| Vintage Pulp | Jan 25 2024 |
When she gets them on the hook they never get off.
The beautiful photo-illustrated poster you see above was made for the British drama Man Bait, featuring George Brent, Marguerite Chapman, and Diana Dors. We gave it a watch, and for some reason the opening credits say, “introducing Diana Dors,” though this was actually her thirteenth credited role. We won't try to puzzle out that mystery. Plotwise, Dors and her irresistible lips are the bait, as she's convinced by a lowlife male acquaintance to blackmail her boss out of three-hundred pounds by threatening to lie about him making an unwanted advance toward her. Unfortunately, Dors is a reluctant scam artist, which puts her at odds with her manipulative accomplice. To say that everything goes wrong for her because of this relationship is an understatement.
Overall, Man Bait is a good film. While Dors is adequate in her role (she was still only twenty-one, despite her previous experience), Brent and Chapman, who both had dozens of films on their résumés at this point, are flawless as the blackmail victim and his loyal employee. An undercurrent of unrequited love prompts Chapman to side with Brent even though things look pretty bad for him as the plot progresses. But there's no need to be too terribly worried—the movie was made during the Hays Code censorship era, so you know crime can't pay. Sure, the Code was American, but even British productions adhered to it if they hoped to earn a U.S. release. Man Bait did when it premiered in Los Angeles today in 1952.
In order to qualify as a temptation there has to be a chance you can resist. These are not a temptation—they're a certainty.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 18 2023 |
You never know what you'll find if you go far enough up the Amazon.
Written, produced, and directed by Curt Siodmak, who was behind numerous monster features, including Bride of the Gorilla and Curucu, the tropical adventure Love Slaves of the Amazon, which premiered today in 1957, is a full color production about the search for a lost realm of warrior women and their priceless treasures. In order for the expedition to take place, semi-crazy Eduardo Ciannelli must convince staid Don Taylor that the Amazons exist. He reveals a golden statue as proof, which he'd obtained on a previous foray into the jungle, and after some back and forth, sufficient funds for the journey are obtained. Unfortunately, rumors of gold and diamonds have piqued the interest of local ruffians, who plan to hijack the expedition.
Are there actually Amazons? You bet. French actress Anna Maria Nabuco is their queen. Are there love slaves? Yup, one poor exhausted one, anyway, and Taylor looks ripe as a replacement as far as Nabuco is concerned. And is there treasure? There's that too. The movie's plusses include a pitched battle between the expedition and the hijackers while both their boats are mired in river mud, and various exteriors actually shot in Manaus, Brazil and the nearby rain forest. Additionally, the poster art by Reynold Brown is tops. On the minus side, we felt that intermittent veerings into comedy were pointless and unfunny. But on the whole, Love Slaves of the Amazons was better than we expected. Does that mean it was good? Define “good.”
BrazilManausLove Slaves of the AmazonsDon TaylorGianna SegaleEduardo CiannelliAnna Marie NabucoCurt SiodmakReynold Brownposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 15 2023 |
There's no better place to try something new.
This is an interesting but uncredited Italian poster for the Alberto Cavallone directed and written Africasploitation flick Afrika (clever name, right?), which premiered in Italy today in 1973. By now you know exactly what to expect. What's amazing about these set-in-Africa movies, whether Italian, German, British, French, or what-have-you, is that they portray the continent as lawless and cruel (cue gratuitous shot of ox being decapitated) in a way that's bemusingly lacking in self-awareness coming from cultures that murdered one-hundred million inhabitants of those lands in the pursuit of profit.
On the lighter side, if we'd been customs agents anywhere in the tropics during the 1970s, we'd have taken aside every white arrival, looked over their paperwork, and said with a straight face, “It indicates here you boarded the flight with your usual inhibitions, but I notice you don't seem to have any with you now.” If only we had a time machine. With luck we'd have “processed” Anita Strindberg and Yanti Somer. At this point we accept whites-in-the-tropics movies as cinematic exercises in behavioural guardrail smashing. Sometimes those exercises are actually good, loaded with cliché though they may be. However Afrika, while suffering from the same old blind spot, attempts a serious story with a modicum of depth.
