| Modern Pulp | Apr 10 2022 |
She's arrived on this earthly plane to love you to death.
We said you'd see sexploitation star Laura Gemser again sooner than you thought, and here she is—or at least here's an interesting depiction of her—on a poster made in Turkey to promote her film Ateşle Oyun. That translates as “game with fire,” but the movie was known in English as Divine Emanuelle and Love Camp. There's no Turkish release date, but we're talking about it today because it premiered today in 1981 in West Germany, where it was released as Die Todesgöttin des Liebescamps, or “the death goddess of love camp.” Death goddess, eh? That doesn't sound fun, but we'll get to that in a minute.
As you can see in panel two, the West German promo is nothing to write home about, which is why we decided to focus on the Turkish art. It's signed by an illustrator named Ömer Muz. We looked him up and got many hits, but with no way of knowing whether any of them were the Muz we were seeking. A few of them were artists, and one was even an art director in movies back in the early 1980s, but final identification eluded us.Die Todesgöttin des Liebescamps was written, directed by, and co-starred Christian Anders, an Austrian musician/singer/composer and man-in-over-his-head in terms of technical ability. His character oversees a free-love cult on Cyprus called Children of Light. He's the servant of the Divine One, played by Gemser, who bathes in milk, parades around topless while flanked by an oiled up bodybuilder, and preaches an apocalyptic schadenfreude doctrine that sounds a lot like the Rapture. In her cult, you can give love freely, but cannot be in love. “Love for only one person is egosim,” she puts it. “When two people love each other they shut the world out. That's a sin.” Basically, that means the cult is an ongoing orgy. Rulebreakers get slapped around or whipped. Gemser even whips herself occasionally. She's a true believer.
The plot kicks into gear, sort of, when one of the cult babes decides she wants to leave and is instead thrown off a cliff by the oiled up bodybuilder guy. There had to be a dark side to all this sex, and that dark side is you can check in anytime you like but you can never leave. We next learn that the police have become suspicious about missing cult members and have inserted an undercover operative who's poking around even as Gemser tries to indoctrinate an heiress and soak her down for her fortune. Will the undercover cop learn the truth of the cult? Will Gemser expose him? Will she expose herself? On the latter score, fans will be satisfied, rest assured. But for objective film buffs, we have to tell you that, like most Gemser efforts, this flick is terrible.
But it's also significant because there's bizarre trivia associated with it. Most notably, David Koresh has a small role. You perhaps remember him? As the leader of the Branch Davidian cult he sought to create a new lineage of world leaders, had sexual partners as young as ten years old, and finally died in 1993 with seventy-five disciples during a fire that broke out at the cult's compound during an FBI raid. On top of all that, writer director Anders propagated various conspiracy theories in books and interviews. The lesson is don't take a movie script too seriously. Especially a sexploitation script. Die Todesgöttin des Liebescamps premiered today in 1981.
Witness me, little ones! Are my abdominals not out of this world?
Bring forth the divine ointments and sexual lubes!
I and my slippery, steroid enraged servant shall now engage in the holy rite of hot raw sex. You may want to rewind this part a few times.
I came here to find myself, and she gives me this room. Feels like she's mocking me.
There's something to find right under these holy raiments, little lost blonde one.
Divine One, I prefer this female version of myself. Diversity is good and all, but we're a matched set. Hope you're okay with that.
Throw them both into the pit of eternal-despair-without-hope-of-redemption-or-surcease! Hmm... probably need to shorten that name. And who forgot to order the lube for today's orgy? Throw him in the whatever pit too!
I'm a cruel goddess, it's true. But behold the everloving fuck out of this!TurkeyCyprusWest GermanyAustriaDie Todesgöttin des LiebescampsDivine EmanuelleLove CampLaura GemserGabriele TintiChristian AndersSascha BorysenkoÖmer MuzDavid Koreshposter artcinemasexploitationnuditymovie review
| Intl. Notebook | Mar 5 2022 |
Taina Béryl and an aquatic companion get into the swim of things.
It was about time for an addition to the Pulp Intl. swim team, so above you see German actress and dancer Taina Béryl from a 1970 issue of the French magazine Moi. She joins vintage water sprites Belita, the Townhouse Aqua Maidens, Ella Raines, the synchronized swimmers of Hellzapoppin, the mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs, and—if we want to stretch the theme—vintage drowner Christine Todd, but ups the ante with body paint and dolphin accompaniment.
