| 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
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 14 2023 |
There's a new prosecutor in town—and his name is Humphrey.
Above: an Italian poster for La città è salva, better known as The Enforcer, starring Humphrey Bogart as a prosecutor tasked with cleaning up rampant corrutpion in the big city. The movie is middle tier for Bogart, but that means it's still very good. The poster is uncredited, but spectacular, with its abstract skyscraperscape and elongated figures. If we ever find out who painted it we'll updated this post. La città è salva premiered in Italy today in 1951.
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 13 2023 |
Around the world in 180 pages (or thereabouts).
Wouldn't it be great to sail away to an exotic island, live in a hotel, and write novels? Ed Lacy was the archetypal globetrotting author, and 1963's Two Hot To Handle is a product of that lifestyle. It's two novellas joined: “Murder in Paradise,” set in Tahiti, and “The Coin of Adventure,” set on the other side of the planet in Tuscany.
“Murder in Paradise” is the tale of an American named Ray Judson and his local wife Ruita, who live reclusively on a small island, and are hired by a Hollywood studio to help scout locations for an adventure movie. Does this idea sound familiar? It should. We guess this sort of thing happened in real life enough to inspire a few novels.
Anyway, when the leading lady is murdered the police point the finger at Ruita, and Ray desperately undertakes to find the real killer. We're going to start using the shorthand term “find-the-real-killer novels” to refer to these plotlines. By day Ruita eludes the cops by hiding out on a tiny islet, and by night she ventures ashore to assist her husband and sneak in some moonlit lovin. Avoiding prison is important, but you gotta get your freak on too.
“The Coin of Adventure” is about Kent Kelly, an American adventurer in Viareggio, Italy, who learns that fascists fleeing at the end of World War II abandoned a hoard of stolen gold in a cave. He and a partner head after the loot, but death and betrayal are always uninvited passengers on such missions.
Of the two stories we liked “Murder in Paradise” a little better. Lacy, it's clear, strove to correctly portray Tahiti without resorting to travelogue or showy displays of local language. He was interested in the people. To even write a character like Ruita, who decides to work for the moviemakers to ensure that they get the details of her culture correct, shows his empathy for island folk. She's an excellent character—ambitious enough to want to influence how her people are portrayed in Hollywood, naive enough to think she can really do it. With Lacy leading the way we'll go anywhere. Tahiti? Tuscany? You bet.
French PolynesiaItalyTahitiPapeeteViareggioPaperback LibraryEd LacyLeonard ZinbergCharles Copelandcover artliterature
| Intl. Notebook | Nov 6 2023 |
When you've gotta go you've gotta go—inside your costume.
When you were a kid did you ever wonder how mermaids performed their bodily functions? We did too. And now that we're adults we wonder the same about actresses that play mermaids. The Pulp Intl. girlfriends seem to use the bathroom about every two hours, so assuming they're close to average in that department we can't imagine that shooting mermaid movies is a time efficient process. In this case, the performer shoehorned into a rubber tail is French/Italian actress Dominique Boschero, who did it for her 1963 film Mare matto, aka Mad Sea. We feel for her. It's a pretty simple mermaid outfit compared to Ann Blyth's in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, but still highly inconvenient, we suspect. We'll watch the movie to see if her discomfort was worth it. Meanwhile, more promo images below, and see another Boschero image here that we were first to put online way back in 2011. 
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 3 2023 |
Dirty mind, clean body.
Above: a poster for the 1972 sexploitation flick I pornogiochi delle femmine svedesi, painted by Italian illustrator Renato Casaro, along with a photo of star Claire Gordon going a rub-a-dub-dub with both hands in a tub, used by Casaro to inspire his creative process. The movie was originally made in England as Suburban Wives. While Gordon is lovely, and the poster is too, the movie is pretty dumb. Many years back we discussed it in a bit more detail and shared another Casaro promo, so if you're inclined to check that out, you can do so here.
ItalyI pornogiochi delle femmine svedesiSuburban WivesClaire GordonRenato Casaroposter artcinemasexploitation
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 30 2023 |
Caroselli is strictly the pits.
Above is a collection of covers from Italian illustrator Benedetto Caroselli for Grandi Edizioni Internazionali, all referencing the concept of Hell, and the entities conceptualized to inhabit the pits therein, including Satan, devils, demons, and incubui. These were made for the terror series I Capolavori della Serie KKK Classici dell’Orrore. You can see more Hell covers at this link and this one, and in this collection.
ItalyGrandi Edizioni InternazionaliMarion WallesElizabeth CroninFrank BogartFrank BoghartJacques CazotteChristian BuschJames MurphyRené du CarPerry RockHeintz ZosterSimon O'NeilStephen TourjanskyBenedetto CaroselliRenato Caroccicover artcover collectionliterature
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 19 2023 |
Gemser adds a few degrees to the equatorial heat.