Set in Ethiopia, it's about a painter played by Ivano Staccioli who's tempted to stray from his wife when he meets a handsome gay college student played by Andrea Traglia. The studious and poetic Traglia is bullied in school, even raped at one point, and finds sympathy and understanding with Staccioli, and a job as his live-in secretary. This is not an easy household in which to live because its occupants are decadent and neurotic. Staccioli and Traglia's relationship is the sanest thing going on, but needless to say, it will lead to trouble and tragedy. This is all framed by a murder-or-suicide and police investigation, which means the central drama of a forbidden gay affair is told in flashback during interrogations.
We appreciated Cavallone taking a swing at a serious drama, and we enjoyed seeing Maria Pia Luzi, one of Italy's many exploitation stars (Women in Cell Block 7, White Slave Ship), given a chance to act rather than strip, but we can't call the movie good. It isn't the performances—everyone does pretty well in that department, considering the level of writing. It's just that the film is portentous and uninvolving. Take away the anti-Africa bias and it's a noble attempt at important subject matter, but in cinema you don't get points for trying. In our opinion you can give Afrika a pass.
EthiopiaItalyAfrikaDiario segreto da un carcere femminileWomen in Cell Block 7L'ammutinamentoWhite Slave ShipIvano StaccioliAndrea TragliaMaria Pia LuziKara DonatiDebebe EshetuAlberto Cavallonesexploitationposter artcinemalgbtmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 11 2023 |
Wild life abounds on sexploitation safari.
This free-spirited poster was made for the sexploitation flick Africa Excitaction, which was originally French/Italian made and realsed in the U.S. as Jungle Erotic. The main brain behind the production was Polish writer-director Zygmunt Sulistrowski, who also stars under the name Don Power, because, if you're gonna write and direct a horny epic, it might as well be you doing to grinding and gyrating. Even simulated sex can be fun—so we hear. Zygmunt didn't star as himself, but as Darr Poran. In addition, the listed actresses, Karen Roche and Mary Alexander, were credited as Carrie Rochelle and Alice Marie. It almost seems as if nobody wanted their names on this movie.
Plotwise, there's nothing complex here. Zygmunt takes two models and his amphibious car to Africa for an extended photo session and some employer-on-employee al fresco lovin'. That may sound fun, but the movie is basically a total loss. It's not coherent, and nobody can act. But—and there's always a but—it's a sexploitation flick, which means all it really needs is to deliver scenery, skin, and sin. The first comes from shooting in Tanzania and Uganda, the second is provided by co-stars Rochelle and Marie, and the third—well, there's plenty of softcore writhing. So in the end, you win. Africa Excitaction has no precise premiere date, but it debuted in 1970.
FranceItalyTanzaniaUgandaJungle EroticAfrica Erotic: A Happening in AfricaAfrica EroticaAfrica ExcitationZygmunt SulistrowskiDarr PoranDon PowerCarrie RochelleKaren RocheAlice MarieMary Alexandersexploitationposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 8 2023 |
California town develops a colossal problem.
We dipped into our sci-fi backlog last night and watched The Monolith Monsters, which had its world premiere in England today in 1957. The movie, which stars Grant Williams and Lola Albright, is typically half-baked sci-fi from the era. A meteor crashes near a podunk western town and the black fragments react with water and give rise to—well, we aren't sure, so have a look:
They look like basalt formations more than anything else. But they're alive—or we think so—and they suck the silicon out of any humans unlucky enough to pass near. It's fatal, of course, this silicon sucking. After some crackpot pseudo-scientific deductions Williams, Albright, and co. come up with a plan to fight the monsters. Do they prevail? Do b-movie airplanes hang from strings? Low budget efforts like The Monolith Monsters are rarely good, but they're always fun to watch.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 4 2023 |
It's nobody's business but their own.
Manhandlers, right? It's a good title for a sexploitation movie, and John Solie painted a nice promo poster, but the actual product is a limp drama with dopy comedic episodes about a woman played by Cara Burgess who inherits her mobbed up uncle's L.A. massage parlor and finds that it's a front for a brothel. Her uncle was killed for being uncooperative with the mafia, and now they come after her, trying to intimidate her into signing away half of the place's profits. One the one hand, she'd supposedly net a nice income just for looking the other way and doing nothing. On the other, she'd be giving in to organized crime. The answer? Fill both hands with scented oil, massage the mob into a sense of false security, then make her move. None of it is as interesting as it sounds, at no point are machine guns wielded, and for sexploitation the extracurriculars aren't very erotic, even with Judy Brown and Rosalind Miles in support. You can give this one a pass. The Manhandlers premiered—and went limp at the box office—today in 1974.
