BAD MOONRISING

His problems aren't just a phase.

Though the term wasn’t widely used back then, Moonrise is a movie about trauma. Dane Clark plays a man whose father was hanged for the crime of murder, and who’s been teased and tormented by others about it his entire life. When one of his worst childhood torturers (played by Lloyd Bridges in an early role) pushes him too far when both are adults, Clark bashes in his skull with a rock and leaves the body in the woods. This is just the beginning of Clark’s troubles. It happens that Bridges’ fiancee is Gail Russell, and Clark has always wanted her. That’s motive right there. Worse, several townspeople are quite aware that he’s always wanted her.

But maybe the body won’t ever be discovered. Fat chance. Clark spends days dreading the inevitable, then after the corpse turns up, sweats like a war criminal in the dock as the local yokel sheriff tries to solve the crime. The sheriff is one of those types that seems slow-witted but—gasp!—really isn’t. You know how it goes from that point. He drawls many homespun yet simultaneously cryptic observations that make Clark quiver in his shoes. There’s an acquaintance of Clark’s who lives in the woods, played by Rex Ingram in a rare meaty speaking role for a black actor, and he really does figure out Clark is a killer, but says nothing because he figures Clark will confess of his own accord. Hmm… maybe.

The problem is, the torment Clark has endured as both a child and adult has been over-the-top cruel. Thus traumatized across the years, he’s unable to respect any boundaries or care about any feelings save his own. For example, he gives Russell zero choice about accepting his amorous advances, and Russell allows herself to be disrespected, manhandled, and eventually bullied into a relationship. Elsewhere, eventual M*A*S*H* actor Harry Morgan plays a “deaf and dumb” local who’s mercilessly teased by a crowd. We bring it up to illustrate that, in short, this is not a movie that offers a high opinion of humanity, which makes it difficult to watch, and a little hard to believe.

But okay, Moonrise is filled with reprehensible and pitiable characters because its ultimate point is that mistreatment embeds itself in the psyche and manifests later, to exponentially more people’s detriment—i.e. it’s a losing game for a society to be cruel. Short term satisfaction is repaid with compound interest on the back end. It’s a good lesson for 2024. Not that anyone who needs to learn it would listen. We just wish Moonrise, with such a serious subtext, hadn’t been so hamhanded about the syndrome it explores. But it wasn’t bad in the end. We suspect the source novel by Theodore Strauss is more nuanced, and maybe we’ll read it and find out. Moonrise premiered today in 1948.

I wouldn't say I'm one of the girls, so much as one of those girls.

Paul Rader was tapped by Midwood books so often he like a house artist. Paperbacks with very nice Rader covers can get expensive, but not in this case. We got lucky and found Richard Mezatesta’s 1963 sleaze tale One of the Girls for twelve bucks. It deals with the lovely Barbara Sellers, nineteen and horny as hell in New York City, paired up with a jealous, violent lover, but who wants to find a worthwhile replacement and expand her social horizons. Instead, an eely smooth pimp first gives Barbara some serious bedwork, then turns her out for rich customers.

As always with the call girl sub-genre of sleaze, the lead’s rationale for turning to prostitution is unconvincing, but it isn’t the point anyway. The point is titillation, and Mezatesta is pretty good on that front. Barbara satisfies numerous clients, wrestles with feelings of love for one man, and takes the requisite journey into self-loathing, yet finds quitting the sex-for-pay life difficult. Will she be a prostitute forever? Will she get married and live happily ever after? A gamut of endings are always in play in these novels, which means you can never guess until the final chapter. In all, this particular effort was pretty good.

For the most part, she's hanging in there.

At first we cropped this image of Japanese actress Miki Sugimoto frolicking on a mooring rope or hawser, but then we decided to upload it in the dimensions it appeared where we found it—in a 1972 issue of Heibon Punch. She made this to promote her role in the pinky violence actioner Sukeban, aka Girl Boss Revenge: Sukeban, in which she starred with fellow heroine Reiko Ike. It’s an iconic entry in Japanese pinku cinema, and this is an iconic shot. We have more from this aquatic session we’ll share later.

