We were out barhopping not long ago when we spotted this promo poster on the wall of one of the many joints we visited. You’ll notice most of the text is in English. That’s because Ondarra sort of markets itself to the expat Brit crowd here. Anyway, after a couple of attempts to adequately photograph the poster, we just ripped it down and departed, because hey, just like that old rap group Naughty By Nature, in a pinch we’re down with o.p.p. This particular o.p.p. features the work of mid-century pin-up artist Peter Driben, who painted covers for the Robert Harrison-operated pulp mags Wink, Flirt, Beauty Parade, and others. Driben is one of the most important and prolific pulp illustrators who ever lived, so we’ll be posting—or, ahem, borrowing—some more of his work in the future. 

Japanese promo poster for the American porno flick Glitter, with an image of star Shauna Grant, 1983. Grant committed suicide a year after this film was released. 

Above is the entire series of Dirty Harry book covers, nicely capturing Clint Eastwood’s famous don’t-fuck-with-me glint. The series, which is known collectively as The Further Adventures of Harry Callahan, was authored from 1981 to 1983 by several people using the psuedonym Dane Hartman. You can find brief descriptions/reviews here.

We just saw this movie for the first time a few months ago and it falls squarely into the category: could-not-be-made-today. That doesn’t automatically make it good, but it just so happens this is a pretty good flick. You’ve got a young, intense Al Pacino, noirish direction from William Friedkin of Exorcist fame, and a story focused on sex, drugs, and violence. Basically, Pacino plays a cop who goes undercover in New York City’s gay BDSM subculture. He’s looking for a killer, which requires him to play the role of an available, leather-clad party boy. But there’s deep cover, and then there’s deep cover. When you cross the line trouble always results. The art above comes from a promotional pamphlet, and it conveys the mood of the film quite nicely. We recommend it, with a reservation—if you’re progressive-minded, you’ll probably hate it. But you know that going in. Whenever Hollywood portrays a so-called subculture for a genre flick, it’s an affront to those being portrayed, whether gay, Chinese, black, female, religious, Texan, environmentalist, Iraqi, or what have you. Could Hollywood make films that portrayed all these segments of society in only positive terms? Sure, but who’d go see them? So bring on the action, and we’ll deal with the caricatures by agreeing that they’re just living cartoons, designed to offer some thrills and chills. Cruising premiered in the U.S. today in 1980. 

What you’re looking at are two pieces of Japanese promo art for the Italian shocker Cannibal Holocaust. Released in 1980, the film was so disturbing that it was banned by several countries, and resulted in director Ruggero Deodato being dragged before authorities who were seriously intent on jailing him for the rest of his life. In order to avoid that fate, he had to prove that his actors had not been killed during filming, and in particular, he had to show that the scene of an indigenous Amazonian girl impaled on a pole was just a special effect. But even knowing the impalement, a castration, a disembowelment, a beheading, and the cannibalism are all fake doesn’t make the film any easier to stomach, mainly because it features some real atrocities, such as a three-foot long turtle being de-shelled, a pig being shot to death, and a monkey having its face cut off with a machete. On the plus side, the Brazilian scenery is beautiful. Cannibal Holocaust’s central premise of lost film footage being found and reviewed in order to determine the fate of the foolhardy foreigners who shot it sets up like familiar horror, but in all other respects the film pushes the envelope so far it’s on the outside looking in. Think you’re tough? Give this one a try. Cannibal Holocaust premiered in Tokyo in January 1983. 

