| Intl. Notebook | Oct 16 2019 |
China figures out how to kiloton of people.
This photo shows the first Chinese nuclear device, detonated today at Lop Nur in 1964. The U.S., Russia, France, and England were already members of the worst club ever devised—the nuclear club, the one aliens will write into the galactic history books as proof of humanity's inferior intelligence. China's tower mounted bomb was about the size of the U.S. bomb dropped on Hiroshima, a mere balloon pop. For the sake of comparison, the most powerful nuke ever detonated exploded with the power of 57 million tons of TNT, more than 1,500 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. Put another way, it was ten times more powerful than all the munitions expended during World War II. Put still a third way, its shockwave circled the entire Earth three times. China very well might build a bomb like that too one day. Just to be like the cool kids. See another image of the above test here.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 15 2019 |
No need to be nervous. To a doctor your body is nothing more than a soft, seductive, infinitely pleasurable biological wonder.
More for the doctor sleaze bin, Roy Benard Sparkia's Doctors & Sinners, from 1960 for Pyramid Books. Sparkia was prolific in this genre, but he also wrote Build My Gallows High, which was the basis of one of the great films of the 1940s, the film noir Out of the Past, which starred Robert Mitchum.
| Femmes Fatales | Oct 15 2019 |
Saying U.N.C.L.E. is not going to appease her.
This shot of U.S. actress Stephanie Powers was made as a promo for the television series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., in which she played the wonderfully named spy April Dancer, aka Agent 0022. The show was a spin-off from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but lasted only one season during 1966-67, which gives us the date range on this photo.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 14 2019 |
The temperature rises and the bodies fall in Fritz Lang's tense film noir.
In the thriller The Big Heat, which is based on a novel by William P. McGivern and directed by Fritz Lang, Glenn Ford plays one of the toughest men you'll find in film noir—ass kicking detective Dave Bannon, whose clash with organized crime sends him down a rogue path that leaves people battered, bruised, bloodied, burnt, and blown up. He co-starred with Gloria Grahame, and the way the plot develops, she turns out to be every bit as tough. We can't tell you anything about the movie others already haven't about a thousand times, so we're focusing instead on this top notch promo poster, a framable classic in the panel format we love. You'll see this online only occasionally because it's way too rare for sellers to ever have in stock, but it's a fitting piece for such a great movie. The Big Heat premiered in the U.S. today in 1953.
The Big HeatGlenn FordGloria GrahameLee MarvinFritz LangWilliam P. McGivernposter artcinemafilm noirmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 12 2019 |
Why did the girl cross the river? For a chance at a better future.
This issue of Adam published this month in 1952 is the second oldest issue of the magazine we've scanned and uploaded, and we gotta tell you, this thing was fragile as butterfly wings. But we got it done, and the magazine survived. The beautiful cover painting is signed by Phil Belbin, and it illustrates longtime pulp western writer Bob Obets' tale “Señorita Spitfire's Kisses”—let's just pause and enjoy that title, shall we? There's all sorts of promise in a title like that. It's simultaneously evocative and ridiculous, which often bodes well. The story is an adventure set on the Texas/Mexico border just after the U.S. Civil War. Basically, it's about a Mexican woman named Carlotta O'Farel y Cavazos who enlists the aid of a mercenary named Ricardo Ruby to cross the Rio Grande into Texas in search of a cache of money buried there. She plans to use it to buy guns for Mexican soldiers, while the captain is thinking maybe to have it for himself.
Here's a fun exchange (Ricardo refuses to call Carlotta by name at first, preferring to make up nicknames):
Ricardo: “Look, Flame of the River, just tell me where that eighty thousand is—and how come you know about it.”
Carlotta: “I was tellin' you, brains-of-a-donkey, the money is in this place call Corpus Christi, where my brother wait for the sheep to take this money to Cuba.”
Her insult really amused us for some reason. “Sheep,” by the way, is “ship” pronounced with an accent. Genre authors sometimes use phonetic spellings to portray accents, but it can cross the line into making the speaker sound stupid. It's something to avoid. After all, the presence of an accent means the speaker knows at least two languages, not just one, like most Americans. The most elegant authors, like Cormac McCarthy, write accents without alternate spellings. Obets opts for the clumsy method, having Carlotta say things like “sometheeng,” and “fineesh,” but he's a good writer anyway. In fact the story is good enough that we checked his bibliography. He's written at least two novels—1958's Blood Moon Range and 1965's Rails to the Rio. We may pick one up. In the meantime, we have a few scans, which include photos of Marie Windsor and Mari Blanchard. More Adam to come.
