Party Selvaggio, aka The Wild Party, is an interesting attempt to capture the decadence and glamour of 1920s Hollywood. The screenplay is based on a Joseph Moncure March poem, which in turn is loosely based on the infamous Fatty Arbuckle scandal of 1921. In brief, Arbuckle was accused of sodomizing an actress named Virginia Rappe with a bottle, an act which led to her death due to a ruptured bladder. No such thing happened, but sensational news reports portrayed Arbuckle as a fat lecher who routinely used his bulk to overpower helpless women. These fairy tales proliferated to the extent that morality groups—which were about as restrained and reasonable back then as they are now—were calling for Arbuckle to be put to death. He was acquitted at trial, but his reputation, career, and life were destroyed. In Party Selvagggio, the Arbuckle role is played by James Coco, who decides to throw a bash for major Hollywood players in hopes of revitalizing his ailing career. Unfortunately, the shindig goes horribly wrong. Coco earned some praise for his portrayal, but the star of the film is really Raquel Welch. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say she’s the draw. The poster lists her second but places her image front and center, and she gets top billing in the official trailer. This was Welch stepping away from overtly sexual roles and being given a chance to act, which we mentioned was her driving ambition during the mid-point of her career. So how did she do? Well, despite the presence of legends-to-be Merchant-Ivory in the producer-director roles, this is a party you can miss. Welch gives her all in what is essentially a musical role, but the film never strikes the right chords. Don’t you just love this Italian poster, though? Party Selvaggio opened in Italy this month in 1973. 

This evocative poster is for the 1975 thriller Perversione, which was originally made in Spain as La encadenada, and for its U.S. release was retitled Diary of a Murderess, or Diary of an Erotic Murderess. Spoiler alert: there’s a murderess in this film. Marisa Mell is nurse to a rich widower’s mentally disturbed son, but she turns out to be a grifter intent on liberating some of the family knick-knacks. She's especially covetous of an antique chalice that resides in a safe. At some point, she finds a diary left behind by the widower’s dead wife, and in its pages the departed plots the murder of her husband, writing her plan in helpful step-by-step detail. Mell decides follow the diary’s instructions, all the better to get hold of that chalice.

But nothing is as it seems here. The chalice is actually the Holy Grail, Mell has actually failed to ditch her terrible husband, and a few other surprises pop up to keep viewers guessing. Director Manuel Mur Oti has crafted an atmospheric piece here, but we recommend it for giallo fans only, because it’s a bit slow off the starting line. Also, we suggest watching the original version, because we’ve heard that the American cut is several minutes short on nudity. It may not matter though, because the movie may be impossible to find. We located our copy online, but the links have since died. Not that we’re recommending any illegal downloading. Us? Never. Perversione premiered in Italy today in 1975. Below, just because we can, we’ve posted an image of Mell at her lovely best, and you can see another one of great interest here. 

This is one side of a chirashi, or two-sided mini-poster, for Gerard Damiano’s 1977 porno flick Water Power, with Sharon Mitchell and Jamie Gillis. Like most chirashi, it features art produced especially for the Japanese market, which makes it highly collectible (assuming you actually dare to collect porn posters). The image doesn’t really read as erotic to us, but then neither does the movie—enemas, yuck. But hey, if you’re into that sort of thing, we don’t judge. Whatever floats your butt. We’ve taken a photo of the reverse side of the poster, below, and we also had a more conventional Japanese Water Power poster, and we threw that in just for the fun of it. The film had its Japanese premiere in Tokyo today in 1980. Side note: we snagged a pile of these chirashi with no idea what movies they were for, and once we found out they were for pornos decided not to post them. But now we’ve changed our minds because the images are interesting, after all. So look for more of these down the line. 

Above, two Japanese posters for Sonny Chiba’s crime thriller Yakuza deka, aka The Assassin, aka Gangster Cop, 1970. 

