Pulp International - Elke+Sommer

Dec 10 2020

No dream involving Elke Sommer can be bad.

This Japanese poster features the German perfection known by the earthly name Elke Sommer, and it was made to promote her Cold War adventure The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz. Generally, long foreign titles were shortened, so in Japan this was called simply “Her Immoral Dream.” It isn't a great film, but it may cause you to have immoral dreams about Sommer. We have some promo photos below showing her in all her incomparable beauty. There's no Japanese premiere date for the movie, but it opened worldwide in 1968.

Japan Germany The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz Elke Sommer Bob Crane poster art cinema

Vintage Pulp

May 13 2020

Males top the endangered species list in 1967 spy thriller.

We've shared a lot of art, including a previous Japanese poster, from the James Bond knockoff Deadlier than the Male without ever actually talking about the movie. Today seems like an opportune time, since we're already on the subject of Bond clones. The film, which premiered in Japan today in 1967 after opening in the the UK earlier in the year, starred Richard Johnson, who actually came close to landing the role of Bond thanks to the interest of Dr. No director Terence Young. It didn't happen, though, and Connery as Bond makes more sense when you see Johnson, who's older, skinnier, shorter, and in less pristine shape. But he has panache, and that may be why Young wanted him. Instead he got Connery, and Johnson got the consolation prize of playing Hugh Drummond, a character that originates in H. C. McNeile novels from the 1920s, but who's updated to the ’60s in order to deal with a Cold War plot to steal rockets and divert them for nefarious means.

Like the Bond films, Deadlier than the Male offers a winning combination of action, quips, exotic scenery, and lightweight sexiness, but the film never quite rises to the upper echelons. Without the Bond budget it's hard to bring a truly thrilling vision to life. At least the filmmakers were smart enough to frontload their assets by opening the proceedings with Elke Sommer, who's second billed, but probably more important than Johnson in terms of increasing the film's watchability. She has a physicality that makes her a nice fit playing an assassin in the employ of the film's ultimate villain. Sylva Koscina co-stars as Sommer's klepto sidekick, which doesn't hurt. The pair's nefarious deeds eventually draw Johnson to their mountaintop stronghold, and there viewers are treated to a final throwdown with the evil mastermind involving a mechanized, life-sized chessboard. While Deadlier than the Male doesn't manage to out-Bond Bond, watch it with friends and beers and you'll maximize its potential.

Japan Deadlier than the Male Richard Johnson Elke Sommer Sylva Koscina Kitty Swan Terence Young H. C. McNeile poster art cinema movie review

Vintage Pulp

Aug 16 2019

With special guests the Slaymates of the year.

Today we have some beautiful rarities, a set of door panel posters made for the 1968 Dean Martin spy movie spoof The Wrecking Crew. Martin played the wise-cracking and woman-loving Matt Helm, a character created by novelist Donald Hamilton. There have been a lot of loveable drunks in cinema, but Martin certainly was one of the most popular. Boozy Matt Helm was a perfect role for him, and the first film became the launching point for a series that stretched to four entries.

The Wrecking Crew was the last film, coming after 1966's The Silencers and Murderer's Row, and 1967's The Ambushers. The movies were populated by a group of women known as “Slaymates,” and the actresses on the posters below are posing as members of that deadly cadre. They are, top to bottom, Sharon Tate, Elke Sommer, Nancy Kwan, Tina Louise, and a fifth woman no other website seems able to identify, but who we're pretty sure is Kenya Coburn.

These posters are 51 x 152 centimeters in size, or 20 x 60 for you folks who measure in inches, and they caught our eye mainly because of Tate. There's been renewed interest in her, including portrayals in two 2019 films—The Haunting of Sharon Tate and Quentin Tarantino's new effort Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Her poster is definitely one of the nicest pieces of Tate memorabilia we've seen.

We glanced at The Silencers a while back and found it just a little too dumb to consider slogging through the series, but maybe we'll have another go at it. We're sort of newly interested in Tate too, and since The Wrecking Crew was her next-to-last screen role, we want to have a look. Allegedly, Dean Martin quit this highly successful franchise because it felt wrong to go on with it after the Tate–LaBianca murders in August 1969. From what we've read about the era, Martin was far from the only person who felt as if that event changed everything. These days Tate's death makes anything she's in seem ironic and portentous, even, we suspect, a piece of fluff like The Wrecking Crew.

The Wrecking Crew The Silencers Murderer's Row The Ambushers Dean Martin Elke Sommer Tina Louise Nancy Kwan Sharon Tate Kenya Coburn Donald Hamilton Leno LaBianca Rosemary LaBianca Charles Manson poster art cinema

Hollywoodland

Jul 5 2019

It was Elke's world. Everyone else just lived in it.

Below, another treasure from our France trip. Cinémonde magazine published today in 1960 with Elke Sommer in a summery cover shot and interior photos of Marie-José Nat, Roger Dumas, Deborah Kerr, Jeanne Moreau, and more.

