| Vintage Pulp | Dec 28 2022 |
After she homicides Johnny, she's going to homicide everyone else who ever crossed her too.
We've returned to Steve Fisher, as we said we would, after reading his 1954 social drama Giveaway. We chose Homicide Johnny because of the title and the Rudolph Belarski cover art. The tale stars Johnny West, a cop in tiny Mamaroneck, New York, about to give up his badge for a private detective gig in far away San Francisco, but who's pulled into one last case. A priceless anti-streptococcic compound has been stolen, and West not only has to solve the crime, but must work with his ex-girlfriend, police investigator Penny Lane. She has a very good if not photographic memory—which is too bad for Johnny because she can't forget or forgive that time he cheated on her. Collaborating with someone who seems to despise you isn't easy, but without trust and cooperation a murderer just might generate more victims. Spoiler alert: he does. Despite Steve Fisher's good rep, we consider Homicide Johnny to be average, even with its unusual medical research backdrop and relationship tension. But there was nothing in it to discourage us from trying him again, so expect to see him here down the line.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 28 2022 |
Slippery pavement ahead. High accident risk. Proceed in low gear.
Above is a poster for Sex rider: Nureta highway, or alternatively Sex Rider: Wet Highway, starring Mari Tanaka as a woman about to be married who succumbs to a case of cold feet and flees her impending nuptials. Her escape gets off to a bad start when she hits a guy with her car. He's not seriously hurt, but seeing a chance to possibly profit, pretends to be gravely injured. Tanaka, no doctor she, mistakes his fake unconsciousness for death and decides to dispose of the body. Reality gets a little bent from that point, as the film descends into a dreamlike state and we poor confused viewers aren't actually sure if the guy is dead. In any case, Tanaka dumps the body in a lake, but is seen doing it by a nearby hunter, and is sexually assaulted by this witness. At that point the dead/not dead man reappears to defend her, claiming, “I'm the ghost of the guy you hit.” Okay.
That's all we'll do on the plot. We want to note that Nikkatsu Studios, undeniably, had an obsession with rape. Their movies are very against the grain nowadays (and were back then too, we suspect, or at least hope), but we think there's value in looking at them objectively. Modern art is always a momentary endpoint and has to be understood with its evolution in mind. That's why we don't judge these sometimes disturbing films too harshly. The 1970s were a time of cinematic exploration and it was coupled with a new sexual freedom wherein merely to shock with nudity was usually considered a nudge toward more liberation. As we understand it, many feminists back then were pro-nudity. It was a flip-off to a patriarchy that had stifled women for centuries.
But when VHS and the porn explosion came along the winds shifted. Billions were made selling women's bodies and women made virtually nothing. Digital tech, which arrived to stick nudity and sex in the faces of people who hadn't even asked to see it, was the final straw. Today, many people see any female nudity as exploitative, and rail against any depiction of violence against women as implicit endorsement of the same. It's understandable. We all have our own red lines. Everybody's upsettable. Even the people who claim to be hard-as-nails free expression absolutists. Don't believe it? Tell one of them you think belief in a god is childish, or you're tired of veneration of the armed forces, and see how that goes. Everyone is upsettable.Japan was a more patriarchal society than many leading up to the roman porno period, so the push toward sexualization was quite strong there. Though cinematic censorship against frontal nudity and sex acts was firm, such prohibitions merely made Japanese filmmakers creative. It's incredible how shocking a roman porno movie can be without showing a wisp of pubic hair. The rape obsession is just one example. There was also a focus on bodily functions, submission, and more. Despite those shocks, we feel like roman porno films differ only in number—rather than content—from what was being produced in the West during the same period. In the U.S., France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, et al, the 1970 to 1980 timeframe was likewise characterized by an exploration of themes that today are considered taboo.
