| Vintage Pulp | May 25 2024 |
Gordon and others get bushwacked in no-budget horse opera.
L'éperon brûlant is a U.S. movie titled Hot Spur, but once again we found a foreign poster far more intriguing than the domestic version. The movie was originally released in 1968, but this poster is from France and was made for the movie's preimier there today in 1970. It's signed by the artist: Loris. We can't tell you anything about him or her except that they also painted posters for 1971's L’homme qui vient de la nuit and 1974's La virée superbe. This is an interesting effort.
We mainly wanted to watch this for raven brunette beauty Virginia Gordon, so imagine our suprise and dismay to see the filmmakers turn her into an unnatural blonde. In any case, the movie is nothing special—it's a Western revenge drama, poorly directed by Lee Frost of Policewomen fame, and poorly acted by Gordon and everyone else. Basically, a Mexican farmhand is driven by constant abuse to seek revenge, and does so by kidnapping his cruel employer's wife. Probably a bad idea.
The film takes advantage of the fraying censorship enforcement of the era to show more nudity and sexual violence than in previous years. There are themes embedded within the script about racism, patriarchal control, and what we'd call today male toxicity, but they're so obscured by sexploitative content that you'll be too busy feeling queasy to absorb any well-intentioned messaging. L'éperon brûlant/Hot Spur is basically a footnote suitable for true cineastes only. All others can give it a pass.
We decided to share this specific poster for a secondary reason. Users on both Alamy and Diomedia claim it as theirs, which is what happens when bloggers and Ebay sellers post high resolution images online to be hoovered up by opportunistic hustlers. Not that we don't sometimes get images from Ebay. This one came from there. But we don't try to claim false copyright on them. Once upon a time we considered uploading our thousands of original scans at huge sizes, but now the decision not to looks pretty smart. Many of those images would be on Alamy, Shutterstock, et al now.
In the last several years the problem of copyright squatters has grown, and with AI programs scouring the internet for instances of presumed infringement, threatening e-mails are increasingly going out to website operators. But once again, it needs to be pointed out that movie posters and promo shots were made for non-copyright holders to publicize the associated works, and such items fall into the category of fair use. The copyright on this poster belongs to the film studio or production company that originally made it (Les Films Leitienne), and isn't transferred just because someone uploaded it to Alamy or any other site. If you operate a blog and get a threatening e-mail, ask for documentation of copyright. They're obligated to provide that. But they won't be able to.
FranceL'éperon brûlantHot SpurL’homme qui vient de la nuitLa virée superbeJames ArenaVirginia GordonJoseph MascoloAngel CarterLorisposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
| Femmes Fatales | Apr 3 2012 |
A million dollar profile.
We were going to upload a Facebook profile for Pulp Intl. today, but then we decided you’d probably rather look at this profile instead. Pictured is Virginia Gordon, who started in 1958 as a nude model, and later appeared in b-films such as The Muthers (the 1968 sexploitation flick, not the 1976 blaxploitation flick), Hot Spur, and Francis Ford Coppola’s nudie western Tonight for Sure. Her movies were mostly forgettable, but her modeling remains precisely the opposite. Bonus shot below from the same session. Probably 1962 on these.
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 29 2009 |
Art and racism in mid-century men's mags.
In case you had any doubts that pulp literature was often used by authors as a catharsis for their racial fears, here’s a representative sampling of vintage magazines featuring assorted cultural stereotypes. Pulp—where men are men and natives can’t get women without kidnapping white ones.
Real MagazineAdventure MagazineMale MagazineMan’s LifeFor Men OnlyBrave & BoldTrue AdventureDanger TrailSpurmagazine art