Los AngelesThe ManhandlersCara BurgessJudy BrownRosalind MilesJohn Solieposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 24 2023 |
Cold War spies make waves in the City of Canals.
The Venetian Affair, which premiered today in 1966, has a rather interesting promo poster. It was painted by U.S. artist Frank McCarthy, who was big in paperback covers early in his career, moved into high-budget movie promos such as James Bond posters, and finally made a mark in realist fine art. We love this piece from him. There's a lot going on. If you check out his effort for You Only Live Twice here you'll see how dense and chaotic his work could be, same as above, where he has people falling off the bridge, off the gondola, and guns being brandished everywhere. In addition, his likenesses of the movie's stars are good. He was a major talent.
The first observation you might make while watching The Venetian Affair is that it would be impossible to make a similar movie in that city today. Nearly four million tourists visited Venice in 2022, making nearly every street—and certainly every site of special historical note—like the mass exodus from a just-completed football game. With that level of humanity about, closing parts of the city or main squares—while maybe possible—would not be practical or economical.
But The Venetian Affair was made back when quiet streets and dark corners existed. Old world architecture always makes for a good spy movie backdrop. That's exactly what you get in this adventure about a mind control drug being used to foment conflict between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Robert Vaughn stars as a former CIA agent who was fired after he married Elke Sommer, who was suspected of being a double agent. Vaughn never found out whether that was true because he and Sommer were torn apart by turbulent events. But when a bomb blows up a Venice political conference and Sommer is thought to be involved, the CIA drags Vaughn back into its clutches to find Sommer, as well as the crucial clue that might explain the bombing.
Vaughn is a cool and composed actor, any movie with Sommer is one we'll watch, and co-stars Felicia Farr, Luciana Paluzzi, Ed Asner, and the venerable Boris Karloff are all enticements, but we can't say The Venetian Affair is a scintillating example of a Cold War spy flick. It's such a fertile sub-genre, one that produced some of the best movies of 1950s through 1970s. Even against the beautiful Venice backdrop it mostly falls flat due to a screenplay that never hits any highs. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't watch it. Though it lacks highs, it also lack any serious lows. You can spend your time worse ways. Plus—Sommer. What more do you need?
ItalyU.S.S.R.Soviet UnionVeniceCold WarThe Venetian AffairRobert VaughnElke SommerFelicia FarrKarlheinz BöhmmKarl BohmLuciana PaluzziBoris KarloffEdward AsnerFrank McCarthyposter artcinemamovie reviewcommunism
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 21 2023 |
Did somebody order a spaghetti western with extra cheese?
We take every opportunity we can to show you the work of Renato Casaro, even when it's used to promote a movie as bad as Carogne si nasce. Casaro painted a lot of spaghetti western posters but this one is a bit more intense than most. There's a reason for that—the character he painted was intense. The movie is known in English as Cry of Death, and it deals with conflict that erupts between squatters and ranchers in fictional Houstonville, Texas, and the marshal—Glenn Saxson—who first tries to stay out of it, but later chooses a side when he realizes that inside the land rights struggle is a deeper problem regarding someone's secret past and corruption amongst the town bigwigs.
This is one cheap-ass movie. The budget is exemplified by a barroom brawl during which a character is shoved through a cardboard wall. Every castmember is a b-level actor at best. And the script—don't even bring up the script. It's like it was accidentally shot full of holes during one of the gunfights. But we'll give this cheeseball movie one thing—the main bad guy is amazing. He's played by ex-bodybuilder Gordon Mitchell, and he looks like a demon wearing bronzer. Spaghetti western producers were good at casting villains, and Mitchell fits the tradition with a capital V. Otherwise, this flick—even with its final act twist—is nowheresville. Carogne si nasce premiered in Italy today in 1968
That's right. I'm the bad guy. You never guessed, did you?
I'm pure evil, but I can smile winningly. See?
Though I'm from hell and consume only souls, I can mimic human rituals such as drinking beer.
But I don't mimic swallowing it. My master should serve this pisswater to the thirsty wretches in his realm.ItalyCarogne si nasceCry of DeathGlenn SaxsonGordon MitchellRenato BaldiniNello PazzafiniMirella PamphiliRenato Casaroposter artcinemaspaghetti westernmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 17 2023 |
When Isabel Sarli enters paradise the snakes come crawling.
