Midnight claims in this issue published today in 1968 that a conspiracy was afoot to assassinate Richard Nixon during his presidential campaign, but with mid-century tabloids the question is always: Is this true? We found no mention of the plot anywhere, though Midnight is pretty authoritative in its assertions, claiming three men were involved, two of whom were in FBI custody, with the third having been picked up by Mexican police in Tijuana. But authoritative or not, the paper got this one wrong.

Weirdly, though, there may have been a plot to kill Nixon in 1968, but a week after the above Midnight hit newsstands. Though the episode is little remembered today, a man of Yemeni origin named Ahmed Rageh Namer was arrested along with his two sons Hussein and Abdo on November 12—a full eight days after Midnight made its arrest claims—and charged with conspiracy to assassinate Nixon, who had won the presidential election the previous Tuesday. You can see Namer under arrest in the photo just below.

The evidence against him and his sons was scant—an informant claimed the father possessed two rifles, had asked him join him in the killing, and had offered him money to do so. This was back before the word of a shady informant could get a person thrown in a black pit in Guantanamo for ten years, so the Namers actually got a trial and their defense lawyer of course shredded the case. All three men were acquitted in July of 1969.

But how weird is it that Midnight would fabricate an assassination story a week before the FBI uncovered what they thought was an actual assassination plot? Maybe Namer read Midnight and got the idea. Nah... he was probably just innocent in the first place. But still, how odd. Sometimes history is stranger than fiction. Elsewhere in the issue you get a bit of Hollywood gossip and a pretty cool photo of Maureen Arthur and another of Carmen Dene, below. See more Midnight at our tabloid index.

Beautiful and very rare, the two posters above were made to promote Toei Company’s Urufu gai: Moero ôkami-otoko, aka Wolfguy: Enraged Lycanthrope, a rollicking thriller that premiered in Japan today in 1975 and starred Shin’ichi Chiba, better known in the West as Sonny Chiba. Based on a manga series by Kazumasa Hirai, the movie involves a vicious invisible tiger that’s killing the members of a Tokyo rock band who gang-raped a woman named Miki and infected her with syphilis because a powerful politician wanted her relationship with his son sabotaged. The tiger is the manifestation of Miki’s curse.

You may be saying to yourself, “But none of that has anything to do with lycanthropy.” You’d be right, but there is in fact lycanthropy here—Chiba the tough reporter is a werewolf. He can’t yet harness his power, but try telling that to J-CIA, a secret organization that will stop at nothing until they obtain Chiba’s vital fluids and create human-wolf hybrids. Hero and heroine’s paths and genitals eventually cross, and from this union Chiba realizes how to control his wolfly abilities.

But there’s more, oh so much more, to this film. Urufu gai: Moero ôkami-otoko is gory good fun, low budget, but well worth a viewing thanks to Nami Etsuko as Miki and, of course, the legendary Chiba. Good luck tracking down a copy. Ours was a cable television rip with all the crazy Japanese commercials intact. 

Hello Pulp International readers! I'm Commercial Girl. The Pulp guys have asked me to introduce five screenshots from Urufu gai: Moero ôkami-otoko. Please enjoy and have a wonderful Tuesday!

The enraged lycanthrope acquits himself admirably in a fight as none other than Steve McQueen the King of Cool looks on with studied approval.

Some girls don’t like wolf blood so when you find one who digs it this much she’s a keeper. Napkins? Nonsense! This blood is finger licking good.

Wild thing you make my heart sing… and squirt like a lawn sprinkler. It’s just give give give with this girl.

Hey, douche nozzles, why the fuck did I hire you? Look at my mouth. That thing hanging there? That's called a cigarette. What does it need? Here’s a hint—why does it emphysema like you never fuckin' listen?

Shhh…I can hear her spirit speaking to me through her portrait. She says KFC bucket meals are 30% off for a limited time only. Um, Wolfguy, you turned off the tv in the other room, right?

