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Pulp International - Stockholm
Femmes Fatales Aug 21 2021
NEEDLE ON THE RECORD
Getting a vaccination can really be a Hasso.


Above is a photo of Swedish actress Signe Hasso from her 1945 spy thriller The House on 92nd Street. We think that if the COVID shot givers looked like Hasso there'd be very few holdouts. But the shot she gives, sadly, is not of the helpful variety—though it was probably easier to administer than convincing some Americans to get their jabs. First the guy's smacked out of his chair, then kicked across the room until he's insensate.

Hasso was born Signe Larsson in Stockholm, was acting in Swedish films by age eighteen, made the leap to Hollywood seven years later, and from that point added many highlights to a career that would turn out to be long and distinguished. Among her notables: Heaven Can Wait, Johnny Angel, and A Double Life, as well as television roles on shows such as The Green Hornet, Magnum P.I., and The Fall Guy.

For the record, we think skepticism against government is healthy. Hell, in a couple of the countries we've lived it's a survival trait. But believing that tens of thousands of scientists are aligning with governments to betray the global population for nebulous goals of control is an outlandish fantasy. Healthy skeptics can be convinced with evidence; unhealthy skeptics can never be convinced, and that's a psychological disorder.

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Vintage Pulp May 28 2021
EUROPEAN VACATION
Mitchum packs everything he needs for traveling except his sleuthing hat.


This beautiful poster for the Robert Mitchum thriller Foreign Intrigue is yet another framable delight from the golden age of Hollywood. Wikipedia calls this movie a film noir, but genre designations are often wrong there and on IMDB. This is actually a spy movie, often light in tone, sort of like the later films Charade and Arabesque. Mitchum is an American in Paris working as a press agent for a reclusive one percenter.
 
When his employer dies of a heart attack, Mitchum comes to believe there was more to the death than a blown ventricle. He follows a trail of clues from the French Riviera to Vienna and Stockholm, which is where the foreign part of Foreign Intrigue comes in. The intrigue part? Well, that never fully develops. In fact, the movie falls back on the cliché of having the villains explain their plot to the protagonist. It has to do with money, blackmail, traitors, and Hitler. Trust us, it's not as interesting as it sounds.
 
Compounding the narrative problems is a dopey soundtrack and a Mitchum who's short on charm here. The flirtations between him and Swedish love interest Ingrid Thulin are solid wood. She went on to win Best Actress at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, which goes to show that half of acting is screenwriting.
 
Are there any saving graces to Foreign Intrigue? Of course. It's well shot, atmospheric, cast with international actors and their wonderful accents, and is a nice travelogue, encompassing Mediterranean villas, Vienna backstreets, and Swedish lakes, all in lush Eastmancolor. And Mitchum is watchable even in a film that mostly wastes his considerable star power. Intrigued? Then go for it. Foreign Intrigue premiered today in 1956.

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Vintage Pulp Sep 12 2016
LESSER FULLER
It's really impossible to measure the Worth of this film.


What more do you need to know about a movie than the fact that cheeseball actor Ken Clark plays a main character named Dick Worth and he spends ninety minutes trying to get his dick's worth of action? The Fuller Report is a half baked espionage caper set in Sweden, involving Clark's smug race car driver who gets swept up in a frantic search for the eponymous report. What's in these papers? References to a Soviet defector, who it turns out is a kidnap and blackmail target. But the villains have more complex plans for her—they intend to turn her into an assassin. And of course the racing comes into play too, but not as much as you'd think based on the Japanese promo poster above. 

Jointly made by the Italian company Fida Cinematografica and French based Les Productions Jacques Roitfeld, this is high budget schlock with Americans in three of the four main roles, and the fourth slot occupied by Serbian star Beba Lončar, who plays the defector. Lončar is a real beauty, but Ken Clark wins the production value award hands down—dude is seriously ripped. There's a steam bath scene involving Lončar, but we think it was actually put in the film so Clark could get his chest all oiled up.