The feature is called “La belle et la bête,” which means, “beauty and the beast.” Needless to say, the dolphin community was up in fins about one of their number being called a beast, and we don't blame them. Last we checked they hadn't eaten almost every living thing in the oceans. Not surprisingly, the dolphin was shunned in the magazine business after the fuss and its modeling career came to an unjust end.
Béryl appeared in nine films during her career, including 1968's Run, Psycho, Run, 1965's Spy in Your Eye, and 1963's L'inconnue de Hong Kong, aka Stranger from Hong Kong. All of those sound like fun to us. Béryl was also popular as a magazine model, scoring covers and centerfolds of publications like Ciné-Revue and Cinémonde. We have a shot of her on land, and if you want to see that just go here.
FranceGermanyMoi MagazineRun Psycho RunSpy in Your EyeL'inconnue de Hong KongStranger from Hong KongTaina Béryl
| Vintage Pulp | Mar 2 2022 |
Everyone in class is expected to give an oral presentation.
The Japanese poster you see here, which is quite striking, was made to promote the West German sexploitation movie Schulmädchen-Report 5. Teil - Was Eltern wirklich wissen sollten. Quite a mouthful. In English it was known as Schoolgirl Report Part 5: What All Parents Should Know. Still a mouthful. There's a reason for that. These films, of which thirteen were made, are legendary—or maybe infamous is the appropriate word—for pioneering the idea of sexploitation flicks as documentaries. We've talked about a few of them, specifically numbers three, seven, and eleven. The tail end of the title for this one—What All Parents Should Know—gives the film a gloss of scholarship, as if scientific research went into its making. But it was a fig leaf. People watched these movies to see nudity and sex, not to educate themselves. And if anyone actually hoped for education, well, they were steered horribly wrong.
The movie consists of six vignettes. In the first, three high schoolers bet during a rural field trip that they can lay their straight arrow teacher. In the second, a man is seduced by his granddaughter and ends up on trial. And so it goes, from scenario to scenario, all of them strange. None of the performers involved, female or male, would win a beauty contest, but a few are appealing, such as Sonja Jeannine, who features on the poster, and Ingrid Steeger, who was a stalwart in sexploitation films and men's magazines. While a couple of the vignettes have serious undertones, they're mostly meant to be tongue-in-cheek. What is incredibly serious, though, is how far the envelope gets pushed thematically. Grandfather/granddaughter incest? That's not good at all. We can't recommend the film, but we love the poster. You won't see it anywhere else. Schulmädchen-Report 5 premiered in Sweden in 1973 and opened in Japan today in 1974.
"Oh, come on, grandpa! I'm sure your heart will be just fine."
"Heh heh, I have to admit, my dear—that get-up is a lot sexier than the bunny pajamas you used to wear."
"I'm out of order? I'm out of order? Your Honor, are you kidding me? She's out of order!"
JapanWest GermanySchulmädchen-Report 5. Teil - Was Eltern wirklich wissen solltenSchoolgirl Report Part 5: What All Parents Should KnowSonja JeannineUlrike ButzPuppa ArmbrusterJudith FritschCleo KretschmerMarisa FeldyMarina Blümelposter artcinemasexploitationnuditymovie review
| Femmes Fatales | Feb 26 2022 |
Bang bang, lovelies—there's a fab new sheriff in town.
Helga Liné's last name has an accent, which means it's pronounced not “line” but “lee-nay.” She was born in Germany as Helga Stern in 1932, but her family fled nazism and she grew up in Portugal, where her first exposure to show business was as a dancer and circus acrobat. It was after moving to Spain in 1960 that her film career took off. She appeared in many giallo, spaghetti western, and horror films, among them All'ombra di una colt, aka In a Colt's Shadow, Pánico en el Transiberiano, aka Horror Express, and Amanti d’Oltretomba, aka Nightmare Castle. The promo above is not one we can identify as from a particular film, but we do know the date—it was part of a session that produced a cover for the Spanish magazine Dígame in July 1965.
GermanyPortugalSpainAll'ombra di una coltaka In a Colt's ShadowPánico en el TransiberianoHorror ExpressAmanti d’OltretombaNightmare CastleDígameHelga Liné
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 22 2022 |
It's paradise found in cheeseball sexploitation flick.
This Italian poster was painted by Ermanno Iaia for the 1972 sexploitation comedy L'isola dei piaceri proibiti, which was originally West German made as as Robinson und seine wilden Sklavinnen, and known in English as Robinson and His Tempestuous Slaves. We have another poster below, and Magda Konopka stars on it but she isn't in the movie. Don't ask us how that happened. Some mysteries aren't meant to be solved.