We love foreign films, and upon exploring Japanese cinema, we progressed from post-war dramas, to samurai and martial arts epics, to counterculture pinky violence films, and thence to roman porno. Ultimately, poster art is one of the linchpins of our site, and roman porno films have great posters, which is the main reason we talk about them so much. We could just share the posters and stop there, but that usually feels inadequate for people who take film as seriously as we (and hopefully you) do. So we watch the movies, but sometimes wonder if we've learned all we can from the genre and maybe should call it quits and move on. But for now we'll keep exploring films such as Sex rider: Nureta highway. In the end, we have to give it credit—at least it tried to be different. But it also should have tried to be better. It premiered in Japan today in 1971.
JapanNikkatsuSex rider: Nureta highwaySex Rider: Wet HighwayMari TanakaKen Yoshizawaposter artpinkuroman pornonuditycinemamovie review
| Hollywoodland | Dec 26 2022 |
Everybody, listen up! Grace is having a nap, so I guess the whole production has to grind to a halt until she's done.
Online you see this photo captioned something like, “Grace Kelly has a nap in Africa on the set of the 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie Mogambo." It's clear, though, that the shot is staged. See all those footprints around Kelly's mattress? Grips, best boys, production assistants, and other species of cinematic wildlife have been constantly trekking through there lugging heavy gear. If she were really in need of a catnap we feel she'd be off to the side, somewhere under shelter from the brutal African sun, for example in a tent reserved for her, so we suspect she and the good folks at MGM chose this spot for a quick photo op. But it's a fun shot. In Africa or out of it, Kelly was hella hot.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 26 2022 |
I know you're new to this life but I feel you have a lot of untapped potential.
Above: a cover for Toni Adler's Dance-Hall Dyke, 1964, from Playtime Books, with a blurb written by an editor who was the William Butler Yeats of teaser text. It's so good it stands alone as a poem:
The vicious jungle
of lesbian lures
the fickle and the fake
screaming the obscenity
of the passions
while tender lovers
cry for understanding
We may inaugurate a Pulp Intl. awards season just for cover blurbs. We wanted to buy the book despite its rude title, but it was going for more than two-hundred bucks, which meant no sale. The cover art is uncredited.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 25 2022 |
This Cameron Kay fella might just amount to something one day.
Cameron Kay was a pseudonym used by literary leading light Gore Vidal when he was short of cash and needed to publish and get paid fast. He'd used other pseudonyms for this purpose, including Edgar Box and Katherine Everard. It took him about three weeks to produce 1953's Thieves Fall Out, and he made three grand on the deal. It's one of those books where a money-seeking rando goes to a foreign country and immediately inserts himself into the biggest caper going for hundreds of miles around—and does it, improbably, with great ease, while seeming to think, irrationally, that it's a good idea. This character, named Peter Wells, ultimately turns sour on the venture and must figure out a way to flee Egypt with his true love by his side.
Though Vidal is not at the heights he'd reach in his best writing, you already know that going in. In the final analysis he gets the job done, like a good carpenter working on a quick side project. We glanced at a few reviews after finishing the story and they seem to miss the point that Vidal does exactly what adventure fiction requires. Saying the book's plot is stock is like saying dance music is repetitive. It has to be that way to make you dance. Because of the identity of the author, it feels as if reviewers try to flaunt their intellectual bona fides by trashing the result. We're not going to do that. The book is satisfactory.
What Vidal does especially well is local color—though refracted through a wealthy Western prism that few Egyptians would appreciate. Yet it's clear he tries to be egalitarian, if imperfectly, and he crafts a tale with unique characters. There's a piano playing hunchback who hides behind a wall and looks at his nightclub through a peephole, a beautiful French countess who was once the mistress of Egypt's top Nazi, and a fresh young beauty who's the unrequited love of King Farouk of Egypt—who has her followed everywhere by his secret police. Those ideas are unusual, for sure, but they're not as farfetched as some reviewers would like you to think.
