissed Andress as the sticky goodness, is a sure bet to work. It'd work on us.

We said the movie is in the same lineage as The Most Dangerous Game, The Purge, et al. Nearly all those films are better than La decima vittima. There are several problems here, not least of which is emotional tone-deafness—the characters love and hate because the script requires it, but there's no spark, no believability. The movie is probably worth watching anyway because of its super sex symbol cast rounded out by Elsa Martinelli, plus its sleek, retrofuturistic ’60s fashions, but don't go in expecting a landmark sci-fi, a brutal social commentary, a cutting satire, or anything of the ilk. In the end, just like the real future, it's so-so. La decima vittima had its world premiere in Rome and Florence today in 1965.

Italy Rome Florence La decima vittima The 10th Victim Ursula Andress Marcello Mastroianni Elsa Martinelli Mario de Berardinis poster art cinema sci-fi movie review

Vintage Pulp

Dec 1 2020

A future literary star puts audiences on notice with a downbeat debut.

Mario Puzo published The Dark Arena in 1955. He would be world famous fifteen years later thanks to his blockbuster novel The Godfather, but here readers find him exploring post-World War II Bremen, Germany, which is bombed out and partitioned between American and Russian troops. His main character Walter Mosca tries to find purpose in this blasted landscape, but his own nature and the chaos around him prevent him finding the humanity he lost in the war. Even the love of his girlfriend Hella can't seem to fill the hole inside him. The book is overwhelmingly tragic in mood from the very first pages, and it becomes obvious which character is going to bear the brunt of the inevitable sad ending, but those aren't criticisms. Puzo's talent in this, his debut novel produced at age twenty-five, shines in the darkness. Like a lot of first books it could be pared down, but on the other hand it's interesting when Puzo stretches his literary wings in lengthy descriptive passages obviously derived from personal observation. He was clearly a star in the making. That may sound like 20/20 hindsight, but it isn't. If The Dark Arena had been the only book Puzo ever published it would be an underground classic today and people would wonder why he never built on his promise. Luckily for world literature, he did.

Germany Bremen World War II Mario Puzo Mitchell Hooks cover art literature

Femmes Fatales

Dec 1 2020

Any way you splice her she's pure perfection.

The above photo shows U.S. actress Geene Courtney posing with a fishing rod during November in Chicago, a city in which, that time of year, people's nasal hairs usually freeze into stalagmites after a few seconds outside. But during this particular November—1949 it was—Chicago was unusually warm, with the mercury at one point climbing to an amazing 76 Fahrenheit, or 24.5 Celsius. That quirk of the weather is why Courtney is in shorts and heels, rather than a parka and mukluks, and the result is one of sexiest vintage shots we've seen. As a side note, the only similarly named actress from the period we found online was Gene Courtney, with one “e”. She has credits starting from 1951, so Geene and Gene are probably the same person, equally beautiful.

Chicago Geene Courtney Gene Courtney

Vintage Pulp

Nov 30 2020

The deeper you go the tighter it gets.

We've all seen movies about the long con, the elaborate, drawn-out, multi-participant scam. The Crooked Web, aka The Big Shock, starring Frank Lovejoy, Richard Denning, and Mari Blanchard, is an early example of the sub-genre. The plan is for a group of crooks to sell a cache of gold one of them found in Germany during World War II, but the con takes an unexpected twist early, and we learn that the trap being set is deeper than it first seemed. We can't share more details, but we can tell you the film strives greatly to rise above its b-movie constraints with plenty of exterior shooting and a script with international scope. The plot even takes the principals to post-war Germany—which looks a lot like Southern California even with matte work designed to put the foreign illusion across. But you have to forgive budget woes. The flaw that's difficult to overlook is the unbelievable carelessness of the central scam artists, who are posing as brother and sister, but are really lovers and can't keep their hands off each other even when their mark is just around the corner. They're almost busted while in the clinch multiple times, which is a laughable lack of restraint when there's so much at stake. But the shortest route to dramatic tension is to make characters behave like morons. We've talked about it before. It's lazy screenwriting, but that's okay—The Crooked Web is still a fun movie. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1955

Germany World War II The Crooked Web The Big Shock Frank Lovejoy Mari Blanchard Richard Denning poster art cinema movie review

Sex Files

Nov 28 2020

Vintage tabloid looks forward to better sex in the future but should have been happy with the present.

This issue of the low rent sexploitation tabloid National Informer published today in 1971 asks what will sex be like in the year 2020. We'd answer that compared to 1971 people will have less of it, and when they do it will come with recycled puritan guilt and fears of fatal disease. Other than that it'll be great! We jest, of course. We have no clue what 1971 sex was like, but National Informer makes clear that there were plenty of worries. Like what if you didn't know proper etiquette for your first orgy? Or what would you wear to the nude-in at Golden Gate Park? And could you get it up after popping three Quaaludes?

With the myriad sexual challenges of the period, it's no wonder people thought 2020 sex would be better, as a utopian article by Tom Bridges makes clear. Our favorite line: “Sex will be just another physical satisfaction in human living, with no stigmas attached.” Um... no. And this bit is great: “There will be sex schools in every city, attended by millions, which will teach by demonstration excellent sexual techniques. Anyone who doesn't attend and graduate will be a social dropout and considered illiterate.” Little could Mr. Bridges have suspected that the U.S. wouldn't come up with enough money to run normal schools, let alone sex schools.

It's fun to read how much faith Informer has in a brighter future. Optimism was actually a chararistic of the time period, we've noticed, whether talking about politics, science, or anything else. But a funny thing happened on the way to the post-millennial sexual mecca Informer imagines—the eunuchs took over the harem, and when 2020 finally arrived, the events of that shitty year were (notice we're already talking about it in past tense—that's how bad it was) enough to kill everyone's sex drives. Well, at least 2021 is just around the bend, and in the event of the virus actually being conquered, maybe a new sexual revolution will take hold, with love-ins and all the rest. We'll believe it when we see it, but it never hurts to dream, right?

National Informer Janet Baker tabloid nudity

Vintage Pulp

Nov 28 2020

The skies may be friendly, but the ground is an entirely different story.

When you come across a ’70s movie with bad acting, bad scripting, vaudevillian humor, nude women, and a foreign setting, there's a good chance you're dealing with the output of either American International Pictures or New World Pictures. Fly Me comes from the latter studio, and was directed by Cirio Santiago, one of the kings of Asian sleaze cinema. He directed more than one hundred features, including TNT Jackson, Ebony, Ivory & Jade, and The Muthers. With that kind of résumé you know you're in for a wild ride.

Fly Me deals with three flight attendants played by cinematic obscurities Pat Anderson, Lyllah Torena, and the gorgeous Lenore Kasdorf, who get into various pickles in Hong Kong and Manila—and get various pickles into them. One stew is secretly working for a drug cartel and is kidnapped after failing to perform up to expectations, a second meets and falls for a guy who turns out to be a British secret agent, and the third mostly tries to ditch her mother and get laid.

We'd love to tell you the movie is good, but no such luck. It lurches back and forth from sexploitation to lowbrow comedy, and as usual with Cirio Santiago's films, the action scenes are inept. We'll admit to enjoying TNT Jackson, but based on the preponderance of evidence he appears to be a real hack as a director. He's a Filipino legend, though, who helmed something like a hundred films, so he'll certainly have opportunities to redeem himself as we continue our explorations. We'll keep you posted. Fly Me premiered today in 1973.