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Pulp International - Costa+Rica
Vintage Pulp May 20 2019
RED HOT ROSSANA
I didn't know that a girl like you could make me feel so sad...


A couple of weeks ago we shared a Mexican movie poster we weren't 100% sure was actually from Mexico. This time we're sure—this beautiful promo Antonio Caballero painted for the melodrama La red says right in the lower left corner “impreso en México.” In that previous write-up we also talked about how popular locally produced films were in Mexico before the industry was suffocated by U.S. business and political interests, and this effort is an example. It was made by Reforma Films S.A., based in Mexico City, and starred Libyan born Italian actress Rossana Podesta, Costa Rican actor Crox Alvarado, and U.S. born actor Armando Silvestre. Enticing a burgeoning international star like Podesta over from Europe indicates how established the Mexican film industry was in 1953, when La red was made.

Interestingly, when the movie played in the U.S. it was titled simply Rosanna, which makes sense, because it would be nothing without Podesta. It struck us that even though Toto didn't write their song of obsession “Rosanna” about Podesta, they might as well have. The film begins when a group of men botch a robbery, a shootout commences, and one of the bandits, Antonio, played by Alvarado, tries to help his wounded comrade. But the dying man gasps to Antonio, “Save yourself—for Rossana.” So we know she's a special woman even before seeing her. Antonio does save himself and goes to live on the seaside with Podesta, where the two harvest sea sponges. It's idyllic, but as a wanted thief he has to lay low, which means sending her alone to town to sell their catch. And the men in the town are... well... see below:

I am intrigued by this spicy redhead.

I too find myself somewhat taken with this mysterious chile pepper of a woman.

Perhaps I'll invite her to coffee and a cronut. That's a cross between a croissant and a donut, my friend, and living out there on the idyllic seashore as she does, I bet she's never had one.

I wonder if she's a fan of our great romantic poet Salvador Díaz Mirón?

I'm certain she has no idea how quickly European skin can burn in this tropical climate.

I'm admittedly less high minded than other men, and mainly wonder what she looks like naked, and whether the carpet is red too.

What the hell are all these guys staring— Oh. I think it's me.

Clearly, these trips into town are menacing affairs for Podesta. If you were to screen the sequences at an anti-sexual harassment seminar, every guy in the joint would bow his head in shame. Important to note, though, that within the narrative these aggressively pervy guys are depicted in a negative light, with even the soundtrack music growing ominous. When one of Antonio's robbery compatriots shows up in town, he gets into a shootout that leaves two men dead, and therein are sown the seeds of future troubles. We won't say more, save that the film is stagy, stylized, operatic, almost devoid of dialogue, and largely remembered because of Podesta's role. It all worked well enough to earn the Prix International du film le mieux raconté par l'image, aka the Award for Visual Narration, at the Cannes Film Festival.

Moving on to the poster, have a look at a previous Mexican promo we shared last year. It's here. We'll wait. Back? You'd think it was the same person who painted both, but the reason we wanted you to glance at the other one is because it exemplifies the strange phenomenon of artists within the same film industry biting each other's styles. It happened in Italy and Sweden too. Either through direct influence from the studios, or through osmosis due to mutual association, several Mexican artists delved into this art deco tinged style. Check out Leopoldo Mendoza Andrade here. Interesting, right? You'll see what we mean even more clearly when we share posters from other Mexican artists, for example Juan Antonio Vargas. That'll be soon. La Red premiered in Mexico today in 1953.
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Vintage Pulp Jan 4 2018
HARD CANDY
It's bad for you but impossible to resist.


When we saw the promo materials for Sweet Sugar we had to watch the movie, because women-in-prison flicks are one of the most reliable forms of guilty fun out there. This one premiered in January 1972, and stars the majestic Phyllis Davis as the archetypal uppity American woman laid low in a tropical hellhole prison. How she got there doesn't really matter. It's what goes on there that the film is built around—medical experiments, a cruel warden, sadistic guards, and not nearly enough clothing to go around. Davis wins over the other inmates and eventually leads them in a chaotic escape attempt. As a women-in-prison entry Sweet Sugaris pretty well regarded, but of course utterly ridiculous and impossibly cheap—the entire budget could probably fit in the rear pockets of Davis's short-shorts. She actually appeared in another tropical prison flick, by the way—1973's Terminal Island, which we talked about a few months ago. In that one she was part of the scenery. In this earlier effort she's asked to carry the film and manages to lug it for ninety steaming minutes without once breaking down in tears and placing a furious call to her agent. Now that you know what you're going to get with Sweet Sugar don't place a furious call to us. We warned you.

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Femmes Fatales Dec 16 2017
ON DANCER, ON PRANCER
Vera to the right, Vera to the left, Vera all over the place.


You often see U.S. born Vera-Ellen's name spelled without the hyphen, but it needs to be there. She was born Vera-Ellen Westmeier Rohe. She had another hyphen too—she was an actress-dancer, working both on Broadway and in Hollywood. Some of her films: On the Town, Let's Be Happy, The Kid from Brooklyn and Carnival in Costa Rica. The above photo was made for 1954's White Christmas, and just for fun there are more below. If you weren't already in the holiday spirit, we hope you are now.


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The Naked City Nov 23 2010
WAITING FOR LEPKE
Sing-Sing the body electric.


