DANCING WITH THE STAR

Bardot uses smooth moves to solve a murder.


Brigitte Bardot graces a black Clément Hurel promo poster for Voulez-vous danser avec moi, and a Belgian poster as well, where the film was known by both its French title and as Wilt jij met mij dansen? In English it was called Come Dance with Me!, and in it Bardot indeed dances, but also pouts, flirts, schemes, and sleuths. It all starts when she weds a dentist. The couple are in love, but within months they’re in constant marital conflict. The husband goes out one night and gets fishhooked by Dawn Addams, though he doesn’t go all the way. Doesn’t matter though, because it looks like he did in the photos shot by sneaky ass Serge Gainsbourg, who’s photographing everything through the French doors—or as the French probably call them, the doors.

Nearly cheating makes the dentist realize how good he has it with Bardot—duh—but blackmail rears its ugly head when his almost affair shows up with the heavy petting photos. Though it may not sound like it, Voulez-vous danser avec moi is a comedy, or perhaps a dramedy. It’s generally considered lesser Bardot, but is there really such a thing? It’s satisfyingly wacky like Bardot films tend to be. For example, when Addams turns up dead, Bardot connives her way into a position at Addams’ dance studio in order prove her husband is innocent of murder. The rest of the film is basically a caper comedy with dance numbers. Lesser Bardot or not, we suspect it’ll get the job done for you just fine. Voulez-vous danser avec moi premiered in France today in 1959.
Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web