There’s no safe place in pulp—especially not the bathtub. Above and below is a collection of vintage covers featuring various unfortunates who chose the wrong time to be naked and defenseless. Well, most of them are naked. A few have clothes on for reasons we cannot discern. Art is by Willard Downes, Barye Phillips, Robert Bonfils, Jef de Wulf, and others. See another good example here.

Above is the cover of the sleaze novel LSD Lusters, published by Greenleaf Classics for their Nightstand Books line in 1967. Author John Dexter was a pseudonym inhabited by a number of writers, including Robert Silverberg. Because of that, we don’t know who actually wrote the book. But they must have been high when they agreed to do it. Art is by Darrel Millsap.

A long while ago we showed you a paperback cover that featured a painting of Sharon Tate. That book specifically used Tate both as cover art and interior subject matter. In contrast, the two figures above aren’t explicitly supposed to be Tate, but it just so happens that both unknown artists modeled their work from an on set photograph from her 1966 Dracula spoof The Fearless Vampire Killers. The photo was shot by Roman Polanski, who also directed the film. As you can see, it was used on John Dexter’s sleaze pulp Chuck-a-Lust, painted by Darrel Millsap, and on Paul Collins’s, aka Renato Carocci's giallo Ordine di uccidere, painted by Bendetto Caroselli. The former was published in 1967, and the latter in 1968. One year later, Tate was gone.

The men of pulp and sleaze fiction typically have a personal creed, a set of unbreakable rules that the best authors constantly mock by presenting the heroes with incredibly bizarre grey areas. We have a suspicion what the guy on the cover of John Dexter’s (Robert Silverberg’s) Sinners Three wants. But how is he going to talk himself into it? We suggest he think back to his college frat and remind himself this wouldn’t be the first time he took advantage of a girl after she had too many shots.