| Femmes Fatales | Jan 9 2023 |
As furniture goes they're all upside, no down.
Can furniture change your life? Maybe. This photo caught our eye because we too have a divan, and it's so very useful. One can lounge, read, nap, emphasize points while seated on its edge, get freaky, whatever. U.S. actress Patricia Morrison—performer in such films as Song of the Thin Man, Dressed To Kill, and Tarzan and the Huntress—seems to have discerned the utility of the classic backless divan in this unusual reverse oriented promo photo. It's... divine. We don't have a date on it, but it's probably from around 1945.
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 9 2023 |
Trouble comes with two guns blazing.
We'll assume we don't have to define the vernacular term “G” as used in our header, and will merely point out that this is a very nice Italian promo poster for the 1972 blaxploitation movie Trouble Man. In Italy it was titled Detective G., and in Italian the G stands for something non-vernacular—guai: “trouble." There's no release date for Italy, but the movie—which is well worth seeing—probably played there sometime in 1973.
| Intl. Notebook | Jan 2 2023 |
America's worst tabloid pops the bubbly and starts the year strong.
Above is a cover of the tabloid National Informer that hit newsstands today in 1972 featuring an unidentified Champagne toasting model. We love how the editors emphasize the word “truthful” in the second banner, beneath the name of the paper. That's a bold claim from one of the ultimate bottom shelf tabloids of the era, one that traffics in faux news and sensationalism more than actual journalism. But we won't argue the point. Whenever one's reputation is less than stellar don't leave it to chance: tell people what opinion to have of you. National Informer says it's truthful, fine.
There are a couple of stories of note in this issue. According to Informer, German high wire artist Karl Traber died when he lost his balance during a walk between the towers of two Munich churches and fell two-hundred feet onto a spiked fence. We couldn't find a single reference to anyone named Karl Traber online, though we did to a Traber family who remain famous today as aerialists. We did a Boolean search within German websites and still found no Karl Traber who suffered this grisly death. It's no surprise. Cheap tabloids often leave you with more questions than answers. We'll blame it on sloppy journalism (maybe they got a name wrong?) rather than false reporting. But since we don't want to spend our Monday searching the internet, we'll just move on.
Later in the issue Informer's resident seer Mark Travis produces a slate of predictions, and one of them qualifies as his wildest ever: I predict the invention of a serum which is injected into the bloodstream to create more pigmentation of the skin and turn a white person black. It will be very popular among the young college students. This serum [snip] will enable white youngsters from affluent homes to really see what life in the ghetto is like. Since the results will wear off in a few weeks if the injections are discontinued, it will be quite an adventure to “go black” for a short period of time. Only a wig will be necessary to complete the disguise. And since another drug which works in reverse—lightens the skin—will enable any Negro who desires to do so to pass for white, it will soon be impossible to tell who is white, who is black, and who is one in the disguise of the other.
We think we know how that would turn out: the caste-destroying serum would be banned in all fifty states, plus overseas U.S. territories, and bring penalties for usage ranging up to execution. We're only half kidding. Imagining the possible fallout from such a form of recreation makes us want to pitch the idea to some of our Hollywood friends. Can you imagine the television show that could be produced? Travis has made some blah predictions over the years, but we bet this one hit a nerve among Informer's readership. Unfortunately, we don't have the next few issues to check the infuriated responses in reader mail. Maybe it's better that way. As a side note, this is the thirtieth issue of Informer we've shared.
West GermanyMunichNational InformerBrigitte BardotKarl TraberLaila LeedsWendy SityMark TravisJanet BakerBarbara Fenneytabloidburlesque
| Intl. Notebook | Dec 31 2022 |
Well done. You survived another one.
A toast, friends, for though the years keep piling high, you've survived yet another. Hopefully those years are getting better for you all the time. Ours certainly are—knock on wood. The festive photo above was made by U.S. lensman Paul H. Oelman, feautures an unidentified model, and dates from the early or mid-1940s. Oelman was born in 1880 and began his career in Dayton, Ohio, where he met the Wright Brothers and shot photos of their airplane flights. His nude period came later, when he moved his base to Cincinnati, a place which, considering its conservative values, seems a dangerous locale for erotic photography. But he made himself a success there just the same.
Oelman eventually became known throughout the U.S., gave talks to regional camera clubs, and in 1948 founded a national lecture program for the Photographic Society of America. Interesting note about his work method: he preferred to shoot local society girls, and did so with their mothers present as chaperones. We can't even conceive of how that would be viewed today. Would the mothers be called groomers? Anyway, Oelman titled this particular work “Pagan,” and that seems as good a wish as any for the upcoming year. We plan to have a positively pagan year, and we hope you have whatever type of year you seek. 2023! Let's do this!
| 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
| 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
| Femmes Fatales | Dec 21 2022 |
For that matter she can barely be bottomed.
