Vintage Pulp | Feb 10 2016 |
Vintage Pulp | Dec 28 2015 |
Above is another issue of the NYC based tabloid Keyhole, this one published today in 1972, and it's the fifth we’ve scanned and shared. British model Susan Shaw, a constant presence in 1970s tabs, puts in another appearance here along with centerfold Barbara Stand. So how does one pick up younger women when one is over forty, as the cover asks? Various experts agree—don’t try to act like a kid, be self-confident, and aim for women around age thirty because they're often willing to look at guys ten years or more older. Seems reasonable enough. But on the other hand, if you can’t figure those things out without a cheapie tabloid’s help we suspect you’re destined to screw up in myriad other ways. See more from Keyhole at our tabloid index, located here.
Vintage Pulp | Feb 22 2015 |
Above, the cover and many scans from Keyhole magazine published today in 1973. The editors push the envelope a bit in this issue with their glorification of under-17 sex, but as always, the content is just fiction spiced up with photos of a few semi-famous glamour models—all well into adulthood—including Susan Shaw, who was a regular in Keyhole’s pages. We have several more issues of thus unique publication and you can find them in our handy tabloid index by following this link.
Vintage Pulp | Jan 11 2015 |
The uniquely sleazy ’70s tabloid Keyhole returns to our website with this issue that hit newsstands today in 1973, filled as always with x-rated fiction in the guise of investigative journalism, and just in time to warm the cockles of male readers’ winter-chilled hearts. Do you know when you’ve got a good tabloid on your hands? When your girlfriend takes a look at the cover, says, “Mouth master, huh?” rolls her eyes, and walks away. Yes, Keyhole has the aforementioned ninja of oral arts Vicci Labist, who wistfully describes embarking on her journey to fellative expertise when she was required—for a gang initiation, no less—to go down on nineteen guys at once.
Later in the issue we meet a group of radicals that have developed an orgy bomb (in gas form, amusingly), we’re introduced to resident seer Ixion and his Love-O-Scope, we get to know a hooker who demands that her customers get their penises tattooed with her name, and we hear from a stewardess whose last Middle Eastern layover involved a horny sheik and a pliant slave boy. And that’s the tame stuff. We have some scans below and more coming from Keyhole later. If you’re interested in the issues we’ve already posted (or in any of hundreds of tabloids), click over to our handy index at this link. Just remember that looking through Keyhole is bad for your eyesight.
Vintage Pulp | Dec 21 2014 |
Sex Files | Aug 21 2014 |
Aside from the fact that it alone among all its competitors printed covers (and centerfolds) in full color, Keyhole Confidential represents close to the rock bottom of seventies newsprint tabloids. It’s an amalgam of stories so perverted it’s a wonder every surviving issue hasn’t been gathered up and hurled into an industrial incinerator. From its contention that Spanish equestriennes have sex with their horses to the ruminations of “Dr. Dyke,” this thing is toxic from front to back.
Its parent company, Keyhole Publishing Corp., churned this out after its first paper Keyhole became a moderate success. Though the publications were basically the same, Keyhole ran for years where Keyhole Confidential seems to have died almost immediately. We’ll see if we can find out more, but it may be difficult because at the moment plugging the name into search engines brings up only one hit—Pulp Intl. Seems we’re the only people silly enough to have ever bought and scanned an issue. Well, now we’ve done it twice. We have fourteen images below, another issue here, and an issue of Keyhole at this link.
Vintage Pulp | Sex Files | Jan 16 2012 |
In our continuing search for rare magazines of high entertainment value (if sometimes dubious quality), we stumbled across the above gem—the first issue of the self-described sexploitation film graphic Flick. Published in the U.S. out of Libertyville, Illinois, it was basically just reviews of x-rated films in tabloid form. The publishers admit in their introductory editorial that the tabloid market is glutted, but insist America needs a magazine that helps porn consumers separate the wheat from the chaff. They do it with utter seriousness and, as a bonus, also throw in some musings on film history, with discussions of Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Theda Bara, Jean Harlow, and Hedy Lamarr, who all had pre-Hays Code flirtations with screen nudity.
