 For British movie lovers Continental Film Review was their ticket across the English Channel. 
Continental Film Review was first published—as far as we can discern—in November 1952. We decided on that month because we saw a copy from February 1953 numbered Vol. 1 Issue 4, and the masthead said the magazine was published the first week of every month. CFR would go on to become one of Britain's most popular film magazines, exposing English language readers to the wide variety of foreign movies being made across continental Europe. The above issue appeared this month in 1966 with cover star Maria Pia Conte, and numerous film personalities inside, including Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Bates, Rossana Podesta, Evi Marandi, and more. We have other issues we'll get around to sharing at some point. In the meantime see more here, here, here, and here.                    
 Olivia Pascal heads to Hong Kong and cockfighting breaks out all around her. 
This nice hand-painted and hand-lettered Belgian poster was made for the movie Vanessa, which starred German actress Olivia Pascal in the time-honored tale of a smokin' hot woman raised in a convent and suddenly loosed upon the world. Pascal is informed that her last relative has died and willed her a fantastic fortune. This relative lived in Hong Kong, so she heads there to check it out and discovers not only that the island is awash in sex, sin, and dark magic, but that her inheritance takes the form of ownership of several wildly successful bordellos. The twist here, if it qualifies, is that even though this is your basic softcore sexual awakening film, the main character never actually gets laid. She gets whipped, though, if you're into that sort of thing. Best dialogue in the movie: “Will you excuse me for a moment? Those are real fighting cocks.” As you might guess, cocks of an entirely different kind fight over Pascal, who was a big bonus in the film Griechische Feigen, aka The Fruit Is Ripe, and here spends substantial portions of the film naked, joined by luminaries like Eva Eden, Uschi Zech, and—wait for it—Astrid Boner. We're not making that last one up. We're also not recommending the movie, but Pascal gets highest marks.         
 Miss France runs into a world of problems. 
Beauty pageants are sexual events. Let’s not debate it. Despite claims by many that they’re merely a celebration of health, beauty, and talent, they provoke a subtly sexual reaction, a bit like the foot rubs in the film Pulp Fiction. To quote Vincent Vega: “We act like they don’t, but they do. There’s a sensuous thing going on where you don’t talk about it, but you know it.” Isabelle Chaudieu certainly must have known it. She won the title of Miss France today in 1984, four days before her eighteenth birthday. Unfortunately for pageant organizers, she had already posed nude for a professional photographer. The French magazine Lui bought the photos, paired them with shots of Chaudieu in her pageant regalia, and splashed them inside its February 1985 issue. In France as elsewhere magazines hit the newsstands a bit earlier than their official publication date, which led to Chaudieu being stripped of her title on the 31st of January 1985 and being replaced by runner-up Carole Tredille.  Beauty pageants are falling out of favor. There's no doubt of that. More people are beginning to understand our original point that they’re basically sexual in nature. This isn’t because such people have dirty minds. Reasonably speaking, when people see a woman parade up and down in a bathing suit they aren’t imagining her swimming the 200 meter butterfly—they’re imagining her peeling out of the suit and performing the Venus butterfly. Sex is the reason every one of us came into being and is the main goal, biologically speaking, of all our lives. It’s just plain silly to expect people not to be reminded of it. And pageant organizers know their product does exactly that, which is why they punish women like Chaudieu, Vanessa Williams, and others for displaying themselves as sexual beings. It’s toweringly hypocritical, but also understandable in the sense that they’re desperate to protect a highly profitable product. The photo we’ve shared below of Chaudieu showing off her body as well as her 10,000 megawatt smile didn’t come from her Lui layout but rather from one of the many later sessions she did after deciding to make a career of glamour modeling. She wasn’t the first Miss France to be dethroned because of nude pictures. In 1983 Isabelle Turpault was defrocked for photos published by Paris Match. And interestingly, Chaudieu’s replacement performed in hardcore porn under the name Tenessy after her reign as Miss France. Chaudieu had cinematic ambitions as well, but of the mainstream variety. She appeared in Gwendoline, aka The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak, but that was her only screen credit. After a few years posing for men’s magazines she disappeared from the public eye, and today a person who was once the most famous—or notorious—in France, doesn’t even have a French Wikipedia page.
 Don't you even go there. 
Here’s a nice piece of promo art for the x-rated film The Journey of O, with Vanessa Jorson, better known as Clair Dia, and the legendary Georgina Spelvin, circa 1975. If you look around the web you can probably find a torrent of this one, which is perhaps appropriate, since the original edit contained some peeing scenes—and we do mean actor-on-actor, not actor-in-toilet. Too much information? Hey, we’re just doing our jobs. Since finding two Mafé posters we highlighted a couple of weeks ago, we’ve started really checking out x-rated art, and the stories behind the productions are often quite interesting. At some point after O’s initial release the pee scenes were cut and more sex was edited in, resulting in a disjointed, but infinitely more pleasing film. That means the wet version isn’t readily available, as a download or otherwise (in light of this discussion, the word “download” just sounds dirty, doesn’t it?). Anyway, they say it never rains in Southern California, but it did today, when The Journey of O made its Los Angeles debut.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1927—Mae West Sentenced to Jail
American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West's considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy. 1971—Manson Sentenced to Death
In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed. 1923—Yankee Stadium Opens
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House that Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It is eventually replaced by a new Yankee Stadium and closes in September 2008. 1961—Bay of Pigs Invasion Is Launched
A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection.
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