| Vintage Pulp | Jul 22 2024 |
Your usual server won't be with you tonight. She's come down with a small case of murder.
The Swinging Barmaids, which splashed across U.S. screens for the first time this month in 1975, is one of those movies with a deliberately misleading title. Rather than the breezy erotic romp you'd expect, it's a thriller about an insane serial killer who stalks a group of waitresses working in a Los Angeles go-go bar. The problems commence when Dyanne Thorne (yes, she made movies aside from the Ilsa atrocities) is stabbed to death, setting off an inept police investigation, while the killer sets his crazy sights on more victims. He's the classic maladjusted loner you find in ’70s grindhouse filcks. You know the type: “You're the first girl I ever met that wasn't dirty underneath.” What type of woman wouldn't immediately leave town after hearing something like that? Answer: a woman in a bad movie.
Eventually, to facilitate his homicidal efforts, Mr. Maladjustment gets a job as a dishwasher at the bar. More killings eventually lead to the unveiling of this wolf in the fold, and his inevitable perforation with 12-gauge buckshot. That isn't a spoiler. His death is the entire point of the film. Well, that and boobs. But the problem is that this is all mounted perfunctorily, is poorly written, visually lackluster, narratively sluggish, and devoid of actorly charisma. In fact, if not for the nudity, you'd think The Swinging Barmaids was a minor television movie. The best thing going for it is the above poster art by the incomparable John Solie. Check, please.
Los AngelesThe Swinging BarmaidsBruce WatsonLaura HippeKatie SaylorWilliam SmithRenie RadichDyanne ThorneJohn Solieposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Jul 4 2024 |
Have you ever had a visitor that refused to leave?
Above and below are two posters for Bewitched, a movie we decided to watch because its title stood out when we saw it. Why? Well, we're still watching the entire run of television's Bewitched. Could this be about the supernatural, we wondered? If that sounds silly, remember, we try not to read synopses of these movies. It's just better, if possible, to go in knowing little or nothing. Obviously, we already know generally about all the more popular films we haven't yet seen, but this one is obscure.
Turns out it's a no-budget melodrama, written and directed by Arch Oboler, about poor Phyllis Thaxter, who suffers from a split personality, or more accurately a histrionic form of cinematic schizophrenia, that sees her taken over by an evil alter ego. This mental invader is named Karen, and she'a a bitch. She forces Joan to commit murder. We thought: Wait—if Joan is imprisoned or executed what does Karen get out of it? Well, Oboler tries to finesse that by suggesting Karen knows Joan will be acquitted because she/they look innocent and an all-male jury will think she's too pretty to kill. Okay.
Joan has never told anyone that she hears an evil voice. She doesn't break the pattern at trial, refusing to take the stand in her own defense. It looks bad, but surprise—that scheming Karen is right. But the moment the jury is about announce an acquittal, Joan realizes that if she's freed her evil side will make her do more bad things, so she stands up and screams: “Stop! I did it! I killed him! I'm guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” And... dissolve.
She ends up on death row. But a mere five hours before she's due to ride old sparky, she finally admits to her lawyer that she has a split personality, and the wheels of deus ex machina lurch into motion. It's as cheesy as it sounds. There's really nothing in the film but a good example of what a b-feature was like during the mid-century era. Sloppy. Slapdash. A baritone voiceover brackets the film, and though it's meant to hammer the movie's point home for viewers, there really is no point. None at all. Bewitched premiered in the U.S. today in 1945.
Do I want to stab my fiancée? Or maybe it's too harsh a method for breaking an engagement.
In the end, I guess it was really more of a rhetorical question.
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 28 2024 |
Cross country train thriller never quite reaches its destination.
Our interest in Peking Express was wholly due to Corinne Calvet, who we've seen in promo images, but never speaking and moving. The movie, which was an update of 1932's Shanghai Express, is an overcooked spy adventure with cheesy, anti-commie filling, making for a creation that's hard to swallow. Joseph Cotten arrives in Shanghai as a World Health Organization specialist on a mission to operate on some bigwig general. On a Peking bound train he encounters two complications—his ex-flame Calvet, and attempted murder. The latter has to do with the smuggling of contraband inside WHO crates. Soon both Cotten and Calvet are held prisoner by ringleader Marvin Miller (playing a Chinese military officer named Kwon) who wants to engineer a hostage exchange.
The movie ultimately portrays Miller as a money-grubbing bandit willing to betray wife, party, and country for personal gain. Threats and torture are his methods of persuasion, along with a hefty dose of general sneakiness. He spouts some of the worst dialogue ever, often starting with, “We Chinese...” But he doesn't get the worst line. We just about upchucked on this, spoken about Miller by a saintly priest played by Edmund Gwenn: “If only he had as much devotion to God's cause we would never have to worry about the world.” Really? Is that so? History says otherwise. To add insult to cognitive dissonance, the soundtrack contains some of the worst villain music imaginable. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin must have worn out an entire brass section recording it.
