| Vintage Pulp | Dec 9 2020 |
Has your husband ever kissed you on the neck like this? No? Well, it's called foreplay, and we lesbians do it all the time.
Above is a cover for Odd Girl by Artemis Smith. The book, published in 1959, is often called a lesbian classic, and since we just read Satan Was a Lesbian, we thought we'd double up on this theme. But there's really no comparison between the two books. Satan Was a Lesbian is a crude joke, while Odd Girl is the incisively written tale of Anne, a New York City beauty who thinks she's gay and goes about searching for her true self in a world of lesbian bars and among an assortment of friends and lovers. The other women—Cora, Skippy, Beth, Esther, etc.—run the gamut from butch to femme, and in Smith's competent hands have distinctly different personalities too. As far as the men in this tale go, the focus is on one—Anne's youthful mistake of a husband Mark, who she's desperate to get rid of via divorce or annulment. If only it were that simple. If vintage fiction teaches any lesson it's that bad men don't go away easily.
We liked this book. It was serious and adult, wasn't exploitative, and had the feel of realism. The latter quality we couldn't have confirmed through personal experience, not being gay women, but the tale simply felt accurate for the period. And no wonder, because when we checked into Artemis Smith it turned out she was actually a gay woman who lived in New York City, was the author of the lesbian oriented novels The Third Sex and The Bed We Made, and was active in the mid-century civil and gay rights movements. She's probably better known today as Annselm L.N.V. Morpurgo and has a very active Twitter feed of a progressive bent. If you intend to take a foray into early lesbian fiction, Odd Girl is about as good as it gets. It's not a literary masterpiece, but it's as well written as most genre novels, and is a consistently entertaining read.
We liked this book. It was serious and adult, wasn't exploitative, and had the feel of realism. The latter quality we couldn't have confirmed through personal experience, not being gay women, but the tale simply felt accurate for the period. And no wonder, because when we checked into Artemis Smith it turned out she was actually a gay woman who lived in New York City, was the author of the lesbian oriented novels The Third Sex and The Bed We Made, and was active in the mid-century civil and gay rights movements. She's probably better known today as Annselm L.N.V. Morpurgo and has a very active Twitter feed of a progressive bent. If you intend to take a foray into early lesbian fiction, Odd Girl is about as good as it gets. It's not a literary masterpiece, but it's as well written as most genre novels, and is a consistently entertaining read.
| Femmes Fatales | Dec 9 2020 |
From Hong Kong with love (at a price).
Nancy Kwan poses in costume as the title character of her hit 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong, which is about a romance between an American painter in Hong Kong and a local “yum yum girl”—i.e. a prostitute. This shot is excellent, we think. Kwan made numerous movies in Hollywood, including 1961's Flower Drum Song and 1968's The Wrecking Crew, but Suzie Wong remains her legacy, a subject of much debate due to its sex trade subject matter, and a source of interesting memomorabilia, such as here and here. Maybe we'll talk about the movie later.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 8 2020 |
Yup, that's them, but do they have to go to jail? I felt like they brought a real touch of class to skid row.
A line-up of women at the mercy of a witness and the police? You know this isn't going to end well. Angels in the Gutter is classic scare fiction (i.e. if you're not careful this could happen to someone you know—or even you!) originally published in 1955 by Fawcett Publications for its Gold Medal line, with this second printing coming in 1959. We really should have bought this book. It's cheap and there are no reviews online. That's the daily double for us. Plus the wraparound cover (below) is excellent. But we have about ten times as many books lined up as women lined up at this police station, and that's no exaggeration, so this one was a difficult pass.
| Femmes Fatales | Dec 8 2020 |
MGM's sure bet didn't quite pay off.
Above is a beautiful, blindingly colorful MGM promo shot of U.S. actress Barbara Lang, née Barbara Jean Bly, someone we've shown you in black and white in the past. The accompanying text, which we've cropped out, explains that Lang “is a sure bet for stardom,” but she acted in only three movies and made about twenty television appearances on shows such as 77 Sunset Strip and Lock Up, with her entire career lasting from 1955 to 1961. Mixed in there was a 1959 suicide attempt that doubtless derailed her momentum. But once upon a time she was a contender, and this shot befits a burgeoning star.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 7 2020 |
Medical malpractice reaches epidemic proportions in wartime murder mystery.
This poster for the thriller Green for Danger, which was made in England and premiered there today in 1946, asks about its central syringe image, “Murder weapon or clue?” Psst! It's both. That's not a spoiler. We call attention to it because it's strange that the question even made it onto the poster. It's not as if one answer precludes the other. In any case, there's more than one murder weapon. But the weapon used in the central murder is not a word that rolls off the tongue, so we guess the filmmakers opted to focus on the syringe used in a later murder because it was simple. That isn't a spoiler either.
Green for Danger, which is based on a 1944 novel by Christianna Brand, is set in World War II era London, when the city is being besieged by German V-1 buzz bombs. These bombs, actually more akin to missiles, couldn't be aimed, so instead were designed to run out of fuel over a general area and fall wherever. The point was terror. In the film, when people hear the devices flying somewhere overhead they don't panic, but if the sound of the engine stops, everyone knows death is coming down and runs for cover.