Overall, we recommend you break out either a twelve-pack or the weed pipe for this flick—it's rife with awful acting, clunky staging, and loaded lines of dialogue any cleverhead could riff on all night. Our favorite? Clark and Lončar are in bed enjoying post-coital bliss and Lončar gushes, “I love you so much.” Clark's response: “Me too.” Invite your funny friends, sit back and enjoy Lončar's beautiful face, Clark's steely torso (without the fur he's wearing below), and the great soundtrack by Armando Trovajoli. The movie opened in Italy as Rapporto Fuller, base Stoccolma in early 1968, and sped into Japan today in 1970.

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Vintage Pulp Nov 17 2014
LAND OF 1,000 DANCES
Notice how the guy goes from an early, enthusiastic attempt to glumly watching from the sideline—that’s how it works for us too.


We’ve seen these paperback covers in different places around the internet and thought they’d make an interesting collective post showing the progression of their dance-themed covers. The first is from 1950 with art by Rudolph Belarski, the next is from an unknown who nonetheless painted a nice rear cover as well, and the last is from Harry Shaare. Macamba concerns a group of characters in Curaçao, and how one in particular struggles to deal with his biracial background as he grows to manhood. He first tries to become a witch doctor, then excels at conventional learning in university, and eventually ships off to World War II and becomes a hero. Returning home, he has many romances and seeks to find his place in the world. You may wonder if there’s any actual dancing in the book, and indeed there is—the main character watches a performance of the tamboe or tambú, a native dance and music that the Dutch colonizers of Curaçao had made illegal.  

Lilla Van Saher captures certain aspects of indigenous culture in Curaçao, even sprinkling the dialogue with some Papiamento, but the book is not derived directly from her personal experiences. She was born Lilla Alexander in Budapest, lived an upper class life, modeled, acted in French fims, married a Dutch lawyer named August Edward Van Saher, and through him was introduced to Dutch culture and its island possessions. During her first trip to Curaçao she claims to have been imprisoned by natives in a church because they thought she was a local saint.

In private life, she was a close friend of Tennessee Williams, traveling with him aboard the S.S. Queen Federica in the early 1950s, entertaining him in New York City, and accompanying him during a press junket of Sweden, acting almost as an agent and introducing him to the upper crust of Stockholm, where she was well known. During this time she was Lilla van Saher-Riwkin, and often appears by that name in biographies of Williams as part of his retinue of admirers and associates, though not always in a flattering light. Later she did what many globetrotting dilletantes do—published a cookbook. Hers was called Exotic Cooking, which is as good a description of Macamba as we can imagine.

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Vintage Pulp Oct 20 2013
CAUGHT IN A CROSSFIRE
Robert Young tries to solve a murder that seems to have no motive.


Above is a Swedish poster for Edward Dmytryk’s Hämnden är rättvis, aka Crossfire, a really interesting film noir about an ex-soldier who is murdered, and his fellow ex-soldiers who are suspects. Police detective Robert Young tries to get to the bottom of the crime, but is increasingly baffled as he realizes the killing did not occur for any of the usual reasons—money, lust, revenge, etc. Different character recollections provide different information about the victim’s last hours, but only serve to underscore the apparent senselesslness of the crime. We can’t reveal the direction Young’s investigation turns without giving away the ending*, but we’ll mention that the movie won an award at Cannes—the Prix du meilleur film social, or Best Social Film.

Though technically and visually brilliant, as a whole we don’t think Crossfire has weathered as well as other noirs (for casual movie watchers it may be too static and talky). But it does have a bravura performance from Robert Ryan, and solid work from both Gloria Grahame and the always excellent Robert Mitchum. As far as the art is concerned, note the strong contrast between the Swedish version and the riotously colorful American ones, which we have below. Swedish film noir posters often de-emphasized color and used long lines to apportion space into several distinct boxes (as seen here, here, here, and here), but the above is one of the most severe examples we’ve found. Crossfire premiered in the U.S. in July 1947, and first played in Stockholm as Hämnden är rättvis today the same year.

*We’ve never worried about giving away endings before. Our capsule reviews are really just excuses to show the poster art and joke around. However, a few recent emails have revealed that some readers actually visit Pulp Intl. for viewing ideas, which just goes to show that after five years online you receive credibility whether you were looking for it or not. So even though recent scientific research shows that people enjoy stories more if they know the endings in advance, we’re going to be better about spoilers in the future. Promise.

