Vintage Pulp | Jul 2 2019 |
Woman, 20, seeks man any age. Must be open minded. Sex guaranteed. No commitment. Emotional masochist preferred.
Above is a West German poster for the French sexploitation flick Laura, originally titled Laure, starring the sexiest elf in cinema history, Annie Belle, in the tale of a minister's libertine daughter trekking around the Philippines, getting laid with whomever while her boyfriend-later-husband watches and sometimes films. We talked about this one in detail a while back but wanted to share this nice poster. Notice Emmanuelle Arsan is credited as the director? What happened was the actual director Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane quit and refused to allow his name to be attached to the film because he didn't get to delve more deeply into his philosophy of freedom and swinging. Which is funny because the movie is almost entirely about freedom and swinging. But give a Frenchman six inches and he'll demand a mile. Read more here. Laura premiered in West Germany today in 1976.
Vintage Pulp | Jun 27 2019 |
Crazy for feeling so lonely.
Above, two really nice West German promos for Roman Polanski's quasi-horror flick Ekel, better known as Répulsion, with Catherine Deneuve as a woman who goes crazy in the isolation of her apartment. We talked about this one briefly and shared two Japanese posters for it a while ago. After opening in France and the UK, the film received its debut for German viewers at the Berlin International Film Festival today in 1965.
Vintage Pulp | May 17 2019 |
The doctor is out—of his freaking mind.
Above: a poster for Arzt und Dämon, aka Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which premiered in West Germany today in 1949. The art here is by Heinz Schulz-Neudamm, whose most famous piece is the poster he designed for the expressionist sci-fi movie Metropolis. It once sold for $1.2 million, which made it the most valuable movie promo in existence at the time, but this Hyde effort shows Schulz-Neudamm's skills in a totally different light. We think it's top shelf work for a top shelf flick.
Vintage Pulp | May 10 2019 |
To Bibi or not to Bibi? That's a rhetorical question.
Remember way back when we talked about the Marie Forså sexploitation flick Bibi? Probably not. It was years ago. In any case we found a collection of promo images from the film and we're not going to pass up an excuse to revisit it because, though the film is not great, Forså and women like her are historical treasures, artifacts of a type of cinema that has all but disappeared. Some say that's a good thing. We don't. To have sex is biologically hardwired into us, and it's constantly on our minds, therefore exploring its possibilities in media—whether visual, written, musical, or merely spoken—is about as normal a compulsion as we can imagine. Bibi is a helluva piece of media. It was made in Sweden but these promos are West German, and show Forså and co-stars Anke Syring, Birgit Zamulo, et al., in a colorful light. Bibi, aka Girl Meets Girl, aka Confessions of a Sex Kitten, premiered in West Germany today in 1974.
Vintage Pulp | Apr 25 2019 |
Danger rears its pretty heads.
Above, a cool West German tri-fold promo for the classic camp crime flick Gefahr: Diabolik, aka Danger: Diabolik, with pretty boy John Phillip Law as the titular spy Diabolik and pretty girl Marisa Mell as his muse and sidekick Eva Kant. If you haven't seen the film it's utterly cheesy and great fun. It premiered in West Germany today in 1968.
Vintage Pulp | Feb 19 2019 |
Ida done it her way.
Above, an interesting German language promo poster for the Ida Lupino film noir Private Hell 36, which we talked about last month. Lupino is considered a film pioneer for her migration into directing, but she's always good in front of the camera too. This piece is signed, though illegibly, so another artist loses their chance for internet immortality. Private Hell 36 premiered in West Germany today in 1956
Intl. Notebook | Jan 15 2019 |
Which one liked to wallow in crap more? National Examiner or Adolf Hitler?
National Examiner offers up a provocative cover on this issue that hit newsstands today in 1973, with an unidentified blonde model and the promise of expert lovemaking tips. Nothing new there. What's different is this issue takes Adolf Hitler's corpse for a gallop around a well-traveled track. The article “Hitler's Strange Desires” digs into der Führer's toilet training, his family background, his private writings and public statements, and comes to the conclusion: sexual pervert! The piece discusses Hitler's “sexual inadequacy and impotence, frail body and softness that was almost effeminate,” and reveals how he doted on his mother but eventually felt betrayed by her, stating, “This sudden indignation with his mother could have been caused if he saw his parents having intercourse.” The ultimate conclusion is no surprise: “[Because of] his extreme form of masochism [he derived] sexual gratification from the act of having a woman urinate or defecate on him.”
As psychological disturbances go, you can take your pick here. Like beer in a Berlin rathskeller, Hitler allegedly had multiple flavors on tap, and they culminated in turning him into a shit freak. That's amusing to consider, but was it anything other than pure bullshit itself? Labeling Hitler a disturbed child-turned sexual deviant was a mini-industry in the decades after his death, and the rumors started by these reports are still prevalent today. We get it—by making him into a non-human it's easyto distance him from the rest of us, but as far as we know there's no evidence he was anything other than a heterosexual who had run-of-the-mill sex, or for that matter that he was anything other than a run-of-the-mill human. Many people would love for the stories to be true, but they're just too easy. We don't blame Examiner for beating that Hitler horse, though. Everybody did it—it sold piles of papers.
