 In the land of bad men the one eyed woman becomes queen 
Above is a promo poster for the Swedish sexploitation flick Thriller - en grym film. When it was released in the U.S. it was retitled Thriller: A Cruel Picture, then edited and given the revised name They Call Her One Eye, and still later dubbed Hooker's Revenge, which we think gives a bit too much away. But what do we know? It's not like we have marketing degrees. Anyway, the poster above for the film's Thriller incarnation has an unusual shape sometimes referred to as subway size because such promos were usually displayed on mass transit vehicles. There are other sizes and orientations of promos for this film, and we'll probably show you a few of those later just for the sake of completeness.
Sweden's best export Christina Lindberg stars here as a Frigga, a young woman gone mute due to a sexual assault in her youth. Terrible luck strikes again when, as an adult, she's abducted, addicted to heroin, and forced into prostitution. She resists, but after she harms a customer her pimp punishes her by cutting her eye out with a scalpel. After enduring further indignities she eventually musters the courage to try and escape. Heroin addiction is the leash her pimp counts on to keep her in line, but she's otherwise free to use her down time as she wishes. With the little money she has she secretly buys lessons in martial arts, shooting, and tactical driving, then when the moment is ripe she finally goes on a revenge spree.
There's nothing here you won't find in other 1970s revenge sexploitation flicks except lots of slo-mo, but for Lindberg's fans—among them Quentin Tarantino, who borrowed the eyepatch look for Daryl Hannah when he made Kill Bill—this is probably a must-see. As a side note, you'll sometimes find Lindberg referenced as a porn actress because of this movie. BAV Film made two versions, one with x-rated inserts and one without. The explicit stuff was done by a stand-in. Or a lay-in. In an interview Lindberg once said the hardest part of her career was resisting the constant pressure to do porn. We suspect this was a film she had in mind. After premiering in France at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973, Thriller: A Cruel Picture first opened eyes in the U.S. today in 1974.                 
 1982 vision of a wrecked future gets better with time. 
Did we already mention that the Blade Runner sequel will suck? We did, we think, and then expounded upon Ridley Scott’s fiasco Prometheus. But Blade Runner is an undisputed classic, one of our favorite films, part of a top ten that includes for us Casablanca, Chinatown, Altered States (and a few non-pulp movies such as Dazed and Confused). It’s worth noting that the movie wasn’t well reviewed upon release. Critics have slowly upgraded their opinions over time to the point where Blade Runner now has one of the highest ratings you’ll find. The upgrades are nice, but it’s kind of funny how far over critics’ heads the movie went at the time. It premiered in June 1982, and first showed in France today the same year. The French promo poster isn’t wonderful, and that’s why below we have a collection of every still we could find in order to celebrate the watershed event of Blade Runner’s creation. These augment the promos we’ve already shared here, and here. Now let’s just hope they scrap that sequel. Update: Okay, the sequel was actually pretty good—but Scott didn't direct it.
                                            
 Will murder for food. 
Ridley Scott’s sci-fi noir Blade Runner is now thirty-one years old, though its vision of a wrecked future still looks new. Studio meddling harmed the initial release, but once Scott was able to recut the film without the jarring narration and tacked on blue sky/beaming sun ending, the movie finally took its true, brilliant form. A Blade Runner sequel to be directed by Scott is in the works, but that isn’t good news. His incoherent Alien prequel Prometheus proved once and for all that big budget movies in Hollywood—even those guaranteed to be huge hits—must above all else be predictable lest 0.1% of their potential audience be turned off. Blade Runner took risks. Its sequel will not. Don't even bother hoping it will—you know better. But whatever happens we’ll always have the original. This amazing promo image of Daryl Hannah in character as the homicidal (and gymnastic) Pris symbolizes its genius.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1914—RMS Empress Sinks
Canadian Pacific Steamships' 570 foot ocean liner Empress of Ireland is struck amidships by a Norwegian coal freighter and sinks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives. Submerged in 130 feet of water, the ship is so easily accessible to treasure hunters who removed valuables and bodies from the wreck that the Canadian government finally passes a law in 1998 restricting access. 1937—Chamberlain Becomes Prime Minister
Arthur Neville Chamberlain, who is known today mainly for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938 which conceded the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany and was supposed to appease Adolf Hitler's imperial ambitions, becomes prime minister of Great Britain. At the time Chamberlain is the second oldest man, at age sixty-eight, to ascend to the office. Three years later he would give way to Winston Churchill. 1930—Chrysler Building Opens
In New York City, after a mere eighteen months of construction, the Chrysler Building opens to the public. At 1,046 feet, 319 meters, it is the tallest building in the world at the time, but more significantly, William Van Alen's design is a landmark in art deco that is celebrated to this day as an example of skyscraper architecture at its most elegant. 1969—Jeffrey Hunter Dies
American actor Jeffrey Hunter dies of a cerebral hemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs and sustaining a skull fracture, a mishap precipitated by his suffering a stroke seconds earlier. Hunter played many roles, including Jesus in the 1961 film King of Kings, but is perhaps best known for portraying Captain Christopher Pike in the original Star Trek pilot episode "The Cage".
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