Pulp International

Dec 14 2023

A different classification of star.

Above is a beautiful promo image of French icon Catherine Deneuve, who's considered by film buffs to be one of the best actresses of her era. Or possibly any era. Some of her acclaimed films include Repulsion, Belle du jour, Indochine, Le dernier métro, aka The Last Metro, and Les parapluies de Cherbourg, aka The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. She also established her cult cred in films like The Hunger. Always looking for the offbeat, we've watched her in Zig Zig and Hustle, the latter of which paired her with Burt Reynolds. For her work, which is ongoing, she's won two César Awards and been nominated for many more. And if that isn't enough, she also has legendary hair and can run really fast. The photo is from 1964.

France César Award Repulsion Belle du jour The Hunger Hustle Zig Zig Indochine Les parapluies de Cherbourg The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Le dernier métro The Last Metro The Hunger Catherine Deneuve

Vintage Pulp

Oct 11 2023

With Bogart and Bacall in the starring roles an unusual fugitive movie takes flight.

This beautiful poster for La fuga was painted by Italian artist Luigi Martinati, and you doubtless recognize Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. They starred in four movies together and had a dual cameo in a fifth. This promo was made for their fourth outing Dark Passage, retitled to “the escape” in Italy. And therein lies the plot. Bogart breaks prison and undergoes a backalley cosmetic surgery procedure on his face in order to evade the cops and have a chance to solve the crime for which he was unjustly sent up the river.

The filmmakers decided to use the gimmick of having the first section of the film in Bogart-vision—i.e. first person pov until he gets his new face. It makes sense. Otherwise they'd have needed to have another actor play pre-surgery Bogart, or have resorted to clunky make-up and prosthetics. Bacall co-stars as unlikely shelter and succor, plus the prospect of love—if Bogie can survive. It's a good movie.

But we're going to tack upwind at this point and suggest that Dark Passage, while good, isn't as scintillating as its reputation. Certainly it isn't in the class of To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, or The Big Sleep. But hey—it stars B&B, and that's all audiences of the era really cared about. Three years into her film career Bacall had grown into superstardom—or stardom as it was called back then—and dished out a performance here that did plenty with a thin script and a belief defying scenario.

The other star here is San Francisco, where most of the movie was shot. The city appeared in many period productions, but we can't think of it ever being used to such an extent as in Dark Passage. Since we lived across the Bay in Berkeley for a couple of years, we got to know San Fran well and it's fun to see it as it once was. Dark Passage—slightly overrated and all—is fun too. It premiered in the U.S. in 1947 and reached Italy today in 1948.

Italy San Francisco La fuga Dark Passage Humphrey Bogart Lauren Bacall Luigi Martinati poster art cinema movie review film noir

Femmes Fatales

Aug 22 2023

I adore this thing, but I need to get it repaired. Every time I try to shoot a photo some random bystander gets wounded.

We love this photo of Italian actress Luisa Rivelli handling the latest in spy gear. Her gun-camera is not quite Francisco Scaramanga's golden gun that doubles as a cigarette case and lighter, but it's pretty nice. Rivelli appeared in numerous films, including Jules Dassin's 1959 thriller La legge, aka The Law, 1965's Il tesoro della foresta pietrificata, aka Treasure of the Petrified Forest, and 1966's Operazione Goldman, aka Operation Lighting Bolt. This image came with a date on the reverse. It was made in 1965.

Italy La legge The Law Il tesoro della foresta pietrificata Treasure of the Petrified Forest Operazione Goldman Operation Lighting Bolt Luisa Rivelli

Vintage Pulp

May 8 2023

Is Django le carogne hanno un prezzo a disaster from start to finish? Why of corpse it is!

We love it when a plan comes together. We told you we hoped to watch this movie, and luckily it premiered today in 1971, mere weeks after we featured co-star Dominique Badou and her bizarro butt stripe. What you're seeing is a poster for the spaghetti western Anche per Django le carogne hanno un prezzo, known in English—amazingly—as Django's Cut Price Corpses. But a unique and snazzy title does not a good movie make. Pardner, this is by far the worst western we've ever seen. It has to be a satire. It absolutely must. But as we've discussed before with satire, if it's poorly made you often lose the ability to discern whether the filmmakers actually are just inept.

