 My husband is clueless. He suspects I'm having an affair, but he thinks it's with a guy from his softball team. 
Above: a nice sleaze cover from Greenleaf Classics' Nightstand imprint for 1960's lesbian novel Sin Girls by Marlene Longman. This has the look of a photo-illustration, but it's credited to Harold W. McCauley.
 The unburnable Hitomi Kozue finally strikes gold.  
Japanese actress and eternal beauty Hitomi Kozue has finally gotten her tan perfect. She's been at it since last June, when we shared the first shot in a series she made for Heibon Punch. We checked in again a few months later and she still hadn't reached her ideal level of sun-baked luminescence. But now the star of such films as the 1974 Dirty Harry reinterpretation Sukeban Deka: daati Marii and the 1975 women-in-prison flick True Story of a Woman Condemned: Sex Hell is perfectly golden and her beach sojourn has come to a close. These two attention getting shots are the last from this particular session, but they're by no means the last photos of Kozue we have for you. She was prolific, and shall return.
 No appeal, no parole, no mercy, no hope. 
Today we continue our journey through ’70s exploitation cinema with Jackson County Jail, churned out of the grindhouse factory known as New World Pictures. Plotwise, Yvette Mimieux plays a Los Angeles advertising exec who leaves her cheating husband and finds herself at loose ends, but manages to score a job from a friend in New York City. She decides to get there by driving cross country, but passes through fictional Jackson County, located somewhere in or around Texas (a geographical fact we learn from a news broadcast that provides a Dallas Cowboys update). She's railroaded into jail and raped by the cop working the graveyard shift. Afterward, Mimieux manages to brain him with a stool and escapes with the help of hardened criminal Tommy Lee Jones, who early in his acting career (and with that monobrow of his) was already capable of making lines like this sing: “There's nothing wrong with being a crook. Everybody's crooked. I never met a straight person in my whole life. Whole goddamn country is a rip-off. And everybody in it.”
Jackson County Jail is sometimes labeled a women-in-prison flick, but it's a bit different for a generally low rent sub-genre because Mimieux was an established star, thirty-four years old with more than twenty movies behind her. The credibility she lends the film changes little about its basic purpose—titillation mixed with violence and an indictment of hick culture. Simultaneously, though, the filmmakers definitely don't go to the extremes of other women-in-prison dramas, in which we've seen women hung up by their hair. There are some viewers, we suspect, who wouldn't consider this movie a women-in-prison flick at all. We're fine leaving it out of the conversation too. The jailbound portion lasts barely twenty minutes of what is perhaps more of an outlaw movie, complete with Jones letting fly with this response to being told the police will kill him: “That don't matter. I was born dead.” Whether women-in-prison, outlaw, or counterculture, that's a damned good line. And Jackson County Jail is a pretty good movie. It premiered today in 1976
          
 Nygren and friends teach moviegoers all about natural selection. 
We'll return to paperback covers tomorrow, but for the moment we're running with the same sort of material we posted a couple of days ago, because as the weather warms thoughts naturally turn to sensual pleasures. We can't think of a movie more sensual than Emmanuelle IV. Set in our planet's most sensual country, steamy Brazil, it was the entry in the Emmanuelle series that ushered original lead Sylvia Kristel out the studio gate, and brought in the first of several new Emmanuelles, in this case Swedish actress Mia Nygren. This West German poster, on which the film is titled Die orgien der Emmanuelle, or “the orgies of Emmanuelle,” caught our eye because—well, for several reasons—but mainly because Nygren is pushed into the background by Camella Donner, aka Camella Thomas. Why is that so interesting? Because she isn't in the cast. She probably wasn't even on the same continent. We guess the West German distributors wanted to sex up the poster a bit more. Donner would have been a great addition to the film, but even without her it was fun. Ridiculous, stupid, carnivalesque fun. They don't make 'em like that anymore. Emmanuelle IV premiered in West Germany today in 1984. Bonus imagery below.
 
 It's the same old story. Take a trip to the tropics, lose every bit of self control. 
We ran across this Italian locandina for the shot-in-the-Dominican Republic sexploitation flick Il pavone nero, known in English as Voodoo Sexy, and thought it made a nice alternate promo to the one we posted years back. The movie premiered in Italy today in 1975, and with a title like Voodoo Sexy you know what it's about: white skin + tropical heat = a total loss of inhibitions. Flicks of this ilk were an unofficial subgenre of ’70s and ’80s cinema. We love them, and you know why? Because they aren't wildly inaccurate in terms of northerners going crazy down south. The star of this one was German actress Karin Schubert, and that's the other reason we revisited the film—it gave us an excuse to share the photo of her below. Hope it helps you get over hump day. 
 That's a tempting invitation, but the hospital has a very strict code of ethics. So we'll have to do it at your place. 
Above: a Harry Barton cover for Stuart Friedman's 1960 sleazer The Way We Love, an “unconventional novels of manners and morals in a modern hospital.” Uh huh. We bet we know what's unconventional about it. Something of note here: the cover for Friedman's 1962 effort The Surgeons is a near-duplicate of this, but painted by Harry Schaare. We wonder if that's chance, or if Monarch's art director influenced the final product. Curious. We have a lot more medical covers in the website. See a small portion of them here, here, here, here, here, and here.
 Do you prefer cold steel or hot lead? The choice is entirely yours. 