What the Eva loving hell is happening in that jungle?

We don’t give much credence to crowdsourced film ratings. These days there are coordinated efforts to drag down the ratings of certain films based on casting rather than execution. However, with vintage films it’s a different deal. Nobody really bothers dragging down those ratings. The Italian exploitation flick Eva la Venere selvaggia, which would translate as “Eva the wild Venus” but is known in English as Kong Island, has a 2.9 rating on IMDB. And that website’s ratings are, if anything, too forgiving of vintage cinema. Therefore we know going in that this is a terrible film. But we like its posters, so we took the plunge.

A scientist in Kenya is implanting radio transmitters into the brains of gorillas in order to control their behavior. When Ursula Davis heads into the area on a hunting trip she’s kidnapped by these enslaved primates. Ursula’s compatriots follow her trail through bush and forest, along the way running across a feral woman played by Esmeralda Barros, who lives in the jungle and knows where to find the mad scientist’s underground lair. Within that lair the scientist is busy explaining to Ursula—in classic cheapo movie style—his entire world dominating plot. Shorter version: his mind control device works on humans too.

Obviously, the final reel deals with the rescue of Ursula and comeuppance for the mad scientist, but it’s as perfunctory as we just made it sound. The folks on IMDB were right this time. In fact, the movie is so bad there isn’t even much satisfaction in making fun of it. It’s too easy. The movie is laden with failure ranging from the script all the way down to the gorilla suits. It’s like a pressed muffuletta sandwich of incompetence—you can’t even discern all the layers, they’re packed so tight. Director Roberto Mauri called himself Robert Morris for this and it’s easy to see why. Kong Island is like something made by apes. It premiered today in 1968.

It's all the same to the shogun.

Tokugawa onna keibatsu-shi was known in English as Shogun’s Joy of Torture. What you get is a film featuring three vignettes highlighting cruel methods of punishment used in Edo (later known as Tokyo) during the shogun era. In the first segment an indebted worker tries to keep his sister, who he’s in love with romantically, from paying his creditors with her body. When he fails, shame and jealousy drive him to suicide, a move that totally backfires when his sister is accused of his murder. In the second segment, a nun, an abbess, and a monk in are a love triangle that leads to jealousy, followed by consequences for everyone in the nunnery. And the third segment involves a famed tattoo artist whose pieces depict violence, and who goes to shocking extremes in order to complete a masterwork.

In all three instances the local shogun, who has a function similar to that of a circuit judge, shows up to mete out punishment, and various cruel methods of execution are on display (being torn in half by oxen occurs in a prologue sequence). So what you have here in the end is basically a bdsm fetish film cranked up to ten. It isn’t something we can recommend. We should note though, that the believability of the torture scenes relies more on good acting than gore, so the movie probably wouldn’t be considered unwatchably bloody by most people. Take that for what it’s worth, and we’ll mark another cult Japanese classic down as watched. Tokugawa onna keibatsu-shi premiered today in 1968.

1930s celeb publication brought plenty of Allure to newsstands

Above: a cover of a September 1937 issue of Allure magazine, along with, below, some of the more interesting interior pages. The magazine, which we found on Archive.org, was put out by New York City based Yorkhouse Publications, and this was the third and presumably last issue, since we’ve never seen others apart from July and August of the same year. If indeed it died that quickly—and don’t quote us that it did—possibly it was because there were similar magazines in the marketplace, such as Film Fun. Alternatively, it could have folded due to internal causes. Either way, three issues is a really short run.

The cover art is uncredited. It looks like the work of Enoch Bolles, but lacking confirmation we can’t label it as such. Inside are photos of Joan Blondell, Marlene Dietrich, Frances Farmer, Loretta Lee, Lona Andre (here called Lona Andrea), Olivia De Havilland in a swimsuit in Palm Springs, Republic contract star Helen Moler, Paramount signee Shirley Grey, Virginia Merrill, Carol Hughes, single name celebs Hildegarde and Armida, Betty Winkler, et al, plus an artful nude of Della Carroll. In addition Allure features the adventures of its cartoon ingenue in constant peril, Little Nell. All below, in nearly fifty scans.