Japanese actress Izumi Shima strikes a nice seaside pose in a 1978 issue of the men's magazine Weekly Playboy. In text we've cropped out, the image mentions two of her upcoming movies—Kyoshi mejika, aka Teacher Deer, and Danchizuma: Futari dake no yoru, aka Apartment Wife: Night by Ourselves, and gives a mailing address for fans to write “love letters” to her at Nikkatsu Studios in Tokyo. The mail must have arrived by the cartload. We have more Shima shots from this session that we'll share later.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 18 2022 |
Had a horrible trauma? Leading roman porno filmmakers say another one should fix you right up.
This flowery promo poster was made for the roman porno flick Kashin no sasoi, aka Call of the Pistil, or sometimes Temptation of the Pistil, which premiered in Japan today in 1971. The movie opens with a cool credit sequence, which you can see in the screenshots below. After that's done, you get a story about a reporter played by Keiko Maki who's traumatized by a sexual assault and whose doctor decides—this is so typical of roman porno cinema—that only by reenacting the event can she be cured.
Her older brother and boyfriend take charge of setting up these scenarios, and the experimental treatments backfire. Big shock. Later they learn that there's more to Maki's mental state than suspected, and that it has to do with her previous investigations and a conspiracy dealing with the U.S. military, and specifically with black GIs. Therefore—again, so typical—brother and boyfriend find a black GI (Peter Golden in a thankless role, his sole film appearance ever) to attack Maki.
Of course, as a roman porno—i.e "romantic" porno—there's no sex or frontal nudity shown during any of this, but it's still disturbing. All this supposed therapy is basically the equivalent of screaming, “BOO!” at someone who's previously suffered a terrible fright. If we make the movie sound a bit dumb, well, it really is. But it's certainly well shot, as all these roman pornos are, but even good production values and decent performances can't put this tale across. It's just too mean-spirited to work. “It was all a bad dream,” Maki's boyfriend says to her in the end. If only life really worked that way.
JapanNikkatsuKashin no sasoiCall of the PistilTemptation of the PistilKeiko MakiHyôe EnokiHajime MitamuraPeter Goldenposter artcinemapinkuroman pornosexploitationmovie review
| Femmes Fatales | Dec 17 2022 |
Blaze Starr drums up interest in her dancing.
Actress, burlesque dancer, and famed consort Blaze Starr looks like a natural with this authentic animal hide djembe, and she'd surely be the center of the best drum circle of all time, but we suspect she rarely needed props to help her draw a crowd. She was one of the top performers of her era, taking her talents from the stage to cinema with the naturist paean Blaze Starr Goes Nudist, and later becoming infamous when her affair with a prominent U.S. governor became public. We talked about that episode a little here, if you don't already know her and are interested.
We tried to date this photo made by James Kriegsmann but it was tricky. Online claims are often incorrect, and we've replicated such errors a few times by trusting them, so our method these days is to be evidentiary about it and try to find the shots on or inside magazines. Most sources, including the respected Getty Images, date the photo to 1960 or 1962, but we found it inside a January 1957 issue of Modern Man. The photo could have been made earlier, even several years earlier, but we're calling it 1956 and we feel pretty confident about it.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 14 2022 |
Avelli treats moviegoers to a double helping of his art.
We recently shared a poster painted by Italian artist Tino Avelli and wanted to revisit his work. He was prolific, painting great promos for such well known films as The Man with the Golden Gun and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. We also recently saw a tarot deck he painted going for $3,000 at an auction site. We predict... we won't be buying that.
Above you see two Avelli efforts for the 1975 film La bolognese. Usually we have an English title for you, but this one was never shown in the U.S. The Italian title refers to any person from the city of Bologna. We've seen the movie, and it's a comedy, so we won't get into it. Plus, it's not funny anyway. It's the type of thing where star Franca Gonella rides her bike with the wind blowing her skirt up and everyone she passes ends up in a ditch from staring too hard at her white panties. Big laughs.
Not that we're above anything gratuitous, whether nudity, violence, or whatever. Vintage genre fiction is all about adding heaping helpings of fan service to most every narrative, therefore we are too. To prove it we've uploaded a nice shot of Gonella below—without her white panties. And you'd been thinking, "Hmm... not a lot of nudity on Pulp intl. lately." Solved. We should add that Gonella made some crime and horror movies, so maybe she'll return in the future.
ItalyBolognaLa bologneseThe Man with the Golden GunThunderbolt and LightfootFranca GonellaTino Avelliposter artcinemanudity
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