We're fine, in principle, with the main plotline. The seemingly contradictory idea of a villain driven by a mix of entrepreneurial greed and communist doctrine is fertile. The crosscurrent of the WHO trying to save lives in a country where many are suspicious of its mandate struck us as relevant. But the operatic dimensions of the characters backfire to infantilise the movie's messages. We suspect that the average Christian would find Gwenn's missionary priest a pompous cardboard cut-out. The average communist would laugh the entire enterprise off as delusional b-grade propaganda. And the typical thief would judge Miller to be an incompetent boob. What would the typical Chinese person think? We can't say, but our special consulting critic Angela the sunbear, whose native habitat includes China, might be able to enlighten us. And finally, what do fans of Corinne Calvet think? We thought: What a waste.
Thanks for throwing that China question my way, boys. I disliked the movie, and I extend an invitation to any who want to understand the complicated reasons why to discuss it with me over grubs and beetles.
ChinaPeking ExpressJoseph CottenCorinne CalvetEdmund GwennMarvin MillerBenson Fongposter artcinemacommunismmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 25 2024 |
In an L.A. minute anything can be stolen.
The now-cult movie Gone in 60 Seconds is remembered partly because the 2000 Nicolas Cage remake rekindled interest, but also because a man named H.B. Halicki is famous for being the producer, writer, star, director, and stunt coordinator. He's a classic example from an earlier era of Hollywood of a guy with knowledge specific to an industry who dreamt up a story then cobbled together the funds to put his vision on the screen. He was a car mechanic who for years had been owner of a Southern California junkyard. In his work life he'd conceived or learned of a foolproof method for stealing and reselling cars. It involved boosting cars that were identical to wrecks, then swapping vehicle identification numbers and other elements so the stolen car disappeared and the wreck was reborn as a new ride. The technique became well known eventually, but back then it wasn't. That idea provided Halicki's entree into the world of moviemaking.
You see a Japanese poster above, with one more plus promo shots below. The movie opened in the U.S. in 1974, and premiered in Japan today in 1975. It's what some people these days like to call car porn, as audiences get to see formula one cars, custom sports cars, limousines, and a customized Ford Bronco owned by Parnelli Jones, who has a cameo in the film. The centerpiece (really more like the endpiece) is a forty minute chase sequence that in order to film allegedly resulted in ninety-three wrecked cars. Storywise, it's about an insurance investigator who moonlights as a professional car thief, who accepts a contract from a South American drug cartel to provide forty-eight luxury cars by week's end. The task seems impossible, but failure isn't an option. Several complications arise. Halicki, playing a character named Maindrian Pace, is called upon to investigate the very thefts his ring is perpetrating. When one of his crew steals a car packed with heroin things start to get really complicated.
That's all fine and fun, and Halicki's personal Hollywood success story is an inspiring one, but the movie does still have the touch of amateurism about it, particularly in the acting. That's to be expected with a quickly mounted production, starring a first-timer who also cast various family members and amateurs in small roles. In the writing area, the characters are mere sketches, which worked fine in other indie flicks from the period like Two-Lane Blacktop, but somehow doesn't quite come to fruition here. The great director John Huston once said Hollywood had a bad habit of remaking good movies. They should remake the bad ones, he advised. Since the remake wasn't as good as it could have been either, Gone in 60 Seconds could probably still use a revamp, but until that time comes audiences will have to make do. Halicki thought outside the box (did we mention the forty minute car chase?) which means his original Gone in 60 Seconds is the only one to watch.
JapanLos AngelesGone in 60 SecondsH.B. HalickiMarion BusiaJerry DaugirdaJames McIntyreGeorge ColeParnelli Jonesposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 24 2024 |
Sinatra and his band of merry men hit movie screens in streamlined form.
In 1960 the amusing self-promotional film known as Ocean's Eleven hit cinemas with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack in the starring roles. Four years later the Pack—minus Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford—assembled for another crime comedy with another numerical title—Robin and the 7 Hoods, which premiered today in 1964 (and came after the Sinatra/Dean Martin vehicle 4 for Texas). You see the movie's insert style poster above. It's a period piece set in Chicago during the gangster era, and deals with Sinatra and his cohort waging a crime war against wannabe kingpin Peter Falk, along the way becoming like the Robin Hood of legend by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
Ocean's Eleven is a very famous movie, perhaps even a landmark, as we discussed a while back, but we didn't love it. We thought Robin and the 7 Hoods would be worse, but we have to confess we liked it better. After we forgave ourselves for such heretical thoughts, we decided it's just possible that without the entire Rat Pack to apportion screen time to the writing is actually a bit better. Have you ever seen rats fight over food? Scripts, being made of paper, are particularly fragile. Could be, too, that fewer Rat Packers meant a bit less extemporizing.
