When Radley Metzger’s softcore movie The Lickerish Quartet was released overseas, its Italian distributors rightly decided that was a stupidish title for a movie and changed it to Esotika Erotika Psicotika. Unfortunately, Esotika Erotika Psicotika sounds glossier and more sophisticated than what you ultimately receive here. What you get is a rich, jaded couple and their surly son who watch 16-millimeter porno loops in their castle for thrills. One night they go out and encounter a motorcycle stunt rider who resembles a woman in one of the loops. They invite her back for what they hope will be a night of debauchery, but which turns out to be less conventional fuck than extended mindfuck. It quickly becomes apparent why the movie opened with a Luigi Pirandello quote pondering the nature of reality, as time and space soon become malleable, leading toward an ending that questions the truth of everything that came before.

Above, six Japanese posters for 1950s and 1960s gangster movies. These are, top to bottom, Shichinin no yajû: chi no sengen, aka Return of the Filthy Seven, Sono gosôsha wo nerae: “Jûsangô taihisen” yori, aka Take Aim at the Police Van, Kawaita hana, aka The Pale Flower, Kutabare akutô-domo—Tantei jimusho 23, aka Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards, and finally two versions of Gendai yakuza: yotamono jingi, aka Hoodlum Yakuza.  

Above, a poster for Dokyumento poruno: zoku sukeban, aka Porn Document: Sukeban 2. This is an obscure one. It starred Noriko Igarashi, who you see brazenly flashing her tighty whities on the poster, and that's all we can tell you except for the premiere date, which was today in 1973.

We’re back to the West German publication Illustrierte Film-Bühne today, supplementing our post from two months ago. These examples are all from American dramas or films noir produced during the 1940s and early 1950s, but which premiered in West Germany later, typically 1954 or after. You can see the earlier IFB collection here.

Above, a poster for Noribumi Suzuki’s Ero shogun to nijuichi nin no aisho, aka Lustful Shogun and His 21 Mistresses, aka The Erotic Shogun and His Twenty-One Prostitutes, which starred Tôru Abe, Yasumori Hikita, and also features three of our favorite pinku actresses, Reiko Ike, Yayoi Watanabe, and Miki Sugimoto. We had a bit of a debate here at Pulp HQ as to the actual number of buns 21 women possess. Would it be 21 or 42? The PI girlfriends just rolled their eyes at this question, by the way. But it’s worth exploring. In the strictly physical sense, a bun possesses two halves, right? Thus one woman has one bun, comprising two halves, each of which might be useful for an open face sandwich, perhaps, but which cannot by itself constitute a whole. Alternatively, when referring to a person’s backside, you might observe that she has nice buns. More to the point, if there were, say, a tattoo there, you might say, “She has a tattoo on her right bun.” Actually, first you might say, “Poor girl. That looks really frickin’ trashy and she has no idea.” But then you’d say she has a tattoo on her right bun. Or left bun, as the case may be. Or saddest of all, across both buns. All of which would seem to imply that 21 women have 42 buns. The PI girlfriends suggested we go with the British term “bum,” which is not in any way ambiguous, but also doesn’t rhyme with “gun,” which was really the whole point. Actually, it technically could rhyme with gun, depending on how loose your interpretation of rhyming is. Certainly, a rapper would agree that bum rhymes with gun, but we don’t rap, so in the end, we went with bun. That is, one woman has one bun. All pretty confusing, truthfully. At this point we’d normally do a quick review, maybe show you some still shots of these 21 mistresses that populate Ero shogun to nijuichi nin no aisho, maybe even mention that it premiered in Japan today in 1972, but after dragging you through the cramped, dark spider hole of our editorial process, the least we can do is show you an/some actual bun/buns. So there’s Reiko’s below. Hooray!

Here’s another replacement post. Which is to say, something else existed here until we went back into our archive and changed it. Sometimes we just grow dissatisfied with some of things we’ve done, and when that happens we replace it with something more amusing or interesting. This falls into the interesting category—a mid-1970s promo shot of Japanese pinku star Yayoi Watanabe, who we’ve featured a couple of times before. She appeared in movies such as Seijû gakuen, aka School of the Holy Beast, and Ero shogun to nijuichi nin no aisho, aka Lustful Shogun and His 21 Concubines, and she was born sixty years ago today. See more Yayoi by clicking her keyword below. 

Published in the mid-1950s by Editions de la Pensée Moderne as part of their Collection Tropiques, Call Girl Central: 08~022 pretends to be the musings of an anonymous NYC call girl. Some Tropiques editions were written by French author Frédéric Dard, but this one is uncredited, as is the Ava Gardner-inspired art (though it could be Jef de Wulf). In any case, this cover is one of our new favorites. 

Sado-masochism has been a mainstay of Japanese art for a long time. During the 1980s, their filmmakers took explorations of S&M further than any cinema had before, and in so doing invented torture porn long before the term was coined to describe American movies like Saw and Hostel. The major difference in Japan is that the films were misogynistic as well. Below is a collection of ten one-sheets for Japanese sado-masochist films released in 1985 and 1986. We don’t recommend any of these for viewing, but the promo art, er… kills.