We make that statement confidently because we've lived in the wilder world. In Guatemala we met an ex-judge from a proximate country who had fled because of being targeted for death by the new ruling party, but who was a drunk who craved public enjoyment and had shaved his head and grown a beard in order to hang in dive bars unrecognized. Was his story true? Maybe. He had a judicial identification card he eventually showed us that looked real enough. Real enough, in fact, that we gave him a wide berth from then on, thinking that if he was assassinated we didn't want to be in the line of fire. It may not sound real, but there you go. It happened.
Therefore we don't agree with reviewers who think Vidal's characters are intentionally absurd, and that he was pushing the envelope of how bizarre he could make his cast. Such people exist. Vidal would have found them. They make Thieves Fall Out a fascinating read. The book isn't top of the genre, nor bottom, but it's unique, and has a fun climax tied into the burgeoning Egyptian revolution and the real-life fire that destroyed one of the most famous hotels in the world. Here's what Thieves Fall Out is in summation: readable, distracting, and just leftfield enough to let you know the author is someone with a different take on the world, who'd later distill his ideas into fiction that would make him a literary sensation.
Therefore we don't agree with reviewers who think Vidal's characters are intentionally absurd, and that he was pushing the envelope of how bizarre he could make his cast. Such people exist. Vidal would have found them. They make Thieves Fall Out a fascinating read. The book isn't top of the genre, nor bottom, but it's unique, and has a fun climax tied into the burgeoning Egyptian revolution and the real-life fire that destroyed one of the most famous hotels in the world. Here's what Thieves Fall Out is in summation: readable, distracting, and just leftfield enough to let you know the author is someone with a different take on the world, who'd later distill his ideas into fiction that would make him a literary sensation.
Fawcett PublicationsGold Medal BooksEgyptCairoLuxorCameron KayGore VidalEdgar BoxKatherine EverardBarye PhillipsFarouk Icover artliterature
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 25 2022 |
Columbia Pictures gives moviegoers a fuller picture of one of its top stars.
Above is a poster advertising the drama Miss Sadie Thompson. When we watched the movie a few years ago we had no idea it had been in 3-D. It seems like a strange choice for such treatment. Now we'll have to watch it again and see what things are thrust at the camera. We're hoping whatever they are, they're all attached to Rita Hayworth. In the meantime, below is a flyer also touting the film's 3-D run. Though it was supposed to premiere “at Christmas,” the American Film Institute tells us it actually first showed on December 23 in New York City, before receiving a nationwide opening in February 1954. The phrase “at Christmas,” we suppose, might imply anytime during the season. Sadie Thompson is an interesting movie, though not Hayworth's best. You can read our pithy thoughts here.
| Intl. Notebook | Dec 25 2022 |
Ciné-Revue was the go-to publication for movie stars seeking exposure.
Here's your official Christmas gift, a prime example of that mid-century phenomenon we discuss often, the intersection of mainstream and adult cinema during the sixties and seventies. Ciné-Revue, which was published in Belgium and distributed there and in France, Switzerland, Canada, Portugal, Britain, and the Basque region of Spain, was at the vanguard of that idea. It highlighted both popular stars and their adult counterparts, blurring the line between the two. It wasn't hard to do. Famous performers often acted in sexually oriented films, and Ciné-Revue was a platform that helped cinematic explorations of sexual ideas be taken seriously.
The issue you see above is the cover of Ciné-Revue Photos 49, a visual compendium of actresses both world famous and somewhat obscure. The names run the gamut from Anita Ekberg to Marina Marfoglia. Marfoglia gets the cover, while Ekberg gets the rear, and that's exactly what we're talking about—the obscure elevated over the known. Both are also featured in multiple pages inside—but while Ekberg gets seven, Marfoglia gets eight and the centerfold. The issue is about a hundred pages, but we're unable to put together a post that long. Instead, we've selected some of the nicer images to warm up this winter day. Enjoy, and don't worry about us slaving over a computer. We put this collection together last week. Right now, on Christmas, we're traveling with the PIs.