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Vintage Pulp Aug 7 2010
SWEDE NOTHINGS
The unhappy hooker goes to Stockholm.

We just finished watching L’ultimo giorno di lavoro di una prositituta, and it’s pretty much exactly what the title says—the last day in the job of a prostitute. Lovely Dagmar, played by Diana Kjær, is a hooker in Copenhagen and has decided to quit the rackets and escape to Stockholm. We follow her during her last day as she sees various clients, co-workers, friends and relatives, and also gets slapped around by her pimp. This movie is really bad—it’s poorly acted, poorly produced, and poorly written. In parts, it’s unintentionally funny, but the deliberate attempts at comedy fall flat. Stereotypes abound: you get a couple of Japanese guys with bowl cuts who say “Ah so,” and know karate, a Russian diplomat who’s always drunk on vodka, a mustachioed Italian guy who air-conducts classical music, and a hippie who’s trying to be a rock star and needs money to get his girlfriend an abortion. While we didn’t enjoy the movie, it’s worth noting that the radiant Anne Grete Nissen appears in a minor role, and we absolutely love the rare Italian poster you see above. L’ultimo giorno di lavoro di una prositituta, aka Dagmars Heta Trosor, aka Dagmar’s Hot Pants, Inc., premiered in Italy today in 1971.

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Vintage Pulp May 3 2010
WILDING OUT
The fast and the furious.
Above you see the Swedish promo art for the seminal youth rebellion drama Vild Ungdom, aka The Wild One. When it premiered in Stockholm, moviegoers heard this:

“Pops, you pick up on this jive, man?"


“What?”

“You pick up on this jive, this crazy music here, man? Did you dig the rebop?”


“What?”


“The rebop, dad! The rebop! He’s a square, man. Don’t you get this at all?”


We’d love to have seen the subtitles, because after that the dialogue gets so crazy even we can’t transcribe it, but that’s The Wild One—a different type of cinema, and a new kind of
star in rough and tumble Marlon Brando. Some people think 1955 was the zenith of the American empire. If that’s so, then The Wild One is the proverbial writing on the wall that change was in the wind. Brando and the rest of his Black Rebel Motorcycle Club roared across movie screens in Sweden for the first time today in 1954. 

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Intl. Notebook Feb 2 2009
THIS WON'T HEARST A BIT
Modern day bad girls are nothing compared to Patty Hearst.

Winona, Paris, Nicole—read and learn. Patty Hearst was first a millionaire socialite, then a kidnap victim, then a self-described urban revolutionary and machine gun toting bank robber. She went on trial for armed robbery in January 1976, and the proceedings continued through March. Newsweek produced the grainy cover you see above twenty-two years ago today. Despite the efforts of celebrity lawyer F. Lee Bailey, Hearst was sentenced to 35 years. But her sentence was commuted by president Jimmy Carter after a mere 22 months of time served, even though she had refused at trial to give evidence against her kidnappers/accomplices. She was later given a full pardon by Bill Clinton. Psychologists claim Hearst was not responsible for her actions due to the effects of Stockholm syndrome, which basically means she started digging her kidnappers. We're gonna try that excuse next time we get arrested, but we have a feeling it won’t work.

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History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
March 19
1931—Nevada Approves Gambling
In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived.
1941—Tuskegee Airmen Take Flight
During World War II, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, is activated. The group is the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, and serves with distinction in Africa, Italy, Germany and other areas. In March 2007 the surviving airmen and the widows of those who had died received Congressional Gold Medals for their service.
March 18
1906—First Airplane Flight in Europe
Romanian designer Traian Vuia flies twelve meters outside Paris in a self-propelled airplane, taking off without the aid of tractors or cables, and thus becomes the first person to fly a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Because his craft was not a glider, and did not need to be pulled, catapulted or otherwise assisted, it is considered by some historians to be the first true airplane.
1965—Leonov Walks in Space
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his spacecraft the Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes. At the end of that time Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter Voskhod's airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, was barely able to get back inside the capsule, and in so doing became the first person to complete a spacewalk.
March 17
1966—Missing Nuke Found
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.
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