Above, a nice Robert Schultz cover for the 1962 titillation novel I Know the Score, written by the curiously named Ort Louis. Surely Ort is a pseudonym, one that sounds like the noise a hungry seal makes, however he's also credited with 1963's The Pleasure and the Pain, and wrote for crime magazines such as Manhunt. So maybe he's a real person. We'll keep an eye out for more info. 

A few years ago we shared a collection of pulp covers featuring women holding smoking guns. Most of them, but not all, were standing over dead victims. Today we decided to revisit the idea, but this time feature only women standing over men they’ve just gunned down. We found many examples, but these are five of the best. Kind thanks to the original uploaders.

In fashion they say it takes a confident woman to wear a red dress. In pulp, it takes a woman with a death wish. Below are fourteen pulp, adventure, and detective magazine covers illustrating that point, with art by Bud Parke, George Gross, Barye Phillips and others, as well as a couple of photo-illustrations.

You may not have heard of The Manhunt of Mystery Island, but this is one of the few Republic serials you can probably rent or buy. The legendary Republic Pictures made sixty-six serials, consisting of short chapters ending with cliffhangers resolved at the beginning of the next chapter, usually by means of an improbable escape. Each chapter would play at a theater for one week as a sort of opening act to the A-feature, the next chapter would run for seven days, and so on until the story was completed.

Watching a movie over the course of three months might not seem like the best way to attract customers to the cinema, but it actually worked quite well because some of the serial characters and actors were immensely popular. If you’ve never seen a serial, in complete form it would look a lot like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and there’s a reason for that—Steven Spielberg fell in love with serials when he was young and deliberately set about to make a modern version.

The plot of The Manhunt of Mystery Island is a bit convoluted to summarize here. Let’s just say it involves a scientist, a pirate, bodyshifting, and lots of fights. Or, by way of summation, consider its alternate title: Captain Mephisto and the Transformation Machine. Sounds good, right? The version we saw was back in the late 90s on VHS, but we remember it well and recommend it highly. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1945.