We often describe posters in glowing terms but this effort for the Argentinian sexploitation drama La tentación desnuda is a legit stunner. The movie, which starred international sex symbol Isabel Sarli, premiered today in 1966, and in that year we can't imagine where this provocative promo was displayed. If anywhere.At first we thought it was a recently made fan creation, but we changed our minds. The fold lines look real, and while those can be created in Photoshop, fan art is almost always too lazy for such touches. Sarli's breasts don't look quite like in real life because the designer painted on a pair of weird cherry nipples, but we've seen that happen with posters before. Otherwise the art matches perfectly a promo shot made by photographer Olga Masa for the movie, but at a much higher resolution.
La tentación desnuda delivers in melodramatic but engrossing style exactly what the title suggests, and shows yet again why Sarli was such a massive star. Plotwise she falls off a boat, drags herself from the water, and wanders blindly to hermit Armando Bo's riverside shack, where she's given shelter and food. Bo harvests sugar cane and hangs out playing his harp, trying to find, “freedom, to be absolutely free,” and to “live spiritually, near the river, the trees, the birds,” but Sarli laughingly upsets his singular existence in a big way by questioning his beliefs and showing lots of skin. She sticks around when Bo promises to demonstrate the merits of his ascetic lifestyle, but other men who live and work on the river have different ideas for Sarli—and they don't involve holistic simplicity.
If the plot seems very similar to 1953's La red you'd be right. Femmes fatales bringing chaos to edenic enclaves was a popular theme in Latin American cinema. This iteration, for the year it was released, is very daring, yet another example of what was going on outside the censored environment within the U.S., where motion picture themes were constrained by the Production Code. Meanwhile, in militarily ruled Argentina, Sarli was going fully nude—a few times, in the case of this film. We guess Juan Carlos Onganía and company liked a litle skin. Even dictators get boners.
Sarli may embody tentación, but she doesn't try to tempt the men around her, aside from Bo, who's the only one she wants. But her preferences mean nothing. Soon everyone is fighting over her, hauling her around like hand luggage on a commuter flight. She's even worth torturing and killing over, as things develop. Men, right? But they'll pay for their hubris. And because Biblical metaphor is strong with this film, there's even a bit of mysticism involved. Maybe that's why the dictatorship tolerated it—that type likes hamhanded religious tropes even more than boners. Well, we'll tolerate Sarli anytime too. You'll be seeing her again.
ArgentinaLa tentación desnudaWoman and TemptationIsabel SarliArmando BoJuan Carlos OnganíaOlga Masaposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 17 2023 |
They're going to salvage a lost cargo come hell or Haie water.
We had a foreign double feature last night, following up La tentación desnuda with Haie am Todesriff, which was originally Italian made as Bermude: la fossa maledetta. Known in English as Cave of Sharks, it premiered in Italy in June 1978 and opened in West Germany today the same year. It is, to be succinct, a Jaws knock-off made with less imagination and less budget.
Set on and around the fictive island of San Domingo, which is somewhere near Bermuda, the movie stars Andrés Garcia as a member of an oceanographic expedition who turns up with amnesia six months after his boat goes missing and his colleagues are lost. During those six months that Garcia was presumed dead, his brother tried to move in on his girl Janet Agren—for which he cannot in any be blamed—but with his bro's reappearance there's now a budding love triangle.
Later a plane crashes near San Domingo under strange circumstances with an illegal cargo, sending organized crime figures into to action to recover their loot. Under false pretenses, they hire Garcia, sending him right back into the dread sector of ocean from he'd been fished. He discovers strange, mystical sharks, and thinks they might be the key to getting his memory back. He loses all interest in the crooks' treasure, but they think he's found it and is withholding it. Trouble looms.
Does all this sound dumb? You aren't wrong. And the bad plot isn't helped by bad acting, bad action, and incredibly bad miniature work. This one isn't worth your time, even with Janet Agren in the co-starring role. But to make reading this worthwhile, we've added a nice Agren shot to the promos below.
ItalyWest GermanyGermanyBermudaHaie am TodesriffBermude: la fossa maledettaCave of the SharksAndrés GarcíaJanet AgrenArthur Kennedyposter artcinemamovie review
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