France Cinémonde Psycho Elke Sommer Marie-José Nat Roger Dumas Deborah Kerr Jeanne Moreau Janet Leigh Antony Perkins Alfred Hitchcock Gérard Blain Jacqueline Boyer Lana Turner Henri Verneuil Tuesday Weld cinema

Femmes Fatales

Jul 31 2018

It's impossible to be on the fence about Elke.

If you watch an Elke Sommer movie you notice immediately how athletic she looks. It was a trademark, and it made her unlike most of her mid-century peers. In fact, in the film Deadlier Than the Male her co-star Richard Johnson specifically disparages her body, opining, “Well, it's not bad. A little bit muscular perhaps, but then you've got to expect that with the violent sort of exercise you undertake.” Sommer was ahead of her time, that's all. Check here and here to see for yourself. This shot of her is from 1959 and appeared in the West German magazine Smart.

West Germany Deadlier Than the Male Smart Magazine Elke Sommer Richard Johnson

Vintage Pulp

Jan 11 2016

Elke escapes the East and probably wished she could have escaped the movie.

Even after seeing hundreds of photos of German goddess Elke Sommer over the years, ocasionally you see come across some and have to hit pause. She appeared on the cover and inside the American magazine Escapade in January 1968, posing for a set of photos taken from her comedy The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz, which had premiered in New York City on January 3rd. Sommer plays an East German decathlete who wants to escape to the west, and does so by pole vaulting over the Berlin Wall, which is what the images below depict. Why is she in her underwear? We've seen the movie but we don't remember. We do know it featured Hogan's Heroes cast members Bob Crane, Werner Klemperer, John Banner, and Leon Askin, and that it uses the Hogan's formula, replacing improbably bumbling Nazis with improbably bumbling communists. But before you add this one to your queue, here's something else we recall—it was terrible.

West Germany East Germany Berlin Wall The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz Hogan's Heroes Escapade Elke Sommer Bob Crane Werner Klemperer John Banner Leon Askin cinema television movie review

Vintage Pulp

Sep 13 2015

Making the world a safer place one skewered man at a time.

Above and below you see some Yugoslavian promo cards for Opasnije od muškaraca, aka Deadlier Than the Male, a film we’ve talked about a few times before. The text is in Serbian, and you’ll notice it describes the movie as “Američki." Actually, it was British. But Brits, Americans, who can tell them apart, really? We imagine the Yugoslavian distributors of the film knew quite well it came from Britain-based Greater Films Ltd., but that they labeled it Američki to make it more marketable. As if Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina aren’t sufficient. See more from the film here.

Yugoslavia Britain Greater Films Ltd.Opasnije od muškaraca Deadlier Than the Male Elke Sommer Sylva Koscina poster art cinema exyu

Vintage Pulp

May 27 2015

Aussie publisher spices up thriller with an image of Elke Sommer.

Last week we shared some images of Elke Sommer from the debut issue of the French magazine Stop. Those were a deliberate preface to today's post, which shows the cover for Carter Brown’s, aka Alan G. Yates’ mystery Death of a Doll from Australia's Transport Publishing, the paperback division of Horwitz Publications.

You can see that the designer used Sommer for his inspiration. Her normally blonde hair was changed to match the hair color of the story’s redheaded femme fatale, but what’s really interesting about this cover is the yawning pose. At least a couple of images from the Stop layout would have worked better, we think, but that’s just our humble opinion.

At first we thought the designer here was Bernard Blackburn, who made many of Horwitz-Transport’s photo-illustrated covers during the mid-1950s, but then we learned that this “reprint by demand” edition appeared in 1960. So we have no idea who created the cover, but he/she had good taste in models, though we seriously doubt Sommer received any compensation for her starring role. Check out the rest of those rare Stop images here and see if you don’t agree about the designer making a weird choice.

Australia Transport Publishing Company Horwitz Publications Revue Stop Death of a Doll Carter Brown Elke Sommer Alan G. Yates Bernard Blackburn cover art literature

Intl. Notebook

May 20 2015

She came along like a breath of fresh air.

The French editors of Stop were pretty smart. How do we know? Because they chose a twenty-year-old German ingénue named Elke Sommer to star on the cover of their debut issue in 1960. She also appeared in issues 6, 27, 31, and others. Very smart. Stop was published throughout the 1960s, and since this issue is N˚1, we’ll assume it’s unrelated to the Stop magazine, also French, that published during the 1940s. We have five more rare-ish Sommer shots below, and you can see an issue devoted to Brigitte Bardot here.

France Germany Stop Magazine Elke Sommer cinema

Hollywoodland

Feb 24 2015

The brightest light in Hollywood.

Elke Sommer speeds through Hollywood during the late hours in this promotional photo from a 1963 issue of the French magazine Stop. She was famous at this point, having appeared in films in Europe, but she wasn’t yet the global icon she would become. In less than a year the hit comedy A Shot in the Dark would make her one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

France Germany Hollywood Stop Magazine Elke Sommer cinema