Hi! Commercial Girl here again. The Pulp guys say Tuesday sucks especially hard. Even more so when your fantasy baseball team goes 2 for 39 and you lose seventeen points! So here’s one more screenshot because you need extra cheering up!

All of us in Kiss want every one of you out there to remember to rock 'n' roll all night and party EVERY DAY! Geishas RULE! Sushi and blow FOREVER! So long Tokyo! Or as you say here, Sayonara! 

Two years ago we shared five covers of women standing over men they had just killed and mentioned that there were many examples in vintage cover art of that particular theme. Today we’ve decided to revisit the idea in order to reiterate just how often women in pulp are the movers and shakers—and shooters and stabbers and clubbers and poisoners and scissorers. Now if they do this about a billion more times they’ll really be making a difference that counts.

French publishers, interestingly, were unusually fond of this theme—so egalitarian of them. That’s why many of the covers here are from France, including one—for which we admit we bent the rules of the collection a bit, because the victim isn’t dead quite yet—of a woman actually machine gunning some hapless dude. But what a great cover.

We also have a couple of Spanish killer femmes, and a Dutch example or two. Because we wanted to be comprehensive, the collection is large and some of the fronts are quite famous, but a good portion are also probably new to you. Art is by the usual suspects—Robert Maguire, Barye Phillips, Alex Piñon, Robert Bonfils, Robert McGinnis, Rudolph Belarski, et al. Enjoy.

These two panel length posters promote the pinku flicks Neon kurage and its sequel Neon kurage: Shinjuku hanadensha. We also have a normal promo for Neon kurage below. The movies, though well known, never had any Western releases as far as we know, but would be called Neon Jellyfish and something like Neon Jellyfish: Shinjuku Float. Shinjuku is a place, but we were unsure on the “float” aspect until we looked it up. It seems to derive from a type of Japanese streetcar decorated with flowers in the manner of a parade float, but its secondary meaning has something to do with sexual performance, specifically vaginal insertions of, well… anything from blowguns to ping pong balls. The movie is alternately titled, according to some sources, Neon Jellyfish: Shinjuku Flower Streetcar.

Above, two alternate versions of the poster for Denki kurage, aka Electric Medusa, aka Play it Cool, with Mari Atsumi. See the slightly different poster we shared in 2011 here. 

Above is the cover (and title page) of Rage magazine from December 1961 with uncredited artwork of a man receiving his just desserts. We chose this because the full magazine was featured a few years ago on the website Darwin Scans, and it just so happens that after a year-and-a-half absence the site is active again. That’s good news for vintage magazine lovers, because few sites make full scans available for download (though the link for this is dead). We’ve talked here about making our many rare magazines downloadable, but frankly the effort is just too much—scanning pages of ads and mastheads and personals would make it impossible to post (nearly) every day, which is where the joy lies for us. That’s why Darwin Scans is such an important site—the sheer work requires dedication, and few have it.

This shot shows up everywhere on the internet, but it’s still worth posting. It’s of course Steve McQueen, a bit battered but basically looking as if he hasn’t a care in the world, under arrest in Anchorage, Alaska for suspicion of drunk driving. He was turning doughnuts in the snow, which sounds to us like a fine idea. That was today in 1972. Bailed, McQueen never returned to Anchorage and was convicted in absentia of reckless driving. 

Above, another Japanese promo poster featuring Mari Atsumi, this one for director Yasuzo Masumura’s Denki kurage, which was known internationally by the great title Electric Medusa, but which was known in the U.S. as Play It Cool. It premiered in Japan today in 1970.

You already know from our previous posts on the subject that we’re big fans of Italian poster artist Sandro Symeoni, so today we have six more pieces from this prolific master. Above you see Un’idea per un delitto (aka Brainstorm), and below are Gli amanti del chiaro di luna, Nude… si muore (aka Naked You Die), Gli altri racconti di Canterbury (aka The Other Canterbury Tales), L’altra casa ai margini del bosco (Behind the Shutters), and La strage di Frankenstein (aka I Was a Teenage Frankenstein). See more Symeoni here and here.