It might be difficult to imagine actors appearing nude on screen during the 1920s and 1930s, but the idea back then was that, because the medium was considered an art form, motion picture nudity was no different from nudity in sculpture, photography or painting. Theda Bara's and Jean Harlow’s screen nudity was merely implied, but Hedy Lamarr went all the way in her 1933 Czech-made romance Ekstase, aka Ecstasy, in which she ran starkers through the woods, giving audiences a gander at her backside and breasts. She was known at the time as Hedy Kiesler, but it’s her.
There’s also a non-nude love scene containing what some critics believe is the first cinematic depiction of an orgasm. As you can imagine, Ekstase was controversial. Only four-hundred prints were ever made, and most of those were butchered by censors. By the 1940s, the only complete copy known to exist was in Russia. It had first been Hungarian property and had been exhibited in Budapest in ’33, but because the Hungarians had fought alongside Nazi Germany and helped conquer swaths of Russian territory in the early 1940s, when the Russians reversed those gains and occupied Budapest in 1944, they sort of helped themselves to a few choice cultural treasures.
Elsewhere in this inaugural Flick you get reviews of the adult films A Hard Man’s Good To Get, Sisters in Leather, College Girls, and Jack Hill’s first full-length effort Mondo Keyhole. The editors remind readers that their magazine is a collector’s item. At the time—January 1970—they probably imagined it would be quite valuable in forty-one years. Well, we got it for $4.00. But just for the hell of it, maybe we’ll hang onto it for another forty-one years. You never know. By the way, if you’re curious, you can actually see that famous Hedy Lamarr nude scene here. It is not a complete version, though. We doubt a complete one exists. See ten scans from Flick below.
Vintage Pulp | Sep 28 2011 |
Today we have another addition to our massive collection of tabloids. It's called Keyhole and it's the parent publication of Keyhole Confidential, which we shared a while back. This issue appeared today in 1972, and some of it is just cringe-inducing to read. For instance, in the cover story “Man Rapes Own Wife” we’re told a married man wanted to have one last fling before settling down and being a good husband. So he decided to rape a random beautiful woman, but in a dark alley mistakenly attacked his own wife. We’re supposed to chortle over this mix-up after having equated the concept “fling” with the act “rape”. That just ain’t right. Yet Keyhole sold well for years—at least nine, if the designation vol. 9, issue 24 is any indication. Can you imagine what the typical Keyhole reader was like? Actually, let's not go down that road—the image is just too frightening. Fourteen interior scans below, and oh so many more tabloids coming.
Sex Files | Jun 24 2011 |
Below, some scans from the debut issue of the low rent American tabloid Keyhole Confidential, sister publication to Keyhole, published out of New York City, June 1972. This is pretty much the Maxim of ’70s tabs, i.e. its minimal text content is especially designed to appeal to people who hate reading. The centerfold is Uschi Digard, posing as Mabel Partree. More on this one later.
Intl. Notebook | Nov 15 2009 |
Inside News was yet another low rent, late-’60s/early-’70s tabloid, like the National Examiner, Keyhole, Midnight and others, that basically printed fiction in the guise of investigative journalism. In a race to the bottom of the market, Inside News focused on sex, the outrage of homosexuality, the outrage of sex associated with drug use, the outrage of sex between whites and blacks, and rape—which they presented not as an outrage, but as titillation. The example above, published today in 1970, is typical. She was raped, but she was a stripper, therefore here she is in a bikini, and boy howdy, it’s pretty easy to see why she was raped, isn’t it? Of course, the report is 100% fabricated, and it’s possible some readers of Inside News even suspected as much. But since it was ideas being sold, rather than literal truth, we can see with the clarity of years that what we have here is a magazine catering to a readership fearful about the direction of the times—i.e. sexual liberation and racial equality. We have two or three more issues of Inside News, but we’re searching for more. We’ll share them as we find them.