So, yes, we watched this, and it's terrible. A schlub pharmacist named Robinson, who's descended from Robinson Crusoe, is trapped in a life of drudgery and domestic strife, but has fantasies of escaping to the tropics. You'd think there would be something in that pharmacy to lift his mood, but instead he actually goes to a jungle island. Since the scantily clad trio of Andrea Rau, Anne Libert, and Ingeborg Steinbach (but not Magda Konopka) are with him everything seems perfect (even with the obnoxious wildlife whose thoughts we get to hear).
By definition, paradise can never last. In this case, sadly, everything goes pear-shaped when cannibals turn up. Did we mention that this is a Jesús Franco movie? But it's Franco trying to be funny, and that isn't pretty. Talking wildlife, remember? Not pretty at all. In that case, why should you watch it? Because you get to see Rau stark raving naked in a waterfall. Boom. Book it. The movie has no Italian premiere date, but if we ever find one we'll update this post. We have some production photos below, and, as a bonus Rau, Steinbach, and Libert in three nice glamour shots.
ItalyWest GermanyL'isola dei piaceri proibitiRobinson und seine wilden SklavinnenRobinson and His Tempestuous SlavesJesús FrancoYehuda BarkanAnne LibertAndrea RauIngeborg SteinbachMagda KonopkaErmanno Iaiaposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
| Intl. Notebook | Feb 21 2022 |
Swiss bank receives long deserved exposure thanks to data leak.
We're occasionally asked why we don't do modern true crime write-ups as often as we once did. There are a couple of reasons. We actually have jobs, and the research on crime stories is time consuming. But secondly, modern day swindles, scams, and corruption are out of control to the extent that writing about them seems redundant. But we're making an exception today because one of our previous subjects, who we wrote about way back in 2009, has popped up in the news again. That would be Hisham Talaat Moustafa, who was sentenced to death for hiring out the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim. His was one of thousands of names just revealed in a massive financial data leak from Credit Suisse, one of the most prestigious banks in Switzerland, which hides money for the richest people in the world.
We think everyone knows Swiss banks are corrupt, right? Their first secrecy laws were adopted in 1713. It's safe to say they've been corrupt for almost that long. Over the years Credit Suisse's clients have included Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, who stole $10 billion from the Philippine treasury, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Panamanian drug lord and CIA informant Manuel Noriega, thousands of Nazis who were hiding their expropriations, and countless shady shell companies. One can insert the usual objections about taxes here, but the point is that regular
people must pay them, yet the rich and powerful somehow always manage to avoid their fair share, even when they've generated their loot through illegal or even genocidal means. As with many morally rudderless institutions and people, what Swiss banks do is perfectly legal, but “perfectly legal” is the phrase uttered by people who know they're willfully engaged in behavior that obviously should be illegal—and in fact is illegal for everyone but the rich and connected.
people must pay them, yet the rich and powerful somehow always manage to avoid their fair share, even when they've generated their loot through illegal or even genocidal means. As with many morally rudderless institutions and people, what Swiss banks do is perfectly legal, but “perfectly legal” is the phrase uttered by people who know they're willfully engaged in behavior that obviously should be illegal—and in fact is illegal for everyone but the rich and connected.Credit Suisse is trying to pretend that the leak reveals old accounts from before the bank cleaned up its practices (which it never substantially did), but the spin won't be effective because the data reveals that the bank is currently holding money for human traffickers, drug lords, oligarchs, stock cheats, treasury looters, mafia kingpins and—in the case of Hisham Moustafa—murderers. Correction—pardoned murderers, since he was released thanks to presidential decree in 2017. The information on all this corruption was originally passed to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung via an anonymous whistleblower, and the odds are good that in a matter of weeks or months that currently unknown person will be outed and have to make a full time job of trying to avoid the total destruction of his or her life and a prison sentence—no pardon pending.
Tax and corruption problems have exploded globally as elite greed has grown, the profits from criminality have soared, digital technology has created previously-unheard-of fortunes, offshoring of profits has become standard practice, deregulation and the de-facto dissolving of anti-trust laws have allowed corporations to grow more powerful than countries, and austerity has shrunk or eliminated the enforcement mechanisms of public institutions. In fact, in addition to funneling money from regular people to corporations and the rich, the other point of austerity is to shrink government to prevent it prying into the affairs of corporations and the rich. Libertarians rejoice. Insider trading, commodities fraud, and money laundering are all now rampant, and there's nothing people can do about it because the government institutions meant to be centers of oversight were taken over by the rich decades ago.
