Pulp International

Oct 29 2022

The spear gun? I don't fish with it. It's for keeping men away. I get my seafood at Safeway like everyone else.

This photo shows U.S. actress Carol Lynley striking a beautiful pose on Malibu Beach, and in our opinion a woman with a spear gun hasn't looked this good since Elke Sommer in 1967. This was made for Lynley's 1969 thriller Once You Kiss a Stranger. We're going to talk about the movie in a bit, but rather than save this image for that purpose we thought it was special enough to deserve its own post.

Malibu Once You Kiss a Stranger Carol Lynley

Vintage Pulp

Jun 7 2020

The beach is always fun and games until someone gets burned.

What a coincidence. We were just talking about Joan Bennett a couple of days ago. You remember the story. Her husband tried to shoot her lover in the balls. Or unit. Or really anywhere in the vicinity of his reproductive organs. And he succeeded in hitting the vicinity, but missed all the crucial plumbing. It was a Hollywood love triangle that ended in blood and violence. Woman on the Beach stars Bennett, Robert Ryan, and Charles Bickford, and is also a love triangle that causes violence. The plot concerns a Coast Guard officer who becomes infatuated with a married woman. The woman's husband is an artist who lost his sight in an accident, but the Coast Guard officer becomes convinced the artist isn't really blind, but rather is using it as an excuse to hang onto his wife. Under the careful direction of French auteur Jean Renoir, Woman on the Beach makes for a decent ninety minutes of entertainment. We don't consider it a film noir, by the way, as some crowdsourced sites and blogs suggest. It just doesn't meet the requirements, in our view. AFI.com agrees, and calls it drama. It premiered in New York City today in 1947.

California Malibu Woman on the Beach Joan Bennett Robert Ryan Charles Bickford Jean Renoir poster art cinema movie review

Vintage Pulp

Oct 12 2018

Stop calling me that. It's Stan. My name is Stan.

Satan in Malibu came from Vega Books via the brain and typewriter of Frank Cannon, and it deals with a man who tries to solve his brother's murder. He learns of the death when a telegram arrives, but is the woman who sent it to him really trying to help, or is there more to her story? The hero's investigation takes him to Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Southern California, and when he gets there he runs across a band of satanists who may have done the killing.

We last ran across Frank Cannon when we shared a cover for his 1964 effort Hide in Hell. The hell in that book was figurative. The hell in Satan in Malibu is a slightly less so, since the villains actually believe in it, but the reason for the murder is rooted firmly in the mundane world. We don't know who painted the cover art, but for Vega Books it's not bad. The copyright on this is 1961.

Channel Islands Santa Cruz Island Malibu Vega Books Frank Cannon cover art literature