Examiner goes for lighter material elsewhere in the issue, with an update on the whereabouts of Canadian actress Ruby Keeler, a story about a wife who makes her husband take her to a swingers club so she can get some strange dick, and a pervy advertisement for instant peepholes we know would be illegal to use today, and which we suspect were illegal to use back then too. Other celebrities who make appearances include Maria LaTour and Monika Zinnenberg. In fact, on closer examination that unidentified cover model might be Zinnenberg. She made the usual slate of bad West German comedies and exploitation flicks during the ’60s and ’70s before leveraging her front-of-the-camera work into a directing career which she sustained all the way up until 2012. And finally there's a centerspread on the benefits of yoga, featuring stars like Cary Grant, Geraldine Chaplain, and Barbara Parkins touting its benefits. That's about it for this Examiner. Scans below, and more here and here.
Examiner goes for lighter material elsewhere in the issue, with an update on the whereabouts of Canadian actress Ruby Keeler, a story about a wife who makes her husband take her to a swingers club so she can get some strange dick, and a pervy advertisement for instant peepholes we know would be illegal to use today, and which we suspect were illegal to use back then too. Other celebrities who make appearances include Maria LaTour and Monika Zinnenberg. In fact, on closer examination that unidentified cover model might be Zinnenberg. She made the usual slate of bad West German comedies and exploitation flicks during the ’60s and ’70s before leveraging her front-of-the-camera work into a directing career which she sustained all the way up until 2012. And finally there's a centerspread on the benefits of yoga, featuring stars like Cary Grant, Geraldine Chaplain, and Barbara Parkins touting its benefits. That's about it for this Examiner. Scans below, and more here and here.
Modern Pulp | Jan 1 2019 |
In space there are no Happy Days.
The gap between the quality of a poster and the quality of the film it promotes is often large, but rarely so much as with the infamous sci-fi b-movie Planet des Schreckens, better known as Galaxy of Terror. We're showing you the West German poster because the movie premiered there today in 1982 after originally opening in 1981 in the U.S. The art is signed by Charo, not the hip shaking dancer-singer, but rather someone who we found no further info about online. This is a spectacular comic book style effort and a rarity that costs a hundred dollars or more to acquire. If you've seen the movie you know the art depicts the death of Taaffe O'Connell's character Damela, who falls victim to a giant maggot. Galaxy of Terror boasts b-movie stalwarts Robert Englund and Sid Haig, plus Erin Moran from television's Happy Days, but O'Connell's slippery demise is the reason it's a cult classic. It's no Star Crash, but it's pretty close. We'll circle back and talk about it in detail later.
Modern Pulp | Dec 5 2018 |
More hapless northerners go to the tropics and end up as cannibaled goods.
Spanish schlockmeister general Jesús Franco made movies cheaply, and Jungfrau unter Kannibalen, aka Devil Hunter, is bargain basement all the way. Even the poster looks like some stoned high school goth painted it during art class. We especially love the obvious theft of Raquel Welch from One Million Years B.C. for the female figure. If this hypothetical goth ever unveiled his painting to his art teacher, she'd have gone, “That's, uh, very... interesting,” while secretly wondering what sort of psychological damage was behind such a creation. That's the way we feel about Jungfrau unter Kannibalen. It's, uh, interesting...
It premiered in West Germany today in 1980, stars beautiful Ursula Buchfellner, billed as Uschi Fellner, and was directed by Franco under the pseudonym Clifford Brown. We figured if he didn't take credit for this it must be really bad and we were right. Buchfellner, who we last saw in Linda, this time around plays a model kidnapped by Amazon maneaters that plan to sacrifice her to their devil god. The German title translated would be “virgin among cannibals,” and that pretty much covers it, plotwise. She gets stripped early and stays mostly naked, along with cannibal chief and swinging dick Claude Boisson. Other cast members disrobe as needed.
Naturally there's a rescue attempt, we guess because virginal blonde models are as valuable as Amazon gold, and apparently just as worth killing over. The expedition is led by Al Cliver, who found himself in an amazingly high number of very bad movies during the 1970s. But you have to respect a guy who had love scenes with Sabrina Siani, Silvia Dionisio, and Annie Belle. Toting future Playboy centerfold Buchfellner around the jungle while she was stark naked may have been his crowning achievement. He probably plays those scenes to his grandkids. Let him be an example to us that we should find pleasure wherever we can in this flick. And for that matter, in life, because you never know when you'll be eaten.
I love being worshipped! There's literally no downside to it!
I hate being worshipped. There's a serious downside to it.
Don't tell anyone, but our so-called ceremonial ointment is really just Shunga strawberry flavored massage oil.
Grr! Argh! Gr— Oh, it's useless, Jesús. How am I supposed to ravage Ursula when I can't even see her?
I have an idea. Follow my voice, Claude. Here's a classic German yodel I learned. Yodel-lay-de-li-di-lo! Yodel-lay-de-yodel-ooo!
Stop that before I really kill you. And what smells like strawberries?
*lick* Wow, Ursula, do all Germans taste this fruity? *slurp*
Need help up? Pull on my dick.
No, seriously. Just reach up here and take hold.
Screw you then, you ungrateful..!
Screw you then, you ungrateful..!
Vintage Pulp | Dec 2 2018 |
Being the object of every man's desire will tend to take a toll.
It took us a while to figure it out, but this is a West German poster for Anita Ekberg's drama Screaming Mimi, which we talked about a couple of years ago. Die blonde Venus is a pretty generic re-titling, in our opinion, but we do like this unusual visual approach for the poster. The movie is about a woman suffering from the effects of a traumatic event in her past, who takes on a new identity and suffers the double misfortune of being dominated by her lover and targeted by a killer. It's definitely worth a watch. You can read more about it here. After opening in 1958 it finally premiered in West Germany today in 1960.