First the Festival of San Fermin, and now Spain’s World Cup victory. To say last night’s celebration was exuberant is an understatement. Nevertheless, we’re back to doing what we do, so here’s a random Spanish-language magazine we ran across, the long-running film publication Ecran, which is not from Spain but rather from Chile. This issue is circa 1965, with Italian actress Elsa Martinelli on the cover. Martinelli starred in a couple of our favorite cheesy flicks from the sixties, which means we’ll be getting back to her in more detail soon. 

We’re starting 2010 out right, with an absolutely amazing poster from an equally amazing film. At least, we think it’s amazing. Reactions to Chilean-born director Alexandro Jodorowski’s El Topo run the gamut—some hail it as high art; other think it’s a pretentious and garbled mess. However, it’s undeniable that the film hails from a much more daring cinematic era. It’s also one of the first true midnight films, gaining popularity during its 1970 Stateside run among New York City’s artsy, nocturnal filmgoing crowd after a slow start in conventional release. Basically, El Topo ("topo" means "mole" in Spanish, but is used as slang to describe an awkward person) is a western, but it’s also a commingling of Biblical and eastern religion themes. Doesn’t that sound fun? The two halves of the film have different flavors, and this tends to turn off some viewers. Jodorowski confessed that a couple of important transitional shots got ruined and were never replaced. Add in all the nudity, dwarves, and random events, and it’s easy to think of the film as sloppy. But what isn’t sloppy is the Italian poster by Enrico de Seta, one of the true masters of cinema promo art, who we’ll be featuring again in the future. In the meantime, we recommend a viewing of El Topo. It’s a unique vision by a singular filmmaker—grand, violent, disturbing, and most of all, pulp. 

Check out the above shot of American cinema legend Cary Grant, looking his debonair best on the cover of the Chilean movie magazine Ecran. And on the back cover is Tina Louise from the days before she was banished to Gilligan’s Island. "Ecran" is not, as far as we can tell with our imperfect language skills, Spanish, but rather French. The word means "screen," but we don't think the magazine is affiliated with French film magazine L’Ecran. We could be wrong about that, though. In any case, we have more issues of Ecran we'll show you later. This one was published in 1959.     

Alrightee, folks, we’re taking a few days off to go pulp hunting. El Monkey Blanco will be scouring the alleyways of Southeast Asia, and Chile Negro will be pounding the pavement in Western Europe. In the meantime, help a brother out and spread our url around. We’re new to this website thing and don’t have it down to an art just yet, but we think we have something unique here and we’d like to share it with as many people as possible. The treasure hunting, writing, and web research are all good fun, but we’re attention whores. So pimp us. Back Tuesday.

The story we posted not long ago about the Griddle Virgin got us thinking about how very pulp lucha libre is. You got a bunch of mean-as-snakes guys kicking the living shit out of each other. You got costumes, secret identities, and exotic tropical locales. And the whole enterprise, let’s face it, comes off a bit seedy. As if those elements weren’t pulp enough, we just discovered that lucha libre promo posters are often printed on low quality paper just like the old dime paperbacks. So today we have a selection of lucha libre art for your enjoyment. If it stimulates a burning desire to try the lucha lifestyle, you can start by getting a wrestling moniker of your own here. We tried it and ours are El Monkey Blanco and Chile Negro—seriously. Suddenly you can cut the racial tension in here with a knife.