| Vintage Pulp | Oct 25 2023 |
I'm glad the Earthlings came. Here on Mars perfect hair, huge boobs, and an hourglass figure are considered unattractive.
Scott O'Neill should be embarrassed. His 1963 novel Martian Sexpot is a really stupid story about three astronauts sent on the first mission to Mars accompanied by a woman named Robin Chou whose official role is to have sex with the trio in order to prevent psychological breakdown. At first everything goes fine, but Robin falls in love with one of the men and shirks her duty to the other two. The pair suffer two long years without sex and are ready to kill by the time the spacecraft lands. On Mars they discover a green valley, spend a night out there, and awaken to find that Robin has been duplicated—spacesuit and all. Turns out she'd dozed in close proximity to a strange root or pod, and it had done what those things do in science fiction. There's no negative to this duplication, though. The new creation is smart, kind, and sexually willing, so the other astronauts make duplicates of Robin too, and everyone is happy. Then they make male duplicates to help with the work, and what happens is...
*pull ripcord and begin to recede into distance*
We don't know what happened after that! We bailed on it!
Because it's really bad..!
Don't read it..!
We don't know what happened after that! We bailed on it!
Because it's really bad..!
Don't read it..!
| Femmes Fatales | Oct 25 2023 |
She shot an arrow into the air, it fell to Earth— Well, nobody knows where because they weren't watching the arrow.
Japanese actress Maria Mari poses with a fancy Nishizawa recurved archery bow, which like the arrow she shot nobody is bothering to pay an iota of attention to. It's understandable. Mari looks quite beautiful and slender here in this photo from 1980. The image is part of a series of seven published in Weekly Playboy featuring different actresses posed with sports and recreation gear. You'll be seeing the other shots as the months roll onward. In the meantime you can see a bit more Mari here and here.
| Hollywoodland | Oct 24 2023 |
So long, suckers! There'll never be a star like me again.
Richard Roundtree, during his long show business career, appeared in scores of movies and television shows, but his first film role was in Shaft and he'll always be known for what can only be described as a cultural awakening, a watershed moment that moved black-centered cinema into the mainstream. It precipitated a flood of capital brought to bear on the genre by investors seeking easy returns, which undermined blaxploitation cinema much same way capital brings a flood of condos to a thriving ethnic neighborhood. Even so Shaft has stood the test of time, is one of the better action movies of the 1970s, generated the sequels Shaft's Big Score and Shaft in Africa, as well as a series of novels, and has remained within the American consciousness thanks to its popular soundtrack, its many lyrical references in hip-hop, and its one-of-a-kind star. Roundtree died today at age eighty-one.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 24 2023 |
Chinese communists try to whip Americans in the nuclear race.
The Chinese Keyhole, Richard Himmel's second novel starring his creation Johnny Maguire, finds the ass kicking lawyer immersed in intrigue in Chicago's Chinatown district, where a mission to deliver a coded message reveals a conspiracy centered in a strip bar. Turns out communists, including a whip wielding psycho, are trying to steal nuclear secrets. Maguire is no longer just a lawyer, but a government agent with his law practice as a front. We don't remember that from the first book, but maybe we missed it.
As in the debut outing Maguire is a guy who takes what he wants, never really asking permission before laying his lips on a nearby woman, and always, of course, he's correct in his assumption that he's sexually desired. Faithful Tina from book one returns to be shabbily treated again, and as before the romantic subplots blossom into full-blown melodrama that would fit perfectly in a Harlequin novel.
We probably don't need to mention that any mid-century book with Asian characters is going to cross some lines, and Maguire doesn't defy expectations on that front, nor does he miss an opportunity to disparage homosexuality. If you haven't read many of these old thrillers you might think that was the norm, but actually it's rare because gay characters don't figure in most of the books. When they did, well, the language got baroque, to say the least. Culturally we've arrived at a better—though still imperfect—place in time.
Flaws aside, we thought The Chinese Keyhole was better written than Himmel's first Maguire novel I'll Find You. Even with this mostly hackneyed commie conspiracy potboiler, he's intrigued us enough to take another ride with his interesting lawyer/lothario/secret agent, so we'll read the third book I Have Gloria Kirby and see where that leaves us. The art on this Gold Medal edition is by Barye Phillips and it dates from 1951.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 23 2023 |
For her taking risks is just feline nature.