This one—and by the way we don't actually think it's a satire—is the sad work of Luigi Batzella, whose other movies include Achtung! The Desert Tigers and The Devil's Wedding Night. So it turns out Django's Cut Price Corpses isn't such a unique title after all. The movie is about bounty hunter Jeff Cameron searching for the notorious Cortez Brothers, who recently stole gold from a Silver City bank and kidnapped a woman. Cameron rides into town and pre-orders some coffins, signaling his firm intent to kill, in a bit that is possibly—no definitely—stolen from Clint Eastwood. He makes an uneasy partnership with Gengher Gatti and John Desmont, who both want the Cortez Brothers for their own reasons, and off they go into the hills on their hunt.

However, Cameron may have secret motives. Oh, hell, why are we bothering to be coy? He's really there to rescue his fiancée Dominique Badoue, who is the kidnappee from the bank job. This twist is revealed by the undercover cowboy in the final two minutes. Yes, that's a spoiler, but we care about you, and now maybe you'll watch a better movie, or read a good book, or drink a bottle of mezcal and hurl, or get an eyelid tattoo, or have someone smash your fingers flat with a meat tenderizer on a marble countertop. All are better options than Luigi's cut price western. How bad are we talking? In the wide shots we kept expecting to see cars passing and—bingo!— at moment 36:34 in a stagecoach scene, there it was. No horses were harmed in the making of Anche per Django le carogne hanno un prezzo, but numerous careers should have ended up in the glue factory.

Italy Anche per Django le carogne hanno un prezzo Django's Cut Price Corpses Achtung! The Desert Tigers The Devil's Wedding Night Jeff Cameron John Desmott Esmeralda Barros Gengher Gatti Dominique Badou Angela Portaluri Luigi Batzella poster art cinema movie review spaghetti western

Vintage Pulp

Apr 20 2023

He was honest. Everyone else made the mistake.

An array of posters were made for Alfred Hitchcock's crime drama The Third Man, which was titled in Italy simply Il ladro—“the thief”—but we've chosen this unusual mugshot based promo because it encapsulates the film nicely. The tired look on star Henry Fonda's face says it all. He's mega-screwed. There are probably other movies that took the mugshot route with their poster art, but we can't remember seeing any examples. For Il ladro, the mugshot poster was part of a series of photo promos taken from various frames in the film, but today we'll just share the one above. Also, below you'll see two more Italian posters painted by Luigi Martinati. It's rare that we prefer photo art to paintings, but this case, because of the subject matter of the film, is one of those exceptions.

Said subject matter is the true tale of Emmanuel Balestrero, an everyman who is falsely identified as an armed robber. This leads to his arrest, ordeal in jail, trial, and retrial. The movie hails from a more naive time, before Americans realized that when the police come asking questions the only answer you give is: “Am I under arrest?” And if the answer is yes, the next thing you say is: “Lawyer,” and that's all you ever say. It's crucial never to talk, because in the U.S. cops are allowed to lie to you, claim there are witnesses that don't exist, or that there's evidence they don't really have. That isn't legal in England, Australia, New Zealand, and many other countries. But Fonda doesn't know any of that, and ultimately that's largely why he ends up behind bars.

After he makes bail he and co-star Vera Miles pound the pavement investigating the false accusation. We doubt that happened in real life, but that's the movies for you. Their amateur sleuth bit works fine narratively. There's a psychological digression that's less compelling, but was included because it was part of the true story. On the whole, though, we like the movie. And we like Hitchcock's style here during his middle phase (he began directing in 1922 and finished in 1976), before high concept thrillers like Vertigo and Rear Window—though those are also good. Here he keeps it mostly basic, and the result is a harrowing drama, which is hard to bear as Fonda is slowly railroaded, but is extremely well put together and compellingly acted. The Wrong Man premiered in the U.S. in 1956 and reached Italy today in 1957.

Italy Il ladro The Wrong Man Henry Fonda Vera Miles Anthony Quayle Alfred Hitchcock Emmanuel Balestrero Luigi Martinati poster art cinema movie review

Intl. Notebook

Mar 12 2023

Wherever you look, there it is.