But the main improvement over Ocean's Eleven is in the ancillary casting. Barbara Rush doesn't rise, perhaps, to the level of Angie Dickinson, but casting Falk as the villain was a masterstroke. He already had that Falk thing down pat, which meant that his screen time was engaging from beginning to end. An Edward G. Robinson cameo never hurts, either. Having him open the film as an aging Chicago capo was also a nice choice. Even so, we're not going out on a limb and claiming that Robin and the 7 Hoods is exactly a good movie. But in the end, whatever its flaws, it has Sinatra. And that's always enough.
ChicagoRobin and the 7 HoodsOcean's ElevenFrank SinatraDean MartinSammy Davis Jr.Barbara RushPeter FalkBing CrosbyVictor Buonoposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 18 2024 |
Mount Naomi erupts with deadly consequences in pinku revenge opera.
The Japanese appetite for pinku films was unquenchable. Conversely, ours is mostly quenched, but when we see a poster this striking we have to share it, and that means glancing at the movie that spawned it. Oryu joen: shibari hada, which premiered in Japan today in 1975, was known in English as Oryu's Passion: Bondage Skin, and it came from Nikkatsu Studios as part of its specialized roman porno line, with the so-called Queen of S&M Naomi Tani in the lead role.
Plotwise, the head of a yakuza clan is assassinated and Tani, his loyal charge, vows revenge. Her search for the killer doesn't go according to the blueprint, and after a betrayal she ends up in a dank bdsm dungeon along with her sister Terumi Azuma, subjected to rope discipline and forcibly dildoed and dp'ed with yam batter as a lubricant. Yam batter. You know how it goes in those pinku dungeons. Note: for novices, roman porno films are not porn. The term is short for “romantic porno,” and they're r-rated, equivalently. Or more likely, they'd not be able to obtain ratings at all under the U.S. system. Just thought we'd reiterate that.
Anyway, Tani eventually slips her bonds with assistance, and her long delayed revenge occurs, bloodily. No spoiler there. You knew it had to happen. We can't recommend this flick. There's really nothing worthwhile about it unless you're a fan of the form. Even then it's middling. Yes, Tani was the Queen of S&M, but she made more than one hundred films, so some will have the feel of going through the motions. Even so, you do get several of the expected roman porno tropes. Like action movies offer gunfire and romance movies offer kisses, it's what you sign up for. Knock yourself out.
JapanNikkatsuOryu joen: shibari hadaOryu's Passion: Bondage SkinNaomi TaniTerumi Azumapinkuroman pornobdsmposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 10 2024 |
Don't push them 'cause they're close to the edge.
Sizzling is a good word for Kim Novak. In her fourth film, 5 Against the House, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1955, she wasn't quite a star yet, but her backers at Columbia Pictures had tabbed her for the Hollywood firmament. They placed her in this drama about a quartet of men who've spent a few years in the Korean War (Novak makes the 5 of the title but she spent that time on the home front) and are back to finish law school. Distressed by their lack of resources and opportunities, one of them, who's a gambler and dreamer, convinces two of the others they can rob a Reno casino. Guy Madison, top-billed, has no idea what's occurring, at least at first, and Novak plays his girlfriend and has even less of an idea. They figure it out, though, while the group are road-tripping to Nevada. Madison and Novak want out, but both are blackmailed into participating.
The movie has an interesting tone. They guys are all quipsters, and some of their Rat Pack interplay is legitimately funny, but their simmering disaffection eventually comes to the fore as they amp themselves up for the robbery by talking about all they've lost having been sent to war. Most of all, they've lost time. That idea makes narrative sense, but the actors are a little old for the roles. Madison, Alvy Moore, and Brian Keith are all in their mid-thirties. How long did they spend in Korea—a decade? Kerwin Matthews is twenty-nine, which maybe works, but Novak, as Madison's college sweetheart, is in her early twenties. How the hell did that happen? Did he start dating her when she was thirteen? Maybe their ages are minor points, but we noticed, and you will too.
In any case, the guys resent being years behind law students who avoided the war, and figure the country owes them something, even if it's only cash. Later, though, right when it looks like they might get smart and back out, Keith shows that he had a screw knocked loose by combat and manages to force the issue. The subsequent robbery involves fake mustaches and a misdirection play, but it's never the point. The movie is really a sympathy piece for the boys who fought overseas and a mild remark about the psychological cost of warfare. All fine, but—and it pains us to say this about any Novak movie—it's weak, entirely unrealistic, and climactically ludicrous. Ultimately, 5 Against the House is probably only worth seeing for the banter between the fellas, and a gander at captivating Kim. She's hotter than Reno in July. You can bet on it.
