Pulp International

Mar 29 2020

Digard and friend discover they're a wrestling match.

This curious photo shows Swedish softcore actress Uschi Digard and American porn actress Candy Samples posing for a photo with a wrestling theme, which was a strange little niche of the nudie market. In fact, it was a niche of the Super 8 home movie market too, which is why you can find loops of these staged clashes for sale even today. We don't particularly dig wresting pix or movies, but to each their own, right? Another niche Digard and Samples filled was the titanic boob market, as both were famous for their endowments. Digard became a star in sexploitation movies, working with directors such as Ed Wood and Russ Meyer. You don't have to pay auction prices for vintage loops of these two squirming and wrasslin' with each other. If you look you can find some online, uploaded to YouTube et al. We have seven more shots from this session below. These date from 1971.

Edit: we got an email from our friend Herman: "Sorry, but I've got to call an audible on this one. Uschi, yes, Candy, no! I don't know who she is but she is not Candy Samples. I've looked and don't find her with any of Russ Meyer's groupies. Uschi & Candy were among his favorites to hang with Kitten Natividad, his companion during the 80s and early 90s."

Thanks for writing in, H. As you probably already know, we call these mistakes, when they happen, internet replication errors, and you can't spell irritated without i-r-e. Basically, how IREs work is one website gets something wrong, so everyone else does too because nobody bothers to confirm the info. If enough sites repeat the mistake, error literally becomes fact. We've caught numerous IREs and thus avoided adding to the chain of incorrect info, but sometimes one slips through. Now we think this blonde wrestler could be Kyra Dyba Young, and she's about as obscure as it gets. But we can't say 100% it's her. For now, wrestler 2 goes in the unidentified bin.

Sweden Uschi Digard Candy Samples Kyra Dyba Young Russ Meyer Ed Wood xxx

Modern Pulp

Oct 6 2016

A Wood time was had by all at 1995 triple bill.

Above, a very nice chirashi mini-poster made in 1995 to promote a cinematic triple-bill of three Ed Wood films—Plan 9 from Outer Space, Glen or Glenda, and Bride of the Monster. None of the three played in Japan when originally released—and if you've seen any of them you realize there's no reason they should have—so this poster is for their premieres. The reason this happened is because Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood became a hit in the U.S. in 1994 and this triple bill occurred about a month in advance of that film's arrival in Japan.

The art is signed, which you can see in the inset image at right, but we can make neither heads nor tails of it. Or rather, we can make out the letters just fine for the most part, but we can't really determine how they should be arranged. Conjizukin or Comjizukin seem most likely, but we get nothing on either of those names with online searches. We weren't surprised. These artists with their esoteric sigantures. We guess none of them imagine they might one day be obscure and their abstract autographs might actually be a hinderance to recognition. If anyone can identify who this is drop us a line.

Update: The answer has arrived. A reader has informed us the artist is Suzuki Cohjizukin. We'll dig up more work from him a bit later, and thanks very much to the person who wrote in.

Japan Plan 9 from Outer Space Glen or Glenda Bride of the Monster Ed Wood Tim Burton Suzuki Cohjizukin poster art cinema sci-fi

Femmes Fatales

Sep 23 2014

I predict low visibility.

Theodora Thurman, who was known as Tedi Thurman and was born Dorothy Ruth Thurman, appears befreckled and bedecked in novelty glasses in this fun promo photo from the mid 1950s. Thurman was a fashion model, actress, and radio personality known as Miss Monitor on the NBC radio show Monitor, where she gave seductive weather forecasts while backed by lush music. As an actress she managed only one movie role in Ed Wood’s Jail Bait, but Monitor made her a huge star.

NBC Monitor Jail Bait Tedi Thurman Ed Wood television

Reader Pulp

Jul 15 2012

A good old-fashioned orgy.

A reader of this website sent in a nice piece of Robert Bonfils art we hadn’t seen before. This is the cover for Orgy of the Dead, novelized from the motion picture of the same name by its screenwriter, schlock film maestro Ed Wood, who gave the world Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space. If you haven’t seen Orgy of the Dead, we’ll tell you that it’s got a werewolf, a mummy, and the (not so) Great Criswell as the Emperor of the Dead. It’s also—of crucial importance—got a bunch of burlesque dancers cavorting in a graveyard, which leads to this classic couplet of Ed Wood dialogue between Pat Barrington and William Bates as they secretly watch Barbara Nordin do a slinky topless dance:

Barrington: “Could it be some kind of college initiation?”

Bates (breathlessly): “It’s an initiation, alright—but not of a college as you and I know of it.”

Well, clearly Bill Bates went to the wrong college. See below. We don’t say Orgy of the Dead is a good movie. But it’s probably perfect background visuals for your next party. Thanks to Andy for sending this book cover our way.