Above, an excellent pulp style promo poster for the West German thriller Der Satan lockt mit Liebe. The film’s title was translated literally into Satan Tempts with Love for some of its English language releases, but it became better known internationally as Devil’s Choice. In the former Yugoslavia, where this piece originates, it was called Davo mami s ljubavju. The movie starred the beautiful British actress Belinda Lee, who died almost exactly one year later in a horrific car accident while traveling from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Lee wasn’t driving. She and two other passengers had left that duty to Alet Nino Falenza, who was racing along at approximately 100 mph when the car suffered a blowout. It skidded nine-hundred feet before finally flipping, sending Lee, who had not worn a seat belt, sailing more than 60 feet from the wreck. She was the only fatality. The shot of her below dates from 1955. Der Satan lockt mit Liebe premiered in West Germany today in 1960. 

More random Japanese goodness today. This is a poster for the 1962 Angie Dickinson romance Jessica. We’re showing you this just for the art, which is to say we haven’t seen the movie. Sorry about that, but we have a lot of Japanese posters, which means if we wait until we see each flick before uploading them we’ll never get them all online. This is an image we were particularly eager to share because, one, we’ve never seen it anywhere before, and two, it’s spectacular. It just smashes the American poster to pieces. But that’s normal when it comes to these Japanese promos. Both versions feature Angie on a scooter, but the colors and graphics on the photoillustrated Japanese version just scintillate. Of course, they have an advantage because their alphabet looks so cool. The text actually does read “Jessica” by the way. The four characters on the right are the Japanese for that name. The four on the left say “nice.” We couldn’t agree more. 

This colorful poster for Masaru Konuma’s sexual drama Nureta tsubo, aka Wet Vase, aka Wet Tattooed Vagina, depicts star Naomi Tani in a tableau taken directly from the movie. In the scene, Tani becomes sexually aroused by watching a man perform oral sex on a mannequin. Tani is ashamed and embarrassed at first, but the guy just keeps at it until she basically collapses in an overstimulated heap. It’s really a beautifully shot scene that by itself is worth the price of renting the flick, in our opinion. Nureta tsubo is part of Nikkatsu’s roman porno stable, but it’s an atypical example—at least, it seems so to us. There are fewer of the extravagances one might expect from a film starring Japan’s Queen of S&M. But that doesn’t mean it’s conservative—on the contrary, it’s plenty kinky. We mentioned that mannequin licking thing, right? See for yourself. We’ve posted some screen grabs from that amazing scene below. Nureta tsubo opened in Japan this month in 1976. 

As Cool and the Crazy opened, we thought the lesson was that cool was acceptable but crazy was what happened when you crossed the line. It quickly became clear that cool and crazy are synonymous, with both terms meaning that you’re beyond the pale, i.e. basically fucked. Lead actor Scott Marlowe plays Bennie Saul, and he’s both cool and crazy. The crazy part is clear, because he’s an M dealer (“M” being hepcat-speak for marijuana). He deals because he owes a big-time criminal lots of money, and the only way he can repay his debt is to get his buddies hooked on the M.

He decides to approach the task methodically. He starts with one member of his crew. This is where the cool comes in. He seduces the guy into trying it, then stands by and smirks as the poor fella tries to crawl between the grain on a wooden table. Later the same hapless chump dances with a bus stop sign as if it’s a woman, demonstrating his underlyingloneliness. Yes, Fred Astaire danced with a coat stand in Royal Wedding, and it was cute, but this bus stop sign dance is edgy stuff, highly disturbing. We hear that in the unrated version of the scene the character sexually assaults a merge sign because it was really asking for it.

Anyway, in the subplot, brooding delinquent-in-waiting Jackie Barzan meets a girl, which is only possible because he’s cool, but not yet crazy. Like Brando in The Wild One. The girl, Amy, is neither cool nor crazy. She’s warm and totally sane, with big, soulful eyes that drip redemption. Like Mary Murphy in The Wild One. While in Amy’s house one day, Jackie starts handling a ceramic bauble and Amy tells him to putit down, because it’s extremely valuable and irreplaceable. So, she’s sane, but stupid. She should know, via the Moviemaking 101 Handbook, that when an expensive bauble is handled, it will later be stolen or broken.