Korean WarNevadaReno5 Against the HouseKim NovakGuy MadisonBrian KeithAlvy MooreKerwin MatthewsWilliam Conradposter artcinemamovie review
| 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
| Vintage Pulp | May 17 2024 |
She's got a very bad feline about this situation.
Are cats creepy? We don't think so. But some people have a problem with them, and filmmakers are always happy to serve up a dose of an audience member's fears. Movies we've discussed that use cats as sources of terror include 1934's The Black Cat, 1948's The Creeper, 1970's Kaidan nobori ryu, aka Black Cat’s Revenge, 1971's Il gatto a nove code, aka, Cat o’ Nine Tails (mainly just on the posters, but what beautiful art), and 1973's La morte negli occhi del gatto, aka Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye. Those are just the ones we've looked at here. The list goes on and on through dozens if not hundreds of movies. In literature we've had looks at Nancy Rutledge's Blood on the Cat and Dorothy Salisbury Davis's The Judas Cat. You get the point. The Cat Creeps, for which you see a pretty nice poster above, fits snugly into cinematic tradition.
In the movie a newspaperman named Fred Brady is assigned to dig up dirt on senate candidate Walter Elliot, who's just been implicated in the murder of a former political rival fifteen years ago. Brady happens to be dating Elliot's daughter, but says nothing about his conflict of interest and takes the assignment to keep it away from a vicious rival reporter. Immediately, Brady learns there are family secrets, which are mostly revealed during a trip made with Elliot, his lawyer, his daughter, an investigator, and two others to the isolated island home of the person who has made the accusations. That person ends up dead, and the more superstitious members of the party come to believe a black cat is possessed by her spirit. Weirdo mystic Iris Clive even promises the others that it will reveal the murderer.
The movie is billed as a mystery, which it is, but it's a glib one, filled with one-liners and goofy looks. We were surprised to see Noah Beery in a major role as Brady's sidekick. He's best remembered these days as Jim Rockford's father Rocky from The Rockford Files, which we've been watching the entirety of during the last year. Here he and Brady—between quips, piercing screams, and drop-dead faints from the entire female cast—manage to solve the puzzle tidily but uncompellingly. Even a couple of ending twists didn't impress, and weaving the cat into it all required torturous screenwriting. But the mystery is never the point. This is an exercise in atmosphere—there's a lot of shadowy creeping around, as promised by the title. It mostly works. For a period mystery you could do far worse. The Cat Creeps—which is unrelated to the identically titled film from 1930—premiered today in 1946.
“Creeps? What kind of weirdo names their cat Creeps?”
| Vintage Pulp | May 17 2024 |
Do not centerfold, spindle, or mutilate.
The Centerfold Girls has a pretty anodyne poster for what is a decidedly provocative film. It hit cinemas today in 1974 and is about a religious fanatic played by Andrew Prine who wishes to save (read: murder) three women who've posed nude for a men's magazine called Bachelor. The film is divided into chapters, with the story around each stalking target—Jaime Lyn Bauer, Jennifer Ashley, and Tiffany Bolling—given about one third of the running time. Obviously that means—er, sorry, strongly suggests—that at least two of the trio die. Spoiler alert! There could also be collateral damage. Spoiler... allusion?
The movie lacks the tongue-in-cheek aspect of so much sexploitation cinema, falling more into the category of in-your-face grindhouse efforts like Thriller - en grym film and I Spit on Your Grave. In other words, it's a mean little movie. But one with serious intent. There's real effort made at character development, for example Ray Danton's feckless playboy in chapter two. There's also effort made to make the film look good. It's cheap but competent, with some Hitchcockian touches added by experienced television and b-movie director John Peyser meant to let cinephiles know he's no hack.
We came across comments in several places saying the movie is disrespectful toward women. That's true. Any film that casts any distinct category of human as victims (and in grindhouse it's usually women) can automatically be seen by some as targeted oppression—especially when that oppression is rampant in the real world. No film called The Centerfold Girls is interested in avoiding that criticism, so you go in knowing that. The result? It's pretty good. You know what would have been really fun? If they'd made a sequel called The Centerfold Boys about Playgirl models. Beautiful, superficial, basically helpless male models. We should have been 1970s movie producers.
The Centerfold GirlsJaime Lyn BauerJennifer AshleyTiffany BollingAnneka Di LorenzoAldo RayRay DantonAndrew PrineJohn Peyserposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