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow seems to have been a career killer for director and writer Kerry Conran, but we just watched it last night and there’s little doubt other directors who have committed far worse transgressions are still working in Hollywood. And truth is, this isn’t a bad movie. Except for the actors, it’s almost entirely digital, but unlike many other CG productions there is some actual warmth here, thanks to stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. The film is a take on the old sci-fi serials like Commando Cody, and old comics like Captain Midnight. It takes place in an alternative 1939 populated by zeppelins, fighter planes, and glowing, vacuum-tubed gadgets. Plotwise, you have giant marauding robots of unknown origin raiding New York City to kidnap scientists and steal items of value. Jude Law, as Sky Captain, is called upon to find out why it’s happening. His adventures with Paltrow—as ace reporter Polly Perkins—take him from Manhattan to Nepal in search of the person they believe to be orchestrating the attacks—the mysterious Dr. Totenkopf (played by Sir Laurence Olivier in archival footage). Sky Captain isn’t perfect, but it’s quite likeable once you accept the preposterous physics of its action sequences. We’d actually have preferred less action and more exploration of its nifty art deco universe, but we’re old school—we’re the types who like movies with 98 minutes of dialogue followed by two gunshots and a credit sequence. But we recommend checking this one out anyway. You could do much worse with your time. Above you see the nice French promo poster. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow premiered in France at the Gérardmer Fantasticarts Film Festival as Capitaine Sky et le monde de demain today in 2005. 

We never saw The X-Files when it was on television, so recently we began downloading and watching this historic show from the beginning. Right now we’re halfway through season four, and that cancer in Scully’s head looks like it’s going to be a real bitch. Anyway, we got to thinking how cool an I Want To Believe poster would look on Pulp Intl., but when we scoured the Internet for one we came up empty. There were plenty of posters for sale, of course—on Ebay alone there were at least a dozen sellers offering them—but most of them were wrong. Wrong UFO, wrong sky, wrong trees. So we built our own from a hi-rez screenshot and you see the result. We hear that there were several versions on the show, but the one we've seen through season four looks like the one above, and now it’s yours, just because you were smart enough to visit this website. If you’re a fan of the show, feel free to add the image to your blog, and—because we’re way too purist to ruin our pretty work with a Pulp watermark or some other ridiculousness—don’t forget to tell everyone where you got it. 

Hana to hebi: kyûkyoku nawa chôkyô was released with the English title Flower and Snake 4: Rope Magic, which is a very pretty collection of nouns for an exercise in torture porn. Fairly hard torture porn, too, probably because by the time this was made by Nikkatsu Studios, adult video was taking a major bite out of Japan’s pinku market. The plot here is simple: a gambler with debts loses his wife and daughter to the Yakuza, who proceed to humiliate the women in various fiendish ways. There’s an escape attempt that goes awry, but basically the story is just a framework for increasingly devilish forms of sexual degradation. You got your dildos. You got your hot wax. You got your urine. This is soooo not our thing. But what is our thing is the promo art, which is just lovely, even while evincing the film’s highly dubious nature. Experienced pinku fans, or those into the Japanese art of Kinbaku-bi (beautiful bondage) may dig this movie. All others proceed with caution. Hana to hebi: kyûkyoku nawa chôkyô, premiered in Japan today in 1987.     

Assorted Italian and Spanish covers of Nicola del Principe’s Sukia,1977 to 1986, borrowed from sources too numerous to name. Credit to all. Also, perhaps you noticed that the cover star looks like Italian actress Ornella Muti? Well, she is Ornella Muti. At least, the main character Sukia Dragomic is modeled after her. We’ll have the full story on Sukia later, along with more covers.     

Update: Okay apparently nobody got our headline and subhead, but that's because they didn't look at the first cover. Notice the snowman has a giant schlong, indicated by the shadow? So Season's Greetings is like a penile salute. And Ding Dong Merrily on High is a (not so) famous Christmas Carol. Not funny? Sigh. All we want for Christmas is more wit.

Remember the era of day-glow exercise wear, when all the fabrics looked like they’d been bathed in radiation? True Police Cases magazine circa December 1989 reminds us how insanely hideous the look was, as their cheeky cover star hunts either the man who gave her a painful wedgie, or the hairdresser who committed malpractice on her fringe. As far as the headless dancer mentioned at left goes, we’d pay money to see that. We went to The Nutcracker once, and those dancers were really good, but they had heads. This Iowa dancer must be more than just a shocker—he must be a balletic genius.