This poster was made for Toba no mesu neko: Suhada no tsubo furi, known in English as Cat Girls Gamblers: Naked Flesh Paid into the Pot, the second of three Cat Girls films. We shared a poster for the first back in 2014 before we could access the movies, but now we have them, so we screened part two last night. The lead in this and the other installments is Yumiko Nogawa, who plays a wandering gambler whose murdered father was a famous maker of rigged dice. After Nogawa's lover is killed in a dice game she swears never to play again, takes a job working at a Turkish bath, and seems to be dedicated to living a quiet existence.
But her idyll is turned upside down when she shelters a recently paroled criminal who wants to gain control of a yakuza territory he'd been promised before going to prison. The crime boss currently running the territory has no intention of giving it up, and Nogawa seems likely to be dragged into the middle of the conflict. As it turns out, she's working in the Turkish bath only as a means to find her father's killer. Since her interests and those of her new friend are aligned, they hatch a plot that just might give them both what they want.
This is a solid effort from Nikkatsu Studios, before the front office bigwigs had their roman porno revelation and leaned hard into sexploitation for the entire 1970s and beyond. Shot in black and white, the feel is arthouse, with a police subplot giving it shadings of an American detective drama. Nogawa, a movie veteran who began her career with 1964's famed Nikutai no mon, is self-assured as the headliner, and the entire supporting cast is good. A climactic fight perhaps won't seem convincingly choreographed to modern viewers, but we recommend taking a chance on this gambling drama anyway. Toba no mesu neko: Suhada no tsubo furi premiered in Japan today in 1965.
JapanNikkatsuToba no mesu neko: Suhada no tsubo furiCat Girls Gamblers: Naked Flesh Paid into the PotYumiko NogawaHideaki NitaniTatsuya Fujiposter artcinemamovie review
| Intl. Notebook | Oct 22 2023 |
1976 was a year that held a lot of promise.
Above is an eye-catching 1976 headshop poster from a Chicago based company called House of Ideas featuring a rearview nude and—bizarrely—a chimp. The image is probably a composite, because while we can maybe imagine a tame chimp in a studio providing a suitable pose—eventually, after banana and mango enticements—we can't imagine a photographer being irresponsible enough to give a creature with outsize strength a pointed implement near a defenseless model. In the emergency room: “Everything seemed fine, then an intern dropped a glass, the noise freaked Bobo, and he shoved a paintbrush clean through her liver.”
Looking more closely at the image, which we did once we were able to focus past the major elements, at lower left is a photographer's credit—H.J. Peyer. Naturally we looked him up and it turns out he, or possibly she, had a cottage industry in headshop posters, though they weren't all this good. He or she did at least a couple of posters of guys flushed halfway down toilets, with the captions, “Problems?” and “Goodbye Cruel World.” We also found one of a chimp—possibly the same chimp—sitting on a toilet. Did we refer to Peyer as, “or possibly she”? When toilets are involved you can be sure a man was the brain behind it. The nudes are definitely more pleasing.
The poster also carries the emblem at bottom right of a company called Eurodecor. Here's why there are two credited entities, we think. Peyer and House of Ideas, who were probably one and the same, produced the original image, then sold the reproduction rights to Eurodecor, which re-released the poster as a calendar in subsequent years as it saw fit. As evidence we have a second image here, which is the same poster but with the year on the chimp's shirt changed and a new calendar on the model's back.Eurodecor wasn't just a fancy name. The company was indeed based in Europe—in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, actually. Why there? No taxes. The language in that alpine enclave is German, and that may explain the typo on the 1976 poster where the month of December reads, “Dezember.” But who has time for proofing when there's so much untaxed profit to spend? Anyway, with its great original photo, unusual concept, dead-eyed chimp, and revealing typo, this poster is a nice historical oddity. The only shame is that the beautiful model is uncredited. But they never were.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 21 2023 |
Forget that loser. I'm a man with prospects. Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about them.
