Vintage Pulp

July 23 2021

PERIOD DRAMA

Red tide brings a flood of problems to a coastal community.

If you’ve been to our site often you can look at the above poster and immediately know it was made to promote an ama movie. This niche of Japanese vintage cinema, like the tides, just keeps coming. This film was called Yobai ama and was known in English as Nasty Diver. Sounded promising, so we watched it and it deals with assorted marital problems in a fishing village. Yôko Azusa plays an ama working days diving in the bay, working nights as a bar hostess, and working as a part-time domestic for a local geisha, while her husband does who-knows-what.

Trouble starts when Yôko’s husband refuses to have sex during her period. He makes numerous excuses, including that it’s bad for her health, but she isn’t fooled for a second. She walks out on him and of course this is big news in this fishing village, which brings an opportunist out of the woodwork eager to take advantage of Yôko’s separation. He’s the local pimp, Yoto, glib and persuasive as movie pimps tend to be. Will Yôko end up on the game? Will she get back together with her period-squeamish hubby? You won’t find out from us. This is lightweight stuff from Nikkatsu, but certainly we’ve done worse with sixty-nine minutes of spare time. Yobai ama premiered in Japan today in 1977.

Japan, Nikkatsu, Yobai ama, Nasty Diver, Yôko Azusa, Reika Maki, Aoi Nakajima, poster art, cinema, pinku, roman porno, nudity, movie review

ABOUT

EMAIL

LEGAL

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

November 15

1920—League of Nations Holds First Session

The first assembly of the League of Nations, the multi-governmental organization formed as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, is held in Geneva, Switzerland. The League begins to fall apart less than fifteen years later when Germany withdraws. By the onset of World War II it is clear that the League has failed completely.

November 15

1959—Clutter Murders Take Place

Four members of the Herbert Clutter Family are murdered at their farm outside Holcomb, Kansas by Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith. The events would be used by author Truman Capote for his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, which is considered a pioneering work of true crime writing. The book is later adapted into a film starring Robert Blake.

November 13

1940—Fantasia Premieres

Walt Disney’s animated film Fantasia, which features eight animated segments set to classical music, is first seen by the public in New York City at the Broadway Theatre. Though appreciated by critics, the movie fails to make a profit due to World War II cutting off European revenues. However it remains popular and is re-released several times, including in 1963 when, with the approval of Walt Disney himself, certain racially insulting scenes were removed. Today Fantasia is considered one of Disney’s greatest achievements and an essential experience for movie lovers.

November 12

1912—Missing Explorer Robert Scott Found

British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his men are found frozen to death on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where they had been pinned down and immobilized by bad weather, hunger and fatigue. Scott’s expedition, known as the Terra Nova expedition, had attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole only to be devastated upon finding that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them there by five weeks. Scott wrote in his diary: “The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God! This is an awful place.”

November 12

1933—Nessie Spotted for First Time

Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster while walking back from church along the shore of the Loch near the town of Foyers. Only one photo came out, but of all the images of the monster, this one is considered by believers to be the most authentic.

November 12

1969—My Lai Massacre Revealed

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre, which had occurred in Vietnam more than a year-and-a-half earlier but been covered up by military officials. That day, U.S. soldiers killed between 350 and 500 unarmed civilians, including women, the elderly, and infants. The event devastated America’s image internationally and galvanized the U.S. anti-war movement. For Hersh’s efforts he received a Pulitzer Prize.