| Vintage Pulp | Nov 24 2022 |
Southwest Florida gets obliterated but most of the wreckage is human in MacDonald disaster drama.
The three weather based thrillers we've discussed—A Town Is Drowning, Tropical Disturbance, and Death at Flood Tide—represent a minor fraction of the total in mid-century fiction. It's no surprise, then, that an author as prolific as John D. MacDonald also tested the waters. Murder in the Wind, also known as Hurricane, came in 1956 during the more fertile, less censorious period for MacDonald, and presents readers with a disparate selection of people who all hole up in an abandoned house during a hurricane named Hilda. Eventually the house is swept away entirely, but the story is never less than solidly grounded and engrossing. If your time is limited you might skip this one in favor of The Damned, which is a close cousin, conceptually speaking, but otherwise Murder in the Wind is a necessary read. You get all the fulfillment you'd want from a disaster drama.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 22 2022 |
Hey, handsome! Ever get tired of all the uncertainty about how a date's going to end?
We finally got hold of one of our favorite George Gross covers. He put together this masterpiece for Harmon Bellamy's Pick-Up, published by Quarter Books in 1949, and everything works here—the colors, the framing, the pose, and the cool urban mood. Some of these digests have photo-illustrations inside, but not this one. It does have an ad on the inside front cover, which is below. We've seen this book go for more than two hundred dollars, but ours cost twenty. That makes for a fine day around the palatial Pulp Intl. metroplex.
Amusingly, the cover has nothing to do with the narrative, nor does the title. What happens is a seventeen-year-old girl named Lois Deane runs away to New York City, is immediately hit by a car, and wakes up in the hospital. The guy who hit her discerns her meager circumstances and gets her a job working for and living with his family. Lois has lied to her hosts about who she is, and her deception eventually comes to light. There are no seedy or criminal aspects at all here—Bellamy has written a straightforward romantic drama. For its type, it's fine, though nothing special.
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 12 2022 |
Franco Picchioni is bad as in good.
Franco Picchioni's hits keep coming. Above is another cover from the respected Italian artist, this time for Georges H. Boskero's Il genio del male, number twenty-two in the crime series Il Cerchio Rosso from Edizioni MA-GA, 1965. The title translates to “evil genius.” In terms of Picchioni, we'll certainly go with genius. See more from him starting at this link.
ItalyEdizioni MA-GAIl Cerchio RossoGeorges H. BoskeroGeorges H. BosckeroGiorgio BoscheroFranco Picchionicover artliterature
| Vintage Pulp | Jul 4 2022 |
You'll really believe a girl boss can fly.
Above: an alternate poster for Document porno: Shin sukeban, which is a roman porno flick from Nikkatsu Studios that in English was called Semi Documentary: Truly High School Girl Boss. It premiered in Japan today in 1973. The poster is worth sharing mainly because it features a different—and more modest—martial arts kick than on the tateken promo we showed you before. What do we mean by more modest? Look here and find out.
JapanNikkatsuDocument porno: Shin sukebanSemi Documentary: Truly High School Girl BossKenji Miyakoposter artpinkuroman porno
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 22 2022 |
I'm sort of a paradox. I'm a terrible wife, but I'm incredible at everything that gets a woman a husband.
Above is a cover for Don Tracy's novel The Cheat, originally published as Criss-Cross in 1934, with this Lion edition coming in 1956 with Charles Copeland cover art. This is a good book, but if you're seeking artful prose you might as well keep looking. 1934 was early in the game for hard-boiled fiction. A few authors were doing visionary work but the form was still establishing its parameters. What attracted readers was that these were new types of stories—frank, violent, and centered around hard luck protagonists, ruthless villains, and women who were to varying degrees breathtakingly beautiful, sexually ravenous, and totally amoral.
The Cheat is about a boxer named Johnny Thompson. The Depression has drained the profit from boxing, so for the moment Johnny is an armored car guard, riding shotgun for payroll deliveries. He's occasionally going out with Anna, who's far too beautiful for the likes of him and mainly just likes to have money spent on her. Johnny doesn't have much of that, which means he has no real shot with Anna. He coasts along in financial and romantic limbo until Anna breaks his heart by suddenly marrying a neighborhood slickster named Slim Dundee.