Above: an uncredited cover for Judgment Day by James T. Farrell, which neatly encapsulates the classic woman's dilemma—most guys who come up to you in bars are at least a little drunk. This book is another case of serious literature getting a pulp style cover as a retrofit. As the text notes, it was the third book in the Depression-era Studs Lonigan series, which is one of the more important literary products of the 1930s, and, like many pieces of politically shaded literature from then, was very critical of American capitalism. This Panther edition came in 1959.
| Femmes Fatales | Oct 21 2023 |
You don't know jack-o'-lantern.
How many people have made jack-o'-lanterns without knowing anything about them? Plenty, we bet. The term comes from an Irish myth about a man named Stingy Jack (sometimes Jack the Smith, Drunk Jack, or Flaky Jack), a folkloric deceiver whose lies and tricks resulted in him having to wander the world after his death, admitted to neither Heaven nor Hell, lighting his way with an ember inside a hollowed out rutabaga. We don't know if rutabagas were ever used for jack-o'-lanterns, but if they were the switch to pumpkins was a good one. Rutabagas aren't scary. Unless you have to eat them.
Posing with en enormous plaster jack-o'-lantern is U.S. actress Anne Nagel, whose Hollywood career spanned about twenty-five years. She acted in (including uncredited appearances) about a hundred films, among them the crime dramas Bungalow 13, Escape by Night, Armed Car Robbery, and The Trap. Nagel is a good femme fatale choice for this time of year because her personal life was even scarier than these photos. Her first husband committed suicide, she allegedly had problems with alcohol, she never accumulated much money despite her many screen performances, and she died of cancer at age fifty.
Here's the most frightening story of all. In 1947 she filed a $350,000 lawsuit against a surgeon who she claimed removed some of her reproductive organs in 1936 without consent when he performed an appendectomy on her. Could you even imagine? Nagel said she had no idea until shortly before filing suit more than a decade later, but the surgeon countered that Nagel knew exactly what he was going to do. We don't know how the case turned out, but given the era we bet she didn't win. These photos, no longer very scary after hearing that story, are from 1940.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 20 2023 |
Don't look at me that way, raspberry martini. You know as well as I do you've been responsible for all my problems.
Do you have a friend like this? We bet lots of you do. The woman on Erskine Caldwell's Love and Money looks like she's playing hard to get, but her friend looks like the persuasive sort, so we bet she'll give in. This came from Signet Books in 1956 and the cover was painted by James Avanti. It fits into our ever growing women-in-bars collection.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 19 2023 |
Gemser adds a few degrees to the equatorial heat.
Yup, Laura Gemser again. It's just one of those things. La donna della calda terra premiered in Italy two days after Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali, so you get to enjoy her twice this week. Above are two posters for the former film, which was originally made in Spanish and released as La mujer de la tierra caliente, then retitled in English as Emanuelle - A Woman from a Hot Country, and, more succinctly, Fury. By this point Gemser's Emanuelle series had pitted her against everything from slavers to cannibals, but here she headlines something close to a straight drama, as she meets Stuart Whitman while both are hitchhiking the hot backroads of Venezuela. As they sit together in a horse trailer being towed across the country, they tell each other their tragic histories.
We've made fun of the bizarre plots of Gemser's movies, but this attempt at unsensationalistic drama is conceptually flat and the screenplay is terrible. Our favorite line: “Don't pay too much attention to women. We have days in which we see everything distorted.” We'd retort that men have entire lifetimes in which they see everything distorted, which is why the world is fucked. *checking credits* Yeah, the screenplay was written by men. Well, they dropped the ball here, not just because of bad writing, but because—and we never thought we'd say this—Gemser's movies need rampant weirdness to be watchable. So give up being normal and enbrace the bizarre. Bring on the slavers and cannibals. They were sorely missed. After premiering in Spain in July 1978, La donna della calda terra opened in Italy today the same year.
SpainItalyVenezuelaLa donna della calda terraEmanuelle - A Woman from a Hot CountryFuryLaura GemserStuart WhitmanGabriele TintiPaola SenatorePilar VelazquezAmel Amorposter artcinemasexploitationnuditymovie review
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