Pornodelirio was originally made in France as Les grandes jouisseuses and premiered today in 1978. The title literally means “the great enjoyers,” but Pornodelirio is a lot snappier, don't you think? As usual with these Italian smut posters, the names are all pseudonyms made especially for the movie's run in Italy. We don't know why, but if if any of the stars ever needed to go there at least their hotels weren't overrun by adoring, pornodelirious fans.

In any case, Annick Fougery, Anne Sand, Michele Perelo, and Pierre Forget are actually Brigitte Lahaie, Ursula White, Jean-Louis Vattier, and Dominique Aveline. It's weird that two of the pseudonyms are Fougery like “forgery” and Forget. And it's even weirder that Annick Fougery and Pierre Forget were actual French stars. But they certainly weren't in this movie. Did they ever know their names had been borrowed? Did Europe have trademark infringement laws in 1978? When they checked into hotels were they beseiged by pornodelirious fans? 

This is all a bit of a mystery, but the only name in which we're really interested is Mafé. He or she painted the promo poster you see above and it's another example of his/her great work on an x-rated promo, along with this, these, and these, one of which you'll notice is an alternate poster for Pornodelirio. We still have no idea who Mafé is/was, but as always, we'll keep up the research. Soon as our delirium subsides. You wanna watch the film? The English dubbed version (with correct credits) is online right here. 

1977’s Porno Shock was originally released in West Germany as Der Ruf der blonden Göttin, but was also known as Porno gola profonda, The Call of the Blonde Goddess, and Voodoo Passion. Indeed, there’s voodoo involved, as the film was shot in Haiti, and every film shot there involves voodoo. The movie was directed by Jesús Franco under his Manfred Gregor pseudonym, and starred Vicky Adams, better known as Nanda Van Bergen or sometimes Muriel Montosse. Supporting her were Ada Tauler, aka Annie Sand, Karine Gambier, Siegrid Sellier, Jack Taylor, and others.

But lest we forget, Pulp Intl. is mainly dedicated to art, and the only reason we’re talking about Porno Shock is because the two English language posters above—and obviously the Italian one at right—were painted by Mafé, an Italian master illustrator who five years after we first learned about him remains a total mystery. We have no full name on him, no biography, nothing. But what we do have is more of his work, and you can see that here, here, and here. We also have more of his posters in our hard drive and we’ll get those up in a bit. Meanwhile, help us out Italian friends—who is this guy?

Above is a fantastic poster from the illustrator Mafé for Piaceri Folli, a 1977 French porn movie originally entitled Suprêmes jouissances, released in English as Exquisite Pleasure, then later as Supreme Delights. Mafé painted two posters for the production, and though the other one is great, this effort is on a different level entirely. In fact, in our opinion this is one of the most successful posters we’ve ever seen. If the mission was to create something both provocative and striking while still being classy, this is a grand slam. Moving on to the artist himself, we promised we’d dig for more info, but when we search in Italy nothing comes up but a few auction houses, sans bios of any sort. And when we search internationally it’s our website that sorts to the top, amusingly. So we’re the online experts on this guy and we don’t know squat. A very good library might be helpful at a time like this but where we live there isn’t one. Oh well. If we’ve learned one thing it’s that the information always appears eventually. We’ll just have to wait. 

We found two more Mafé one-sheets, and we’re now going to just go ahead and declare him the greatest illustrator of x-rated posters ever. He did non x-rated work too, but he flourished in porn, bringing a real elegance to the material, as you can see for yourself. He’s still a bit of a mystery to us, but we’re digging for more info. These two posters are circa mid-seventies, and you can see the other two Mafé pieces we posted here. 

Since we got on the subject of x-rated films this weekend, we thought we’d continue the theme today. Back in the 70s smut often had beautiful promotional material, usually painted by extremely talented pulp-style artists. Here are two prime examples. Italian illustrator Mafé painted both of these, and as you can see, they’re a far cry from the gynecological tab A into slot B collages of modern porno art. We’re too young to know, but we hear there was a time when porn was considered liberating rather than exploitative. It was considered a way for women to throw off the shackles of male domination by taking control of their own sexuality. But somewhere along the way the form became a perfunctory and semi-violent money mill, extremely profitable, of course, but completely sans art or passion. Though we disagree here on the eternal bush/no bush question, we’re unanimous that the old porn was better.