So many of these pulp novels hinge upon sex, but it couldn't be explicitly stated. Tracy is fairly clear about it here, though. Johnny thinks he's ugly yet refuses to consort with women he considers to be of inadequate quality, so he's sexually inexperienced. He isn't a virgin, but it's been years since his first couple of sexual encounters. Anna is his unattainbale dream. He's never even kissed her, but her willingness to associate with him provided his life with hope. He lost that when she married, but she later shocks him by finally offering herself to him, vows be damned. We get a clear sense of what it means to Johnny:
I bit my knuckles thinking about it and how sweet—oh my God—it would be, but I wouldn't take it. [snip] Every hour was full of pictures of Anna. Anna as I'd seen her and Anna as I'd never seen her, but could if I went there the next night. Anna, naked. Anna, in my arms, looking up at me. I kept seeing her and feeling her body under me and her open mouth on my mouth.
So hot she makes him bite his knuckles. That's hot. Johnny virtually flogs himself, telling himself not to give in, not to betray Slim, not to accept Anna's baffling out-of-the-blue offer, but it's useless of course. He goes, she meets him at the door in a kimono and nothing else, his fuses all blow, and nature takes its course:
I remember sobbing, although I wasn't really crying, when the first deep contentment began to rub out the ache I'd had in me for so long.
Well, that gets to the point. And it's a point we've been making for years. These guys don't get into trouble because of mere sex. They get into trouble because of sex as they never imagined it could be—in this case sex that makes him “not really” cry. Yowsa. His reaction has largely to do with finally attaining what he thought he was not good enough to have, in effect validating his entire existence, but there's no doubt the heights of sheer physical pleasure bring it on too. We picture him drying his wet eyes with a corner of the sheet and telling Anna, “I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me.” Needless to say, he's hooked, and who wouldn't be?
During subsequent sessions Anna keeps her, ahem, guard up, and Johnny enjoys every moment, despite feelings of guilt for being a backstabber. Then comes the pivotal day when Slim approaches him with an idea to rob the armored car—with Johnny as the inside man. Anna is on board with the plan, so clearly if he refuses she might not let him be her inside man anymore. Where it goes from there we won't reveal. We'll only say that The Cheat overcomes its rudimentary feel and provides considerable entertainment, which is the next best thing to actually being well written. And for those who enjoy their crime thrillers with motion and sound, a pretty good movie was made of it in 1949. Chose either or both. You'll win regardless.
| Vintage Pulp | May 29 2022 |
Up the river and into trouble.
Vintage Belgian movie posters are generally very nice. This one was made for Congo Crossing, which was titled Carrefour des proscrits in French and Het Kruispunt der Bannelingen in Dutch. The movie isn't actually set in the Belgian Congo. Instead it takes place in a fictional west African territory called Kongotanga, where George Nader and Virginia Mayo find themselves snared in an adventure that's part Casablanca and part African Queen. Sounds good, right? You can read what we wrote about the film here. There's no premiere date for Belgium but it probably played there in the spring of 1957.
BelgiumHet Kruispunt der BannelingenCarrefour des proscritsCongo CrossingGeorge NaderVirginia MayoPeter Lorreposter artcinema
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 23 2022 |
If you think you'll get Bardot down the aisle you've got another think coming.
We meant to share this several days ago, but you know how that goes. It's a Belgian promo poster for Brigitte Bardot's Le bride sur le cou, with the Dutch title Met losse teugels in red just below the French. You might think, based on the French title, that the movie is about a bride, but that word, which has the same origin as the English word “bridle,” means “strap,” and the title translated would be, “the strap on the neck.” In Dutch, the title translates as, “with loose reins,” so that should make clear that the movie is actually about trying to control a wild Bardot. There's little chance of that, and wild is an understatement. She turns Paris upside down. In the U.S. the movie was released under the title, Please, Not Now! The poster is worth a share because it's built around a rare image of Bardot, and the movie is worth a watch because Bardot was a phenomenon. There's no known release date for Belgium, but probably it premiered there—this poster promotes showings at the Acropole Cinema in Brussels—in the spring of 1961.
FranceBelgiumBrusselsLe bride sur le couMet losse teugelsPlease Not Now!Brigitte Bardotposter artcinema
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 13 2022 |
You moved like they do. I've never seen anyone move that fast.
Usually when we share a foreign poster for a film it's because the foreign version is markedly better. The original poster for Bruce Lee's Hong Kong-produced martial arts thriller Tang shan da xiong is actually pretty nice, but the Matrix-like motion capture attempt on this Italian version is just too cool to ignore. In Italy the film was titled Il furore della Cina colpisce ancora, or “China's fury strikes again,” and the art is by Averado Ciriello. It's an inspired effort, which he almost equals on version two, at bottom. There are also two Japanese posters at this link, and it's here that we mention that the movie was titled in English The Big Boss and Fists (not Fist) of Fury.