When the door Slams you can't depend on anyone but yourself.

Jim Brown went from an NFL career to become one of the most popular blaxploitation screen stars of his era, and The Slams, for which you see a promo poster above, proves it. This was the second Brown movie to hit U.S. screens in a month, coming today in 1973, hot on the heels of Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, which had premiered on August 31. Unlike that film, in The Slams Brown is on the wrong side of the law. He’s thrown in supermax after a robbery and violent doublecross. $1.5 million in cash and a shipment of heroin are missing, and the prison authorities, the police, the mafia, and Brown’s cellmates all want a piece. He actually threw the heroin in the ocean, but the money is secreted away.

Brown is facing one to five years inside, which he figures he can do easily, but the mafia—who he robbed of the cash and drugs—wants him dead. He’s attacked even before he’s placed in his cell, and the bad guys keep coming. But Brown is saying nothing about the money. It’s the only thing keeping him alive. He could potentially leverage everyone’s greed into release, protection, or anything else he wants, but his plan is to do his time, get out, recover the cash, and disappear. But his timeline changes—urgently—when he learns from the prison television that the place he hid the money is going to be demolished. Escape becomes his only choice.

Low budget ’70s action movies rarely weather well, but we thought The Slams was actually rather good. Better acting would be helpful, but on the whole Brown is about on par with everyone else in terms of thespian talent, and he brings an intangible extra to the screen—charisma. His physicality works in his favor, and his cool delivery of dialogue provides gravity. Being a vintage movie, the language is off the charts incendiary, with n-bombs and f-bombs (not fuck—the other kind) flying left and right, so viewers who might be sensitive to that should take a pass. Otherwise, we recommend The Slams for blaxploitation fans, and give it a cautious thumbs up for fans of ’70s actioners. It premiered today in 1973.

The fruit never falls far from the tree, but sometimes it rolls completely out of sight.

Since Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been in the news this election cycle, we thought it would be a good time to share these political posters for his father Robert F. Kennedy, whose 1968 campaign was tragically cut short by an assassin. It isn’t that rare for a child to have opposite politics as their parents, so the fascination with Jr.’s drift to the right is overblown, in our view. It happens. That he’s incredibly strange, with his brain worm, Central Park bear cub, and chainsawed whale head, is another issue entirely. These posters of his dad are simple pieces, but visually pleasing in the way vintage material often can be. We checked out posters for Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and others from the general period, and they all have this halcyon look. We may share more campaign posters down the line.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1918—Sgt. York Becomes a Hero

During World War I, in the Argonne Forest in France, America Corporal Alvin C. York leads an attack on a German machine gun nest that kills 25 and captures 132. He is a corporal during the event, but is promoted to sergeant as a result. He also earns Medal of Honor from the U.S., the Croix de Guerre from the French Republic, and the Croce di Guerra from Italy and Montenegro. Stateside, he is celebrated as a hero, and Hollywood even makes a movie entitled Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.

1956—Larsen Pitches Perfect Game

The New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitches a perfect game in the World Series against hated rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is the only perfect game in World Series history, as well as the only no-hitter.

1959—Dark Side of Moon Revealed

The Soviet space probe Luna 3 transmits the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The photos generate great interest, and scientists are surprised to see mountainous terrain, very different from the near side, and only two seas, which the Soviets name Mare Moscovrae (Sea of Moscow) and Mare Desiderii (Sea of Desire).

1966—LSD Declared Illegal in U.S.

LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.

1945—Hollywood Black Friday

A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.

Classic science fiction from James Grazier with uncredited cover art.
Hammond Innes volcano tale features Italian intrigue and Mitchell Hooks cover art.

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