So, back we go to signdancer, who by now is so hooked on the M that he’s going to lose his mind if he doesn’t partake every day. The problem is he’s already spent his entire net worth. So, being a good friend but a terrible boyfriend, Jackie steals Amy’s priceless trinket to sell for more evil M, but he accidentally breaks it. Conveniently, this happens right in front of Amy, and rather than rat out his buddy, Jackie pretends to be hooked on the M himself. He whines, “You don’t know what it’s like when you’re hooked on the smoke, Amy! It’s the worst! Just the worst! When you’re hooked… you’re hooked!”

Later Jackie… actually, you know what? Let’s just yank the ripcord and end this agonizing freefall. You’ve got better things to do, right? We’ll summarize by saying that in mid-century drug movies all roads lead to either the nuthouse or a fiery wreck. That’s poor Bennie Saul in there, below, no longer cool. But he doesn’t charbroil in vain. His deathserves to reform Jackie, and perhaps even give him a shot to get back with Amy, who may be out one priceless tchotchke, but never runs dry of forgiveness.

As bad as Cool and the Crazy was, it’s an informative example of mid-century drug hysteria. All it needed was an ending voiceover: “And so Bennie Saul, rather than working hard and staying on the straight and narrow like a good American, took a shortcut that led to the graveyard. But while it’s too late for Bennie Saul, it isn’t for the rest of you out there. Play by the rules, obey the law, pay your taxes, and all your money will eventually be given away to a bunch of criminal bankers in something called a bailout.” Well, that last bit probabaly wouldn’t be in there. Maybe in the remake though. Cool and the Crazy opened in the U.S. this month in 1958. 

This excellent vintage poster is for the Italian nunsploitation flick Interno di un covento, which was known in English as, alternately, Within a Cloister, Within the Convent, and Behind Covent Walls. So, what exactly goes on behind convent walls? Well, they have lots of sex. With each other and with whatever men happen to be around. And they exercise naked a lot. Well, almost naked. They never take off those cornettes, no matter what, but everything else is on display, including some really lovely bushes. All of this depravity is the work of Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, working from a novel—a novel!—by the French writer Stendhal, aka Marie-Henri Beyle. But we’re giving Borowczyk most of the credit, er, blame here, because we don’t think Stendhal had a scene in his book where a nun devirginized herself with a Jesus-faced dildo. What’s the plot here? It isn’t important. The question is, what’s the point? Well, we’re talking about a movie made in Italy, so the point seems to have been to annoy the very powerful Catholic Church. Mission wholly accomplished, we suspect. We gotta say though, we have never gotten this fascination with nuns. But if that’s your thing, then this is your movie. It premiered in Italy today in 1978. We have a few screen shots below, and if you just can’t get enough nunnage, check out this amusing post. 

Above are nine vintage Japanese pinku posters from our large collection, for films featuring that scourge of evil men everywhere—Reiko Ike. These are circa 1971 to 1974, and they are, top to bottom, 1: Sukeban burûsu: Mesubachi no gyakushû, aka Girl Boss Blues: Queen Bee’s Counterattack; 2 & 3: Sukeban: Taiman shobu, aka, Girl Boss: Mano a Mano; 4: Black Leopard M (we don’t know the Japanese title for that one); 5 & 6: Kyôfu joshikôkô: bôkô rinchi kyôshitsu, aka Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom; 7: a rare and valuable round poster for Sukeban, aka Girl Boss Revenge; 8: Sukeban gerira, aka Girl Boss Guerilla; 9: Furyo bancho: Norainu kidotai, aka Wolves of the City: Alley Dog Commando.

A quick word about the last one: that is Reiko Ike on the poster, with a machine gun at lower right. We’ve seen this debated on a couple of websites, but there’s no debate—it’s her, beauty mark next to her mouth and all. Besides, her name is on the poster, left column, fifth line. We’ll have more Reiko Ike posters down the line (no, we haven’t run out yet), and we’ll upload promos from other pinku stars as well. To see our entire Reiko Ike collection, click here. Also, we still have some very provocative posters of pinku stars Miki Sugimoto, Naomi Tani, Meg Flower and others that have never appeared online before, as far as we know. We promise we will get those up soon-ish.