Pulp International - Beverly+Garland

Apr 1 2020

No time to wallow in the mire.

Above is a poster for the Roger Corman produced b-movie Swamp Women, which starred Marie Windsor, Carole Matthews, Beverly Garland, and Mike Connors, the latter acting under the name Touch Connors. Connors was Armenian-American and thought—correctly, we suspect—that his real name Krekor Ohanian wasn't going to help his show business career. He accumulated at least twenty credits as Touch Connors before he jettisoned it and eventually became the guy everyone remembers from the cop show Mannix.

In Swamp Women Connors plays an oil prospector boating around the Louisiana bayou who stumbles across a group of escaped female convicts searching for a stash of diamonds. Among their number is an undercover police woman charged with finding the stones and apprehending the group. It's fully as ridiculous as it sounds, and with Corman at the helm you know it's cheap, too. Plus this was only his fourth full directing gig. But we give him credit—he really made his cast slog through the Louisiana mire, which means you get realism to offset the use of stock footage.

The thing about Corman is that he always did more with less. But despite his particular set of skills, the script here hamstrings any attempt at making a decent flick. As an example of what we mean, Mike Connors doesn't go into the swamp alone. He takes his girlfriend with him, and she's eaten by an alligator. Hours later he's smooching the undercover policewoman. Not as part of a ruse or escape attempt. Just because he digs her. His girlfriend was a gold digging pain in the ass, but still, you'd think seeing her ripped to pieces would cool his ardor. But they don't call him Touch Connors for nothing. Plenty more fish in the bayou.

If you look on Wikipedia Swamp Women is classified as a film noir. That's purely comical. It's a proto-exploitation flick along the lines of what American International Pictures would routinely do fifteen years later with more skin and better efx. By the time the swamp women finally reach the site of the hidden diamonds and dig up a box, you'll be hoping they open it and find a new script and more investment money. But no such luck. Corman would do better later. Windsor, Matthews, and Garland had done better in the past. That's show business—one day you're at the top, the next you're sinking in the bog. Swamp Women premiered in the U.S. today in 1956.

Armenia Louisiana Swamp Women Mannix Krekor Ohanian Mike Connors Touch Connors Marie Windsor Carole Matthews Beverly Garland poster art cinema television movie review

Vintage Pulp

Nov 15 2019

We knew Amazon working conditions were terrible, but now there's a monster too?

This is a brilliant Belgian poster for a terrible U.S. monster movie originally called Curucu, Beast of the Amazon, about plantation workers who are being terrorized by a horrible creature—possibly Jeff Bezos. Considering the low pay, hard work, and lack of bathroom breaks, the workers should have gone on strike long before the monster showed up. Unfortunately, before they can get organized the man in charge materializes to set everything straight. That would be John Bromfield, armed with a machete and a strong sense of entitlement, while Not of This Earth's Beverly Garland plays a scientist wandering the same patch of jungle looking for a miracle drug.

You'll need a miracle drug too, if you plan to watch this flick—we recommend mescaline. But really, you don't even have to watch it, because the poster covers all the salient plot points—Garland is attacked by a big rubber snake, Bromfield is attacked by a big stuffed leopard, they get tied up at one point but escape, and the villain dangles some shrunken heads at them before ending up one himself. Rapacious capitalism is saved again. The movie was called Curuçu sorcier de l'Amazone in French and Tovenaar van de Amazone in Dutch. There's no known Belgian premiere date for it, but it opened in the U.S. in late 1956 and probably reached Belgium in the middle of 1957.

Curucu Beast of the Amazon John Bromfield Beverly Garland poster art cinema movie review

Vintage Pulp

Feb 10 2019

Hi there. Is this planet taken?

Above is an iconic poster for Roger Corman's sci-fi thriller Not of This Earth, about an alien in human form who is beamed to Earth through a matter transmitter and enacts a scheme to be transfused with human blood. If he derives the hoped for benefits from these transfusions, his entire dying race will come to Earth, in what you might call an interstellar migrant caravan, only rather than fleeing danger and finding good paying jobs their intent is to enslave humanity and steal its blood. This film is one of the all-time cheeseball classics, well worth a viewing, especially when accompanied by drinks and friends. And it's just about 70 minutes long, which is a nice bonus. The poster art, which is the entire point of this post, is by Albert Kallis, one of the great American movie artists. More from him later, or if you prefer, more of his unearthly talent now. Not of This Earth premiered in the U.S. today in 1957.

I'm getting some really high readings on this. We better try the rectal thermometer.

I don't have a rectum, baby. But I have a rection. That's the word in Earthtongue right?

Sure, he wanted to enslave humanity. But it felt good to be wanted.

Not of This Earth Paul Birch Beverly Garland Roger Corman Albert Kallis poster art cinema sci-fi movie review

Intl. Notebook

Mar 22 2018

Clearly they have consent issues.

Monsters may be horrible but you can't fault their taste. To borrow a line from one of their number, they're automatically attracted to beautiful. It's like a magnet. We wonder if it's possible their need is an unconscious manifestation of the id of male Hollywood screenwriters. Or were the writers deliberately making commentaries about male power, nuclear paranoia, and environmental degradation? Well, those are questions for smarter people than us. We take monsters at face value. Maybe that's not what we mean—some don't even have proper faces. What we mean is we judge them as individuals. Most monsters are direct, like Pongo, above, trying to impress Maris Wrixon in the 1945 movie White Pongo, while some, on the other claw, are more circumspect. But the language barrier usually sabotages their delicate efforts. “I know an independently owned café that serves a killer macchiato,” comes out as a series of glottal grunts. “I loved La La Land too and I think the naysayers are mainly joyless jazz purists,” comes out as a sustained sodden hiss. Even if these vocalizations could give a true indication of the inner depths of a monster's personality, women generally wouldn't give them a shot anyway, because despite what they say, looks really do matter. What's a monster to do?

This Island Earth, with Faith Domergue.