Her insult really amused us for some reason. “Sheep,” by the way, is “ship” pronounced with an accent. Genre authors sometimes use phonetic spellings to portray accents, but it can cross the line into making the speaker sound stupid. It's something to avoid. After all, the presence of an accent means the speaker knows at least two languages, not just one, like most Americans. The most elegant authors, like Cormac McCarthy, write accents without alternate spellings. Obets opts for the clumsy method, having Carlotta say things like “sometheeng,” and “fineesh,” but he's a good writer anyway. In fact the story is good enough that we checked his bibliography. He's written at least two novels—1958's Blood Moon Range and 1965's Rails to the Rio. We may pick one up. In the meantime, we have a few scans, which include photos of Marie Windsor and Mari Blanchard. More Adam to come.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 11 2019 |
They say you can't have everything but To Have and Have Not comes close.
This one has been a long time coming to Pulp Intl. To Have and Have Not. We love this flick. We never bothered to highlight it because it's so familiar to so many, but with the Pulp Intl. girlfriends out of town (did we mention that yet?) we decided to revisit a few movies we've seen often. First off, we get it, Hemingway fans. The film mutilated his 1937 novel. But what a shock—Warner Brothers was not going to make a Marxist themed movie in 1944. Hemingway may have, we like to imagine, wanted to keep the book out of Hollywood's hands for that very reason. But when Warners came across with a fat offer he was like, “Well, sure, okay, I suppose that amount of money will take the sting out of you whitewashing my Marxist opus.” You, see everyone has a price.
Howard Hawks directed, and Jules Furthman and William Faulkner wrote a screenplay that changed the location of the novel, its time period, its subtext, and its characters. Basically, Warners wanted a follow-up to Casablanca, and that's exactly what they got, though To Have and Have Not differs from Casablanca by being light-hearted in general, and wickedly comical in parts. But there are also thrills aplenty. The basic idea is Humphrey Bogart plays a diffident charter boat captain in French Martinique who finds himself drawn into World War II thanks to an idealistic anti-Vichy cabal that plans to rescue a French patriot imprisoned on Devil's Island. Everything and everybody in the film is great. Lauren Bacall, in her debut, brings just the right tone to her character Marie Browning, Walter Brennan puts on a physical acting clinic as Bogart's alcoholic sidekick, and as the Vichy administrator of Martinique, Dan Seymour channels Major Strasser from Casablanca, adding a touch of torpor meant to disguise his snake-deadly nature. The film also adds great music performances in the down and dirty Bar du Zombie and the café of Hotel Marquis, with Hoagie Carmichael taking on the Sam role from Casablanca. To Have and Have Not is so iconic it has been studied in university courses and written of in modern treatises about race. The latter is a lot to pile onto this lightweight adventure. Set in the Caribbean, it tries to at least portray a high level of racial inclusiveness, though not perfectly.
There's one more reason to watch the movie. We've seen it so much we've developed a drinking game from it. We've developed lots of drinking games from movies, but don't generally play them when the Pulp Intl. girlfriends are around (did we mention they're out of town?). Take a shot every time someone throws something in the water. That's it. Bottles, matches, whatever. If you're really brave, take a shot every time someone litters, whether at sea, on land, or indoors. It's interesting to observe littering behavior from an era when the environment was thought to be boundless and impossible to ruin. As members of a generation trained to get our garbage in a receptacle at all costs, the polluting here is really funny to see. 10 out of 10 for this movie. Watch it. Love it. Watch it again. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1944.
There's one more reason to watch the movie. We've seen it so much we've developed a drinking game from it. We've developed lots of drinking games from movies, but don't generally play them when the Pulp Intl. girlfriends are around (did we mention they're out of town?). Take a shot every time someone throws something in the water. That's it. Bottles, matches, whatever. If you're really brave, take a shot every time someone litters, whether at sea, on land, or indoors. It's interesting to observe littering behavior from an era when the environment was thought to be boundless and impossible to ruin. As members of a generation trained to get our garbage in a receptacle at all costs, the polluting here is really funny to see. 10 out of 10 for this movie. Watch it. Love it. Watch it again. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1944.
MartiniqueDevil's IslandWorld War IITo Have and Have NotHumphrey BogartLauren BacallHoagie CarmichaelWalter BrennanDolores MoranDan SeymourErnest HemingwayHoward HawksJules Furthmanposter artcinemafilm noir
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 10 2019 |
Erm... before you shoot... I just want you to know it was all her fault.
Crime en deux temps, or “crime in two stages,” was originally released in 1939 as The Case of the Rolling Bones. For some reason the French publishers of this book, Presses de la Cité, call legendary mystery author Erle Stanley Gardner just Stanley Gardner, which sounds, well, non-legendary. Stanley Gardner is a guy at the office you don't talk to because he's a skin picker. Erle Stanley Gardner is a guy who, if he likes you, can get you into Nobu. So, the Erle is needed.