Moustafa paid to have his girlfriend knifed to death. Unlike murderers able to hide behind the fig leaf of non-conviction, his guilt was established as a fact during a criminal court proceeding. He was sentenced to hanging but was retried and had his punishment reduced to a mere fifteen years. He spent, in total before his pardon, nine years in a country club prison, and all the while managed his wealth, built up his billions, and
came out of jail not disgraced and shunned, but welcomed, feted, and once again demanding and receiving VIP treatment, the best tables in the best restaurants, and the ear of the global elite. He threw a few coins to charity along the way to spit-shine his reputation, had his thriving conglomerate Talaat Moustafa Group donate some COVID vaccines, but still he's a murderer who wriggled loose from the hangman's noose, and today enjoys every privilege he ever enjoyed—while his victim is dead forever.
came out of jail not disgraced and shunned, but welcomed, feted, and once again demanding and receiving VIP treatment, the best tables in the best restaurants, and the ear of the global elite. He threw a few coins to charity along the way to spit-shine his reputation, had his thriving conglomerate Talaat Moustafa Group donate some COVID vaccines, but still he's a murderer who wriggled loose from the hangman's noose, and today enjoys every privilege he ever enjoyed—while his victim is dead forever.This is the place in which we find ourselves. We all understand, if we actually absorb factual information rather than apologist propaganda or fanciful myth, that the rich have fucked up this world, and the rest of us, as well as future generations, are going to pay to clean up the mess. If it can even be cleaned up, which is doubtful. And that's why we stopped writing about modern crime and corruption. It's pointless. It's banal. Writing about old crimes is an escape, a window into history and the mad hearts of men and women who are long, long gone. Writing about current crimes is self-flagellation. We'll still do it on occasion when the urge strikes, like today, but we're well aware that people tend to complain more as time goes by and we don't want to fall into that trap. We want Pulp Intl. to be a place of entertainment and wonder—by which we mean amazing art, exciting fiction, bizarre historical and Hollywood facts, and beautiful women.
GermanyEgyptLebanonRomaniaPanamaSwitzerlandPhilippinesSüddeutsche ZeitungCIAHisham Talaat MoustafaSuzanne TamimFerdinand MarcosImelda MarcosNicolae CeausescuManuel Noriega murdernazis
| Hollywoodland | Intl. Notebook | Jan 26 2022 |
The king of tabloids sets its sights on the Queen of Greece.
Every month when Confidential magazine hit newsstands, we imagine Hollywood celebrities receiving the bad news that they'd made the cover, and going, “Shit.” This issue published in January 1964 features Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Frank Sinatra, and Jill St. John. The first three members of that group probably took the news in stride, since they were all tabloid staples by then. St. John wasn't quite at their level, but her links with Sinatra kept her in the scandal sheets for a while too.
A person who wasn't used to Confidential's attentions was Frederica of Hanover, who at the time was Queen Consort of Greece—which is just a fancy way of saying she was married to the King of Greece. Confidential says she was a Nazi, a pretty serious charge, needless to say. Was she? Well, her grandfather was Kaiser Wilhelm II, as a girl she was a member of Bund Deutscher Mädel, which was a branch of the Hitler Youth, and she had brothers in the SS. Also, back in 1934 Adolf Hitler wanted to link the British and German royal houses, and tried to pressure Frederica's parents into arranging for the seventeen-year-old girl to marry the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII. And as Queen Consort she made a habit of meddling in Greek politics in ways that made clear she was not a fan of democracy. None of that is a particularly good look.
She had defenders, though, who believed that for a person in her position it would have been impossible not to have been a member of certain groups and to have socialized with Nazis. It's interesting, isn't it, how the rich and powerful always benefit from a special set of excuses? People can't really expect her to have made a stand, can they? But the excuse is hollow. As a high ranking royal she could have avoided anything she wished. Membership in organizations when she was a little girl is one thing, but as an adult she could have denounced Nazism with damage to her reputation the only potential result. A damaged reputation is no small thing, but if we expect resistance from people who'd have been imprisoned or shot for doing so, we should probably expect the same from people who would have suffered mostly dirty looks.
Confidential focuses on Frederica's July 1963 visit to England. The visit was no big surprise—Frederica, her husband King Paul of Greece, Queen Elizabeth, and her husband Prince Philip, were all related. They were all direct descendants of Queen Victoria. Monarchy is a funny thing, isn't it? The visit triggered a protest of about three thousand British leftists that was violently broken up by five thousand police. The protestors carried banners that said, “Down with the Nazi Queen.” After mentioning this fiasco, Confidential delves into Frederica's history, some of which we've outlined above, then loops back to the protests, which she blamed on the British press. But she had already reached a level of notoriety that usually brought out protestors who loudly booed her, particularly in Greece. She eventually retreated from public life, became a Buddhist, and died early at age sixty-three.