So that no confusion arises, Junko Fuji, who you see in this photo, is known today as Sumiko Fuji. But back during the ’60s and ’70s she acted as Junko, and since we're a vintage site that's what we've always called her. As you can see, she's added a razor sharp wakizashi to the pistol we saw her brandishing in a similar photo a few years ago. We found this shot in a 1971 issue of the Japanese magazine Modern Romance, and it was probably originally made for her 1968 yakuza actioner Hibotan bakuto—aka Red Peony Gambler—or for one of its sequels. By the way, Modern Romance? This photo just screams romance, right?
 Strange ideas from the minds and lenses of mid-century promo photographers.   A while back we shared a promo photo of Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame from 1953's The Big Heat that was meant to imply oral sex (it absolutely was, and you can see for yourself here). We commented on its weirdness, and noted that an actress would probably not be asked or made to pose that way today. The shot got us thinking about whether there were other kneeling promo shots from the mid-century era, and above you see two others from The Big Heat. Below we have more such shots, and while none are as jarring as that previous promo, they're all interesting. We assumed there would be few if any featuring kneeling males, but we found a couple. Even so, there are probably scores more kneeling actresses that we missed. While many of shots took the form they did to highlight the criminal/victim themes in their parent films, you still have to wonder what else—consciously or not—was in the various photograhers' minds. Anyway, just some food for thought this lovely Thursday. Ready, set discuss!   Rod Taylor and Luciana Pauluzzi swap subordinate positions for 1967's Chuka.
 Edmund O'Brien goes for the time honored hair grab on Marla English for 1954's Shield for Murder.
 Inger Stevens and Terry Ann Ross for Cry Terror, an adaptation of a novel we talked about a few years ago.
 Kim Hunter soothes an overheated Marlon Brando in a promo for 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire.
 George Raft menaces Marlene Dietrich in the 1941 comedy Manpower.
  As promos go, these actually make sense. They show three unidentified models mesmerized by vampire Christopher Lee for 1970's Taste the Blood of Dracula.
 Glenn Ford is at it again, this time looming over Rita Hayworth for the 1946 classic Gilda.  Aldo Ray and Barbara Nichols for 1958's The Naked and the Dead.
 This one shows less domination and more protectiveness, as Humphrey Bogart prepares to defend Ida Lupino for High Sierra, 1941.
 Humphrey once more. Here he's with Lizabeth Scott for Dead Reckoning, 1947.
 This shot shows Brazilian actress Fiorella Mari with an actor we can't identify in a movie we also can't identify.
 Shelly Winters and Jack Palance climb the highest mountain together for I Died a Thousand Times, 1955.
 As we said, we didn't find as many examples of kneeling men, but we found this gem—Cappucine makes a seat of director Blake Edwards on the set of The Pink Panther in 1963. Does this count, though? While Edwards is subordinate, he isn't kneeling and it really isn’t a legit promo. And lastly, in a curious example, Hugo Haas seems to tell Cleo Moore to stay in a shot made for 1953's One Girl's Confession.
 In Japan business is war—complete with innocent bystanders. 
This brilliant promo was painted for Hana to hebi: Shiiku-hen, known in English as Flower and Snake 3: Punishment. It starred Minako Ogawa of Dan Oniroku ikenie shimai, aka Sisters To Be Sacrificed, and in fact the same painter must have produced both posters. Have a look. The central figure is almost identical, no? Right down to her hairy armpits. Since there's no official info on who the artist is we'll throw in our two cents. It was bondage painter Kaname Ozuma. He painted at least one other poster for the Flower and Snake series, which you can see here. In the meantime this piece is literally nowhere else to be found in the quality you see here. At least, as far as we can tell.
We watched the film and it's a typically perverse roman porno tale about a powerful businessman married to Minako Ogawa, who he stole from a subordinate who was helpless to prevent it. When he later declines to help a business associate out of a jam that person has Ogawa kidnapped—literally thrown into a giant bag—taken to an isolated house, sexually assaulted, and coercively trained using bondage, a kielbasa, and other esoterica in order to turn her into a performer for live sex shows. That's a hell of a twisted retaliation for being refused financial help, but twisted is what roman porno is all about.
Of technical note is the fact that, though it was illegal to show pubic hair in Japanese movies, the ever clever roman porno filmmakers found a loophole. They have Ogawa's captors, as part of her torment, cut off her pubic hair with scissors. Though it couldn't be shown attached to her body without bringing down the wrath of censors, they got away with showing it falling into bathwater. You gotta give the pervs credit. They were always thinking outside the—er—box. Hana to hebi: Shiiku-hen premiered in Japan today in 1986.
After a long day on the set filming sex and bondage... I'm very happy to spend the evening doing this.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—Germany Announces Hitler's Death
German radio in Hamburg announces that Adolf Hitler was killed in Berlin, stating specifically that he had fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany. But in truth Hitler had committed suicide along with his mistress Eva Braun, and both bodies were immediately thereafter burned. 1960—Powers Is Shot Down over U.S.S.R.
Francis Gary Powers, flying in a Lockheed U-2 spy plane, is shot down over the Soviet Union. The U.S. denies the plane's purpose and mission, but is later forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance aircraft when the Soviet government produces its remains and reveals Powers, who had survived the shoot down. The incident triggers a major diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. 1927—First Prints Are Left at Grauman's
Hollywood power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, become the first celebrities to leave their impressions in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, located along the stretch where the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame would later be established. 1945—Hitler Marries Braun
During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia's Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden. 1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title
After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon.
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Marilyn Monroe swoons as Richard Widmark snarls for Don't Bother To Knock, 1952.