Plotwise, this revolves around greed, gold, and a group of people who want to prevent their relative from losing his fortune to his prospective wife. In order to stop this imagined horror, they commit the relative to a nuthouse before he can get married. Which backfires when he escapes. As always with Gardner there's a murder, which brings Perry Mason onto the scene to sort everything out.
As you might guess, because Gardner was (and is) an immensely popular author there are several English language paperback covers for this, and they all feature dice in some form. Which makes sense, because the original title came about because there's an actual die maker in the book. He makes crooked dice, and he gets murdered. This uncredited French cover from 1950 caught our eye because of its non-literal approach. No dice, but it's a winner.
Plotwise, this revolves around greed, gold, and a group of people who want to prevent their relative from losing his fortune to his prospective wife. In order to stop this imagined horror, they commit the relative to a nuthouse before he can get married. Which backfires when he escapes. As always with Gardner there's a murder, which brings Perry Mason onto the scene to sort everything out.
As you might guess, because Gardner was (and is) an immensely popular author there are several English language paperback covers for this, and they all feature dice in some form. Which makes sense, because the original title came about because there's an actual die maker in the book. He makes crooked dice, and he gets murdered. This uncredited French cover from 1950 caught our eye because of its non-literal approach. No dice, but it's a winner.
| Femmes Fatales | Oct 10 2019 |
Her friends should have staged an intervention before things went this far.
This photo shows Japanese CM model Kenī Sari, who has almost everything she needs for the beach—an umbrella, a copy of Elle magazine, sunscreen probably, maybe a bottle of water. But somehow she's forgotten half of her swimsuit and—wouldn't you now it?—nobody has told her. Luckily it's always summer here at Pulp Intl. This great photo was published in the magazine Weekly Playboy in 1978.
| Modern Pulp | Oct 9 2019 |
The more you Zoom the weirder everything looks.
Above is a poster for Zûmu appu: Bôkô hakusho, aka Zoom Up: Sexual Crime Report, the fourth film in the Zoom Up series. This installment starred Yuki Kazamatsuri and Rie Hirase, and premiered in Japan today in 1981. Where do we start with this? Kazamatsuri plays a disc jockey married to a powerful businessman. One night on her way to the radio station she's raped by a gang of creeps on motorcycles, and it turns out this was not a random attack. That's already a spoiler, so we'll stop there.
As always, we try to remember that Nikkatsu Studios was in the business of making money. The directors and screenwriters had a lot of artistic freedom, and occasionally tried to embed social commentary and deep metaphor in these films. But you know how it goes with metaphor—if you suspect it's there you'll look for it until you strain your brain. Broadly speaking, roman porno avoids the feminist patriarchy smashing of pinky violence films, usually denying women any sort of cathartic retribution. We stress usually. Even in this retrograde genre women sometimes get the opportunity to make men eat cold steel, or hot lead, as the case may be. Which path does Zûmu appu: Bôkô hakusho take? We ain't saying.
If you look around the internet the very few reviews of roman porno films you find are by males, usually in Japanese. We sometimes add to the all-male chorus, but just as often we keep our write-ups vague, focusing mainly on the poster art. We hope one day there'll be a more diverse online analysis of these, particularly of two types: in English from Japanese viewers who can provide social context we can't; and from women. The latter you might expect us to get from PI-1 and PI-2 (did we mention they're out of town?), but they refuse to watch these. Maybe, truly, that's the most incisive analysis of all.
Wait, so this is all a cinematic metaphor?
Ahh, a wonderful, relaxing metaphor for womblike security.
Oh no! A terrible, disturbing metaphor for survival in a hostile world!
Lalalala... slurp.... gurgle... metaphor.... lalalalalala...
Shhh... trust me. This is a metaphor you're really going to enjoy.
Maybe these metaphors will be clearer without my glasses.
JapanNikkatsuZûmu appu: Bôkô hakushoZoom Up: Sexual Crime ReportYuki KazamatsuriRie Hiraseposter artcinemapinkusexploitationroman pornonuditymovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 9 2019 |
He would've wanted me to find happiness. Maybe not this often, but hey, a girl’s gotta live, right?
How long is a proper mourning period? Not very long, apparently. Above is an excellent piece of cover art from Charles Copeland for Rick Holmes’ 1963 Beacon-Signal sleaze novel New Widow, about a woman whose husband of six years dies in an automobile accident, and who suddenly finds that four men she thought were friends now just want to get into her panties.
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