We're back. We said we'd keep an eye out for pulp during our trip to Donostia-San Sebastián, and we did see some, though we couldn't buy it—it was all under glass in a museum. The Tabakalera (above), a cultural space mainly focused on modern art, was staging an exhibit titled, “Evil Eye - The Parallel History of Optics and Ballistics.” A small part of the exhibition was a selection of Editorial Valenciana's Luchadores del Espacio, a series of two-hundred and thirty-four sci-fi novels published from 1953 to 1963.

We snuck a few shots of the novels, which you can see below. Overall, though, what was on offer were photos, short films, political literature, and physical artifacts dealing with war and conflict. Since the participants were all artists, journalists, and witnesses from outside the U.S., everything naturally focused on wars that the U.S. started or sponsored—those ones they don't teach in school. The pulp fit because of its suggestion that human conflict would continue even into outer space.

We also said we'd try to pick up some French pulp, and that side trip happened too. We managed to score several 1970s copies of Ciné-Revue that we'll share a bit later, and those will feature some favorite stars. Though the collecting was fun, we're glad to be back. The birthday party was a success, as always, and now we're down south where the weather is gorgeous and hopes are always high. We'll resume our regular postings tomorrow.

Spain France Donostia-San Sebastian Editorial Valenciana George H. White José Luis Macías cover art literature sci-fi

Vintage Pulp

Dec 20 2022

Hello? Is anybody there? Santa? Is that you?

Our sprint through movies this December continues today with the Italian Christmas favorite—Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale europea, for which you see a festive yule themed poster above. It was painted by Mario Piovano and just oozes holiday spirit. Right. Well, obviously not. This couldn't be a Christmas movie unless Christmas makes you want to kill everyone around you. But it qualifies as a gift from us to you, because we're going to save you the time you might have spent watching it.

The title translates as, “extract from the secret police archives of a European capital,” but was shortened to Tragic Ceremony for its English language release. The Italian title would seem to indicate that this is a giallo flick, but it's actually more in the realm of gothic horror. Basically, a quartet of carefree hippies stumble upon and must survive assorted evils, including a black mass, a phantom gas station, and spurts of megaviolence, all loosely related somehow to a string of possibly cursed pearls.

The movie stars Camille Keaton, who's not well known today, but headlined perhaps the most infamous grindhouse offering of the 1970s—Day of the Woman, better known in some quarters as I Spit on Your Grave. Keaton appears here six years earlier, and is stranded with her hippie-hedonist friends in a creepy old manse where she's seized upon by the loony, aristocratic occupants as a potential sacrifice. She escapes, but the aftereffects of her close call are numerous and gory.

Critics hindered by their own knowledge of niche cinema to the extent that they can't see the forest for the trees tend to describe this movie as underrated, but it really isn't, even if you accept it as a sly commentary on the generational clash between the counterculture and the gentry. At one point a distressed Máximo Valverde asks, “What's happening? What's going on?” Well, you've ended up in a below average horror movie, Max. It happens. Revisionist critics can't help you. Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale europea premiered in Italy today in 1972.

Italy Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale europea Tragic Ceremony Camille Keaton Tony Isbert Luciana Paluzzi Irina Demick Máximo Valverde Luigi Pistilli Mario Piovano poster art cinema horror movie review

Vintage Pulp

Jun 24 2022

The liar that came in from the cold.

Above is a nice Belgian poster for the Mexican melodrama Susana, which was known in Belgium as Susana l'Impure in French, and Susana, de Eerloze in Dutch. We talked a long while back about this story of a family shaken by the arrival of sexy young Rosita Quintana. Shorter version: not everybody caught out in a rainstorm deserves to be rescued. The movie premiered in Mexico in April 1951 and reached Belgium today in 1955.

Belgium Mexico Susana Susana l’Impure Susanna de Eerloze Rosita Quintana Luis Buñuel poster art cinema

Hollywoodland | Intl. Notebook

Jan 26 2022

The king of tabloids sets its sights on the Queen of Greece.

Every month when Confidential magazine hit newsstands, we imagine Hollywood celebrities receiving the bad news that they'd made the cover, and going, “Shit.” This issue published in January 1964 features Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Frank Sinatra, and Jill St. John. The first three members of that group probably took the news in stride, since they were all tabloid staples by then. St. John wasn't quite at their level, but her links with Sinatra kept her in the scandal sheets for a while too.