BelgiumFranceSwitzerlandCanadaPortugalBritainCiné-RevueAnita EkbergSara SferatiEleonora ValloneMarina MarfogliaGiovanna RalliJilly JohnsonOrnella VanoniLara Saint PaulCristiana MancinelliEleonora GiorgiNadia CassiniMarinella GiordanaPaola MorraLaura BelliEdwige Fenechnuditynudie mags
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 23 2022 |
Montalbán makes his deepest fantasies come true.
Sombra Verde, aka Untouched, was a romantic adventure made in Mexico, based on a novel by Ramiro Torres Septien, and starring Ricardo Montalbán, who was establishing himself in Hollywood but also returned south for occasional productions. The promo poster is amazing, done in that particularly Mexican mid-century style that echoes art deco. In this example, you can see those elements most clearly in Montalbán's abs, the texture of the dress on the female figure, and the lines of the hammock in which she reclines. We've shared several of these masterful concoctions, and you can see them by starting at this page and following the links.
In Sombra Verde Montalbán plays a scientist dispatched to the state of Veracruz to search for barbasco roots used for pharmaceutical production. He hires a guide named Pedro, and the pair head into the trackless wilderness. Montalbán soon grows distrustful of Pedro, and when they get lost tensions rise. No worries, though—Pedro doesn't last long (though his death scene takes forever) thanks to a poisonous snake. After wandering alone for a period, Montalbán finally stumbles across some inscrutable villagers, including the beautiful Ariadna Welter, who instantly makes his little Mr. Rourke stand at attention. Montalbán is married, but with Welter flouncing about his vows become a secondary concern, and romance ensues. The father in this scenario, however, played by Victor Parra, is bent on keeping his daughter pure, so what you ultimately get is a star-crossed love story in the dripping jungle.
There are some moments that may verge on accidental comedy for modern viewers—Montalbán fruitlessly sucking poison out of Pedro's leg comes to mind, as does the scene where he looks to the sky and sees about thirty buzzards circling, but it all works fine because he's a born star who handles this adventure with ease and confidence. We can't help thinking it's a shame he got few leading opportunities in Hollywood. He surely made more money there than in Mexico, but on the other hand his countrymen knew top level talent when they saw it, and knew what to do with it. Sombra Verde, despite some melodramatic excesses, shows Montalbán's quality. It premiered in Mexico today in 1954.
MexicoSombra VerdeRicardo MontalbánVictor ParraAriadna WelterJorge Martínez de HoyosRamiro Torres Septienposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 23 2022 |
Honey! Oh no! There goes your undefeated record! And in your very first fight!
This 1959 Berkley Books edition of the 1958 W.C. Heinz boxing novel The Professional has excellent Robert Maguire cover art of a boxer on the deck and a distressed woman looking on in horror. You'll also notice Ernest Hemingway's endorsement. Papa's fame led to his stamp of approval being highly coveted. We'd guess we've seen his name used this way on ten covers, but we bet there are more.
If you go by the reviews on this book, Heinz deserved all the praise he received for his tale of a middle-weight boxer trying to climb to the top. As an award winning sports writer he knew his stuff, and he collected other accolades to go with his anointment by Hemingway, winning the E. P. Dutton Award for best magazine story of the year five times, and earning the A. J. Liebling Award for boxing writing.
Over the decades Heinz had his work reprinted in dozens of anthologies and textbooks, so if you're into sports journalism he's one of the main dudes. We have a fair number of boxing covers in our website, and they tend to be amusing if you look at them just the right way. We won't link to them all, but if you want to see some good examples try here, here, here, here, here, and here.
| Femmes Fatales | Dec 23 2022 |
Every time she takes out a cigarette she barely survives a forest of fires.
Above: an interesting of shot of French actress Corinne Calvet made in 1951 when she was filming the anti-communist thriller Peking Express. It was a remake of the 1932 film Shanghai Express starring Marlene Dietrich. Tough shoes to fill but Calvet was a major star in her day, and considered a major beauty. You can't see that in this photo, what with all the smoke, but you can in a shot we shared earlier, at this link.
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