Confidential's unexpected exposé on Frederica wasn't out of character for the magazine. It was the top tabloid dog in a very large kennel. It had an expansive staff, serious reporters, hundreds of informers spread across the U.S. and Britain, and published stories about heavy hitters from all sectors of society. It had a regressive political agenda, as its article filled with terrible slander against gays and lesbians makes clear, but even with its rightward slant it took pains to keep its reporting framework factual. That makes it a priceless source of contemporaneous info about public figures, particularly of the Hollywood variety. We doubt we'll ever stop buying it, because we never know who we'll find inside. Twenty-plus scans below.
GreeceGermanySpainBarcelonaHannoverConfidentialElizabeth TaylorRichard BurtonFrank SinatraJill St. JohnFrederica of HanoverFriederike LuiseQueen Elizabeth IISteve McQueenJames DeanMarlon BrandoWilliam HoldenCapucineFrancisco FrancoEdward VIIIAdolf Hitlertabloidnazislgbt
| Intl. Notebook | Jan 6 2022 |
West German magazine tears down the wall.
German isn't one of our languages, but who needs to read it when you have a magazine with a red and purple motif that's pure eye candy? Every page of this issue of the pop culture magazine Bravo says yum. It hit newsstands today in 1957 and is filled with interesting and rare starfotos of celebs like Romy Schneider, Horst Buchholz, Clark Gable, Karin Dor, Mamie Van Doren, Ursula Andress, Marina Vlady, Corinne Calvet, jazzists Oscar Peterson and Duke Ellington, and many others. This was an excellent find.
We perused other issues of Bravo and it seemed to us—more so in those examples than this one—that it was a gay interest publication. After a scan around some German sites for confirmation we found that it was as we thought. The magazine's gay themes were subtle, but they were there, and at one blog the writer said that surviving as a gay youth in West Berlin during the 1960s, for him, would have been impossible without Bravo. We will have more from this barrier smashing publication later. Thirty-five panels below.
West GermanyBerlinBravo MagazineRomy SchneiderHorst BuchholzClark GableKarin DorMamie Van DorenUrsula AndressGermaine DamarMarina VladyCorinne CalvetOscar PetersonLittle RichardSylvia SimsJames DeanUrsula AndressJohn BromfieldBeverly GarlandOlga VarenHélène VallierOdile VersoisAndrea ChecchiIrene TuncJoan Crawfordtabloidlgbt
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 16 2021 |
Hi, this is Elke calling from Down Under. Can I speak to my agent? There's been a trademark infringement.
As usual the Aussie publishing company Horwitz has used a film star on one of its book covers—this time German goddess Elke Sommer on the front of 1959's Terror Comes Creeping. She was a favorite of theirs—we've seen her on four covers, including this one, and we've speculated that they're all unlicensed, for reasons discussed here.
This one stars Carter Brown's, aka Alan G. Yates's franchise sleuth Danny Boyd, who's hired by a woman named Martha Hazelton who thinks her father is killing off his children—with her next in line—in order to avoid losing his dead wife's inheritance. The father, when confronted by Boyd, says that insanity runs in the family and his daughter is paranoid and probably nuts. It certainly seems that way when Boyd meets his client's loopy, danger obsessed little sister, but of course matters soon begin to look far more complicated than they seemed at first.
On one level it's amazing Carter Brown sold something like 120,000,000 books, because his work is not special. But on the other hand it's fast, sometimes funny, and hits the right notes for detective novels. So maybe his success isn't so strange after all. We'll probably read another, because we have a few.
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 25 2021 |
If he's German we're a couple of Midwestern turkey farmers.
Erhard von Sprecher, author of 1954's Les mains rouges, or “red hands,” is a pseudonym. Has to be, right? French mid-century policier and espionage authors loved pen names, so much so that few of the authors wrote under their real names. We're not sure why, but we suspect that they felt it gave their books credibility if they adopted American sounding names like Patrick Rock (Louis Valgrand), Jerry Lewray (Louis de la Hattais), Slim Harrisson (Jacques Dubessy), et al. In this case, the name von Sprecher was used to give this tale about an S.S. agent who refuses to admit the Third Reich lost World War II a sense of firsthand German reality, but he was almost certainly a French writer—though one so obscure there's no information out there. Maybe something will turn up later. In any case, we decided to feature this book not because of von Sprecher's name, interesting as that is, but because of the striking red hand art. And guess what? We can't find out who did that either. C'est comme cela que ça se passe.
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