This True Detective from November 1939 features a cover painting of mobster Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, whose flight from authorities had taken him from the U.S. to Mexico, and then to Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and Cuba, and across the ocean to England, France and Germany. Buchalter had begun his career in organized crime by shaking down pushcart operators in Brooklyn, and had risen through the ranks of the criminal-controlled fur industry by doing every type of dirt imaginable, from issuing threatening phone calls to garment union activists to throwing acid in a competitor’s face. Eventually he was running a criminal empire that stretched to both coasts, and was acting as head of the infamous assassination squad Murder, Inc.

In 1936 Buchalter went into hiding after he became aware that criminal charges were being prepared against him. Not long after he dropped out of sight, he was indicted for smuggling an estimated $10 million in heroin into the U.S. from Hong Kong. The FBI printed a million posters and displayed them in every post office, police station, and federal building in America. All this attention was a problem for U.S. mob bosses, and so with characteristic unsentimentality, they decided Buchalter had to surrender. Convincing him was not difficult. While he undoubtedly had the flair and intelligence to dodge the feds indefinitely, living in another country away from the old neighborhood and away from the hundreds of underlings who respected him was not his style. Buchalter was a mobster through-and-through. To him, an anonymous existence, even in a tropical paradise or cosmopolitan foreign capitol, was little different from being in prison.

Buchalter’s associates got word to him that if he came back to the U.S. he would be able to surrender personally to J. Edgar Hoover. Surrendering to the Feds meant he would not face a more serious group of charges brought by Manhattan D.A. Thomas Dewey. But it was wishful thinking. The federal charges were rapidly followed by Dewey’s charges and Buchalter earned a fourteen-year jolt in the pen. His legal team hoped tohave the sentence reduced via appeals and procedural maneuvers, but when a snitch fingered Buchalter for ordering the murder of a candy store owner named Joe Rosen, he was tried for the killing, convicted, and sentenced to execution. By some estimates Buchalter had been responsible for a thousand murders as head of Murder, Inc., but all it took was one to seal his fate. Louis "Lepke" Buchalter was electrocuted in Sing Sing prison's famous "Old Sparky" electric chair on March 4, 1944, perhaps while realizing life on a beach in Costa Rica hadn’t been so bad after all.

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Sportswire Sep 23 2009
BRADY'S BUNCH
Lawsuit alleges Tom Brady’s hired muscle shot at two photographers

From previous episodes pretty much everyone in the world knows that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is not one of those guys who enjoys the attention that comes with fame—unless the attention is coming from Brazilian models.

Two photographers found out firsthand just how camera shy Brady is, and the mess that resulted led to them suing Brady and his wife Gisele Bundchen yesterday. The court papers read like a chapter from an Ian Fleming novel, complete with the leafy tropical hideaway, menacing bodyguards, and lethal gunfire. The alleged incident occurred in Costa Rica in early April, when AFP photographer Yuri Cortez and colleague Rolando Aviles of the daily newspaper Al Dia tried to photograph Brady and Bundchen at a party being thrown on private property. The photogs had gotten permission to venture onto a neighboring property, from which they shot photographs of the party occurring next door. So far so good for the shutterbugs.

However, according to the court papers, when the two were returning to their rented SUV, bodyguards hired by Brady and Bundchen appeared, demanding their cameras and memory cards. Aviles immediately booked for the car, leaving Cortez to deal with the bruisers. Cortez claims one bodyguard twisted his arm behind his back and told him the Brady-Bundchen family wanted to have a chat. Aviles was still with the SUV at this point, and the confrontation moved in that direction. At some point the photographers claim they spotted a gun in the hands of one bodyguard and decided to drive away. That bodyguard or another then fired at the SUV, the bullet shattering the rear window and ricocheting off the windshield.

Asked for comment Brady’s lawyer said he had not seen the court papers yet, and Bundchen’s people said they had no comment. But we have a comment. If the charges are true, we wonder if the NFL’s zero tolerance conduct policy will apply to Brady. We doubt it. New York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress just got two years for accidentally shooting himself in the leg in a Manhattan nightclub and will face a league suspension even after he gets out of jail, but we think employing bodyguards who shoot at two fleeing men is equally disturbing. Just saying—and no we aren’t Jets fans.

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Mondo Bizarro May 27 2009
STATING THE OVNIOUS
Aliens are unimaginably advanced but haven’t figured out stealth technology.


Personally, we think if aliens were able to traverse the immense gulfs of space to visit Earth, by definition they’d be technologically advanced enough to prevent us from seeing them. But UFO believers are legion, and UFO websites continue to grow in popularity, particularly in France, where unidentified flying objects are known as Objets Volant Non-Identifié, or OVNIs. The images here are from the French website forum-ovni-ufologie.com. From top to bottom they were shot—or perhaps faked, depending on your beliefs—in Catalina, U.S.A. July 9, 1947, Bulawayo, Rhodesia 1953, Barra-da-Tijuca, Brazil 1952, Liege, Belgium 1990, Phoenix, U.S.A. 1997, Lac Chauvet, Puy de Dôme, France 1952, and above Lago di Cota, Costa Rica 1971.

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History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
April 19
1927—Mae West Sentenced to Jail
American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West's considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy.
1971—Manson Sentenced to Death
In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed.
April 18
1923—Yankee Stadium Opens
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House that Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It is eventually replaced by a new Yankee Stadium and closes in September 2008.
April 17
1961—Bay of Pigs Invasion Is Launched
A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection.
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