When a victim of one of these bombings dies in surgery in a London hospital, a staff member comes to think it was murder. She voices her suspicions, foolishly as it turns out, and is the next to be dispatched. At that point in comes the shambling detective to solve the crime. He's played by Alistair Sim with considerable humor, which may seem inappropriate in a thriller, but this the movie is also a bit like a wartime soap opera, young doctors in love, that sort of thing, so Sim's wry personality sort of fits.
But it's still mainly a whodunnit, and such movies usually end either with the dick explaining to the assembled suspects who committed the crime, or with him concocting some baroque scheme to cause the killer to unmask himself. This one ends with Sim doing both, which leads to a preposterous set-up for the finale, but we won't spoil that either. In the end Green for Danger—equal parts thriller, melodrama, whodunnit send-up, and comedy—was good fun.
BritainGermanyWorld War IIGreen for DangerTrevor HowardSally GrayRosamund JohnAlistair SimChristianna Brandposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 6 2020 |
Hell hath no fury like the pious denied.
Above is a beautiful but uncredited 1964 Mayflower Dell cover for Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb, an author we knew only from horror fiction until we read this. We'd seen the movie a few times, and it's brilliant, as everyone knows. Well, so is the book. It's well written, and of course introduced to the world its iconic serial murderer Preacher, aka Harry Powell, who has l-o-v-e tattooed across the fingers of his right hand, h-a-t-e tattooed across the left, and puts those hands to use in his violent quest for hidden bank robbery loot that may be in the possession of two children. This was Grubb's first novel, coming in 1953 originally, and it's as assured a debut as you'll ever read. Every passage in the book is good, but for a typical example, here's a short one:
Her hand rose to her mouth then, the lips gasped suddenly, and presently the teeth settled, gently, grinning, in the glass of spring water, while Icey turned her back on them and fell into the healthy sleep of a fat, innocent child. Yet Walt lay awake. It was something he had learned to do in their marriage: hammering his thoughts into the shape she wanted. It was the price of peace, of sleep itself. Whatever unframed and as yet unshaped suspicions he had of Preacher were gone—stamped and trodden into the soil of domestic orthodoxy.
It's just a couple going to bed, with one of them beginning to have doubts about the preacher who's come to town and infiltrated several lives. But even in minor passages Grubb shines, showing that good writers work hard to describe even less significant moments well. That level of attention to detail helps Grubb build tension to the point where it's hard to bear—almost to the level of one of his horror tales—as Preacher psychologically dominates the children at the center of his obsession. His mental tortures are mere precursors to his physical violence.
Night of the Hunter became a great movie because the source material was as deep and rich as a seam of buried of gold. Filmmakers often make major changes to material and produce something amazing. Other times it's best to keep riding the same horse that took you to the rodeo. For those who have never seen the film, Grubb's novel will be a special—if terrifying—treat. But we think the book is worthwhile even for those who know what's going to happen. And we consider Preacher, whose twisted interpretation of scripture is designed to serve his lust for money and power, a relevant character in 2020.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 5 2020 |
The view from below is plenty thrilling in Gemser sex comedy.
We're sure you can take a gander at the above poster for Malizia erotica and instantly come to the conclusion: Ahhh yes, good ole European sex comedies. The movie was originally made in Spain but released as El periscopio in Italy today in 1979. It stars lanky erotic icon Laura Gemser in a story that would surely ruffle feathers—if not spark litigation—were it to be made today. In short, a teenaged schoolboy played by Ángel Herraiz lives with his parents in an apartment beneath that of supersexed nurses Gemser and Bárbara Rey, and like any rational kid would, he uses a periscope to spy on them.
There are other plot threads here, but forget those. This peeping teen angle leads to an amazing scene: Herraiz gets so heated up by his voyeurism that he develops pains in the groin area. His parents know the upstairs pair are medical professionals and ask Gemser to diagnose the kid's problem. She discerns immediately that Herraiz has a debilitating case of blue balls and gives the kid some manual relief—in front of his parents! Ahhh yes, good ole European sex comedies. Sure, her nursely fap session happens out of direct view under the kid's blanket, but still.
It just goes to show that little is out of bounds in this genre. The older woman introducing a boy to sex has been the subject of scores of films, but what was once thought of as a lucky manchild's rite of passage is now considered sexual predation. We don't disagree, however we know two guys this has happened to and neither of them regret it. Real life is full of contradictions that way. In any case, what would have been nice is if this particular coming-of-age story were better written, acted, and filmed. But ahhh yes, good ole European sex comedies—they're nearly always inept. El periscopio does not reverse the trend.
ItalyMalizia eroticaEl periscopio...And Give Us Our Daily SexLaura GemserBárbara ReyÁngel Herraizposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 5 2020 |
I've successfully hooked the captain's hat, and now I'm going for his pants.
Since we had a piece of fishing themed art recently, today we have another item. Here you see a Corp. A. Fox Technicolor lithograph of an unknown model decked out for a day on the water. It was printed in 1954 and is the latest addition to our always expanding collection of these. You can see the others by clicking the keywords below.
| Vintage Pulp | 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.
JapanNikkatsuOL日記 密猟 あさるOL nikki mitsuryô (asaru)Office Lady Diary: PoachingHitomi KozueJunko Miyashitaposter artcinemasexploitationpinkuroman pornonudity
| 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.
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