Bruce Lee movies are not to be watched for their acting or complex plots, and the dialogue in this one is laugh-out-loud bad. The film is a morality play about Lee, an expert fighter, having promised his wise old uncle never to fight again because “violence is never the answer.” Of course he's immediately dropped into a pit of evil when his new job in an ice factory turns out to be a front for drug smuggling. His intervention in the racket comes exactly too late to help his cousin, who's murdered by the villains, but when he finally fights, it's with lightning quickness and almost mystical ability, as he lethally wades through hoards of baddies and cripples the smuggling enterprise single-handedly, or double-fistedly. Maybe violence is the answer after all.
But it isn't quite that easy. These traffickers didn't reach the top of the heap for nothing. Their continued commitment to violence demands that Lee either walk away or willingly descend into the same cycle. As always there's a final showdown with a crafty old karate master who pushes Lee to his limits. His moral progression from purity through temptation, corruption, shame, revenge, and consequences is cheesy but it's also very entertaining, and one thing is clear. He never needed digital help to dazzle the eye. He'd demonstrate his gifts in three more movies, then be gone, at the age of thirty-two, with his final film—his biggest hit Enter the Dragon—released posthumously. Tang shan da xiong premiered in Hong Kong in 1971 and reached Italy today in 1973.
ItalyHong KongTang shan da xiongThe Big BossFists of FuryBruce LeeMaria YiJames TienAverado Cirielloposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Mar 18 2022 |
She's a wolf in psycho's clothing.
The two posters you see above were made for the Italian movie La lupa mannara, known in English variously as Legend of the Wolf Woman, Werewolf Woman, and She-Wolf. You get more or less what you expect here. Annik Borel has nightmares about being a werewolf, which would be pretty random, except it so happens that an ancestor from two centuries ago was burned by villagers who thought she was the real thing. As Borel's werewolf obsession advances she's inhabited or haunted—if perhaps only imaginarily—by the spirit of this allegedly lyncanthropic forebear. She then roams the local landscape killing unsuspecting men, until she meets one who makes her drool—with sexual desire. But is she really a werewolf, or is she just nuts?
Borel really gives this role her all, even channeling Linda Blair's bedbound possession scenes from The Exorcist, but since this is a sexploitation flick more than a horror movie, her body is considered by the filmmakers to be more important than her acting ability. Taking full advantage is director Rino Di Silvestro, who also helmed Women in Cell Block 7 and generally specialized in erotic fare. What he didn't specialize in was pacing, framing, blocking, and the like, and in the end the movie is murky and unterrifying. But it's of a particular era and style that's beloved by schlock aficionados the world over, and will certainly satiate the appetites of such viewers.
Because the version of the film we watched didn't look all that great, we decided not to bother with screenshots. Instead we have a few production stills of Borel below being costumed as the werewolf. Seems like the makeup department always has the most fun. We should also note that the film features German b-actress Dagmar Lassander, who we last saw in Le foto proibite di una signora per bene, aka The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, and Maria Renata Franco, who was in Emanuelle in America. Perhaps they'll serve as additional enticements. And lastly, we were not able to identify the poster artist. We've said it before—sign your work, people. La lupa mannara premiered in Italy today in 1976.
ItalyLa lupa mannaraLegend of the Wolf WomanWerewolf WomanShe-WolfRino Di SilvestroR.D. SilverAnnik BorelDagmar LassanderHoward Rossposter artcinemamovie reviewhorrorsexploitation
| Femmes Fatales | Mar 16 2022 |
Never mess with anyone who guts fish for fun.
This cool image features Japanese actress Sanae Ôhori in character as Mari from her 1974 pinky violence flick Sukeban: Tamatsuki asobi, aka Girl Boss: Crazy Ball Game. Ôhori appeared in only four other films, but among them were Seijû gakuen, aka School of the Holy Beast and Onna hissatsu ken, aka Sister Street Fighter, both of which are fun efforts. With a résumé that slight it's unlikely we'll see her again here, but you never know.
JapanSukeban: Tamatsuki asobiGirl Boss: Crazy Ball GameSeijû gakuenSchool of the Holy BeastSanae Ôhoripinkupinky violence
 |
 |