Yup, Laura Gemser again. It's just one of those things. La donna della calda terra premiered in Italy two days after Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali, so you get to enjoy her twice this week. Above are two posters for the former film, which was originally made in Spanish and released as La mujer de la tierra caliente, then retitled in English as Emanuelle - A Woman from a Hot Country, and, more succinctly, Fury. By this point Gemser's Emanuelle series had pitted her against everything from slavers to cannibals, but here she headlines something close to a straight drama, as she meets Stuart Whitman while both are hitchhiking the hot backroads of Venezuela. As they sit together in a horse trailer being towed across the country, they tell each other their tragic histories.
We've made fun of the bizarre plots of Gemser's movies, but this attempt at unsensationalistic drama is conceptually flat and the screenplay is terrible. Our favorite line: “Don't pay too much attention to women. We have days in which we see everything distorted.” We'd retort that men have entire lifetimes in which they see everything distorted, which is why the world is fucked. *checking credits* Yeah, the screenplay was written by men. Well, they dropped the ball here, not just because of bad writing, but because—and we never thought we'd say this—Gemser's movies need rampant weirdness to be watchable. So give up being normal and enbrace the bizarre. Bring on the slavers and cannibals. They were sorely missed. After premiering in Spain in July 1978, La donna della calda terra opened in Italy today the same year.
SpainItalyVenezuelaLa donna della calda terraEmanuelle - A Woman from a Hot CountryFuryLaura GemserStuart WhitmanGabriele TintiPaola SenatorePilar VelazquezAmel Amorposter artcinemasexploitationnuditymovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 17 2023 |
There are no limits to what Diana Dors can convince men to do.
After all these years working on this website it remains a surprise when promotional posters of extremely high quality are uncredited, but such is the case with these two Italian beauties made for Nel tuo corpo l'inferno, a movie originally produced in England as Tread Softly, Stranger. The Italian title translates as “hell in the body,” which we rather like. It fits the plot, which revolves around George Baker avoiding a gambling debt by fleeing London to the small town where he was raised, only to find that his brother who lives there is also in debt, having stolen money from his employer. He's spent it on femme fatale Diana Dors, who's way out of his league, money-hungry, and willing to pit the brothers against each other if it improves her station in life.
Baker, being of sound mind and body, wants Dors badly. With just a little nudge, he and his brother are convinced by Dors to stage a heist. The phrase “corpus delecti” in legal terms means that a crime has to be proved to have actually occurred before anyone can be convicted of it, but in vintage cinema nobody has to prove anything because the scales of justice tend to be cosmic. As viewers, then, you know the brothers could be convicted by karma for just attempting the crime. They get the loot, but they certainly won't get to keep it—though how they lose it will come as a surprise. And if one of the brothers gets Dors, they probably won't get to keep her either. In mid-century crime movies thems the breaks. Tread Softly, Stranger premiered in Britain in 1958, and in Italy today in 1960.
ItalyEnglandNel tuo corpo l'infernoTread Softly StrangerDiana DorsTerence MorganGeorge BakerPatrick Allenposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 17 2023 |
You don't have to be a cannibal for her to make you hungry.
Sticking with Italy today, the poster above is not one you'll see often. It was made for Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali, an entry in star Laura's Gemser's expansive Emanuelle series. In English this was called Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, and you really don't need to know more to figure out what's in the movie. The shot used by Fulvia Film for this poster is from a scene in which Gemser paints herself with a glyph before pretending to be the reincarnation of a cannibal goddess and attempting to rescue a friend who's slated to become dinner. On the poster her lower regions are covered by a painted-on loincloth, but we don't have to do that here, so you also see two uncensored production photos of her as she actually appeared during the scene. We watched and wrote about the film ten years ago, and it was one wild trip. You can read what we wrote about it here, and see a crazy piece of Japanese promo art for the movie here. It premiered in Italy today in 1977.
ItalyEmanuelle e gli ultimi cannibaliEmanuelle and the Last CannibalsLaura Gemserposter artcinemahorrorsexploitationnudity
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 15 2023 |
I've almost got you! After I rescue you please don't feel any sense of gratitude that becomes confusingly sexual!
Yup, it's another disaster thriller. We told you we can't resist these. Rain of Terror was published in 1955 and came from Malcolm Douglas in a Gold Medal Edition fronted by James Meese cover art. The story takes place partly in Rome, but mainly in the fictitious Italian town of Asceno. We're always baffled when authors don't just choose a real town, but whatever. The Asceno area is being battered by a weeklong rainstorm, with flooding, looting, and chaos. Newspaperman Jake Abbott is sent to get the story. Once there, the waters nearly destroy the town, and a cache of long lost jewels appears, along with two Botticellis. The fight over these riches is predictable, but what isn't is Abbott's almost Kafkaesque nightmare as he's trapped in a town that becomes like a labyrinth. His misadventures, romantic entanglements, arrests, beatings, and wrong turns read like farce or metaphor. Rain of Terror isn't as good as other disaster thrillers we've read, but it's memorable.
 |
 |