A person who wasn't used to Confidential's attentions was Frederica of Hanover, who at the time was Queen Consort of Greece—which is just a fancy way of saying she was married to the King of Greece. Confidential says she was a Nazi, a pretty serious charge, needless to say. Was she? Well, her grandfather was Kaiser Wilhelm II, as a girl she was a member of Bund Deutscher Mädel, which was a branch of the Hitler Youth, and she had brothers in the SS. Also, back in 1934 Adolf Hitler wanted to link the British and German royal houses, and tried to pressure Frederica's parents into arranging for the seventeen-year-old girl to marry the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII. And as Queen Consort she made a habit of meddling in Greek politics in ways that made clear she was not a fan of democracy. None of that is a particularly good look.

She had defenders, though, who believed that for a person in her position it would have been impossible not to have been a member of certain groups and to have socialized with Nazis. It's interesting, isn't it, how the rich and powerful always benefit from a special set of excuses? People can't really expect her to have made a stand, can they? But the excuse is hollow. As a high ranking royal she could have avoided anything she wished. Membership in organizations when she was a little girl is one thing, but as an adult she could have denounced Nazism with damage to her reputation the only potential result. A damaged reputation is no small thing, but if we expect resistance from people who'd have been imprisoned or shot for doing so, we should probably expect the same from people who would have suffered mostly dirty looks.

Confidential focuses on Frederica's July 1963 visit to England. The visit was no big surprise—Frederica, her husband King Paul of Greece, Queen Elizabeth, and her husband Prince Philip, were all related. They were all direct descendants of Queen Victoria. Monarchy is a funny thing, isn't it? The visit triggered a protest of about three thousand British leftists that was violently broken up by five thousand police. The protestors carried banners that said, “Down with the Nazi Queen.” After mentioning this fiasco, Confidential delves into Frederica's history, some of which we've outlined above, then loops back to the protests, which she blamed on the British press. But she had already reached a level of notoriety that usually brought out protestors who loudly booed her, particularly in Greece. She eventually retreated from public life, became a Buddhist, and died early at age sixty-three.

Confidential's unexpected exposé on Frederica wasn't out of character for the magazine. It was the top tabloid dog in a very large kennel. It had an expansive staff, serious reporters, hundreds of informers spread across the U.S. and Britain, and published stories about heavy hitters from all sectors of society. It had a regressive political agenda, as its article filled with terrible slander against gays and lesbians makes clear, but even with its rightward slant it took pains to keep its reporting framework factual. That makes it a priceless source of contemporaneous info about public figures, particularly of the Hollywood variety. We doubt we'll ever stop buying it, because we never know who we'll find inside. Twenty-plus scans below.

Vintage Pulp

Jul 12 2021

They may be cannibals but you have to credit their exquisite culinary taste.

The above poster for was made to promote Sergio Martino's La montagne du dieu cannibale, which was originally filmed in Italy as La montagna del dio cannibale, and in English was known as Slave of the Cannibal God and The Mountain of the Cannibal God. Basically, Ursula Andress ventures into the New Guinean jungle to find her husband, who disappeared during an expedition to Ra Ra Me Mountain, considered by native tribes to be cursed. The movie was actually shot in Sri Lanka, but details, details. Andress is accompanied on her quest by her brother, played by Antonio Marsina, a professor, played by Stacy Keach, and some unlucky locals. Their jungle trek brings on interpersonal strife, native attacks, gruesome murders, eventual capture, and additional gruesome murders, all to the accompaniment of creepy drum and synth music.

You'll sometimes see this movie classified as horror, but it's really a mondo revulsion flick, padded with real animal deaths that most people will find unwatchable. These gross-outs are somewhat balanced by the imminently watchable Ursula Andress, who's forty-two here and looking just fine. We don't mention that in passing. The entire point of this gorefest is to get her tied to a stake, stripped, and caressed by hot native girls. The plot about her missing husband—which morphs into a scheme to get rich with uranium—is just a fig leaf. We don't recommend the movie even with Andress undressed in it, but if you watch it maybe don't eat lunch beforehand. After originally premiering in West Germany, La montagne du dieu cannibale opened in France today in 1978.