| Vintage Pulp | Dec 16 2018 |
You better hurry up. At the top of the hour I turn back into a housewife and hand you a list of chores.
Jason Hytes' 1960 sleazer Sex Before Six is about a married twenty-something who uses her body to climb all the way from nowheresville to the cusp of a career in professional filmdom. She's willing to lie, connive, and serially cheat on her mild mannered husband to reach her goal but is disturbed when she discovers film people are depraved. What's their depravity, exactly? Some of them are gay and lesbian. The word “evil” occurs more than once. If you were to read this with your anti-regressive filter activated you might find a thrill or two sandwiched around the homophobia and Bible style retribution, but we wouldn't go so far as to recommend the book. The best thing about it is the brilliant cover femme fatale painted by Bruce Minney. We've seen magazine art from him before but this is the first paperback front we've come across. Top work.
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 13 2018 |
He'll choose me in the end. She's a plain old black pepper, whereas I'm more of a savory golden turmeric.
More flavorful goodness from Midwood-Tower, 1964's The Spice of Life by Grant Corgan. Basically it's about four couples who all live in a suburban complex with a shared pool. Two of the group are out of town for work a lot, which leaves the two abandoned spouses—Wick and Adrienne—to start a torrid affair. Another woman in the complex has always wanted Wick, and when she finds out he and Adrienne are secret bedmates things start to get complicated in the neighborhood. Pretty soon, everyone has a sidepiece. The novel is pretty well written, but doesn't have as much heat as we'd like. The cover art, though, is nice. It's uncredited.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 31 2018 |
Actually, ma’am, I’m just the janitor. But if it helps, I got pretty good at deep tissue massage in prison.
This is one of the nicer pulp covers we’ve run across recently, which is no surprise since the art is by the incomparable Paul Rader. The author James Harvey wrote standard issue sleaze like this one for the Midwood imprint during the ’50s and ’60s, and also specialized in lesbian fiction with offerings like Between Two Women, Daughter of Joy and Lady Wrestler. We can’t find much more information on him, which is a clue he was probably a pseudonym used by Midwood’s in-house scribes. But we’ll see if we can dig up more facts. In the meantime remember to always check your masseur’s credentials before getting naked.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 30 2018 |
Once you go down there's no turning back.
But isn't Third Street in the other direction?
We're gonna go down the third street.
You mean the third street from here?
If you wanna think of it that way.
Why are you holding my hand?
The third street gets slippery. You'll see.
Super rare Joan Ellis authored Midwood-Tower lesbian sleaze novel about a painter and model who come together over more than just art, 1964, with Paul Rader on the cover chores.
Super rare Joan Ellis authored Midwood-Tower lesbian sleaze novel about a painter and model who come together over more than just art, 1964, with Paul Rader on the cover chores.
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 3 2018 |
Why don't you get undressed and we'll have a coming in party instead.
It's mandatory to occasionally share a cover from Midwood-Tower, so above you see Coming Out Party by Kimberly Kemp, who was a pseudonym, in this case occupied by Gilbert Fox. The story involves a homeless beauty picked up on the street by a wealthy NYC couple who give her a place to live but turn her into a plaything—topless chores, nude photographs, sexual duties with the heads of house. You know—the usual maid stuff. They may be dirty people but at least everyone ends up sqeaky clean. The cover art is by Paul Rader, and the copyright is 1965.
| Vintage Pulp | May 18 2018 |
It's not the size of the caucus that matters. It's what you do with it.
This one is self explanatory. Nick Vendor's Sabrina and the Senator, published in 1960 by Midwood Books with cover art by Paul Rader, is billed as a behind the scenes story of the private lives and public affairs of politicians and their playmates. Thanks to the current U.S. president, this sort of thing is on people's minds in a way it hasn't been since Bill Clinton. As fans and collectors of pulp fiction, we've always gleefully wallowed in political sleaze. Well we're up to our comb overs in it now.
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 20 2018 |
It's my ex, if you must know. I was in love, and lower back tattoos were trendy. But then the creep really hurt me.
Reliable old Midwood graces Robert Bruce's sleaze drama The Face of Evil with a nice piece of Victor Olson art. Though it would be funny if the book were about a woman's tattoo mistake, it actually concerns a rich widow named Marguerite who serially dominates and destroys men. Olson's work on her hair, with its turquoise and violet streaks, requires a second glance to really appreciate. It's copyright 1966
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 20 2018 |
*sigh* Okay, lesson learned—new sexual orientation, same old crushing regret.
Above is a piece of classic Midwood sleaze, The Drifter, by March Hastings, aka Sally Singer, 1962, with Paul Rader cover art and the staggeringly funny tagline: Any port in a storm—and one of the ports was Lesbos. In the story, a woman has an impotent but deviant husband who seems to be sexually inspired only by his sister, so wifey flees and the drifting begins. As does the slumming, self-hating, and everything else. Since lesbianism is universally understood in mid-century sleaze to be a mental disorder, it's no spoiler to reveal that our heroine doesn't stay docked in Lesbos permanently, but rather learns the usual dubious lesson imparted by these books: the love of a good man fixes everything. It's a sex conversion fantasy written for a male market, and not to be taken seriously in any way. As a side note, since Lesbos is a Greek isle, that means we have a bit of a theme today (see below).
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 6 2018 |
If you're looking for a street walker keep looking. If you're looking for the street walker you've found her.
Above is the cover of Jason Hytes' 1964 sleaze novel The Street Walker, with beautiful unattributed art in tones of red and violet. In the story, a judge becomes infatuated with a prostitute he encounters when she is a defendant in his courtroom. The judge's wife becomes infatuated with a cop, and the middle-aged cop becomes infatuated with the wife and judge's eighteen-year-old daughter. That's a lot of infatuation and it all gets messy pretty quickly, as the judge beds the prostitute and other women who pass through his court, the cop beds the judge's wife, and later the judge's virgin daughter, a trio of workers bed the judge's wife together, and round and round it goes, leading to a climax, so to speak, that sends the judge to a mental institution, the wife someplace unknown, and the judge's daughter and the cop together down the marriage aisle. There isn't much street walking in this one but there sure is a lot of sex, and the writing isn't bad, considering the genre. Are we recommending it? Well, heh heh, not quite. Just saying, we've spent our time worse ways.
| Vintage Pulp | Nov 19 2017 |
I had new shocks installed, so theoretically nobody outside should be able to tell we're in there humping like beasts.
In Sin on Wheels a virgin moves into a trailer park with her new husband and discovers he and most of the other residents are swingers. He's cheating on her within a week, she's cheating back days later, and pretty soon everyone wants a piece of her wedding cake. Of course, it was always the husband's plan to share his bride, which means the friction, so to speak, derives from her attempts to resist being turned into a trailer park plaything. It's all written from her point of view, so it's basically a male fantasy of a woman's descent into the sexual gutter. This is credited to Loren Beauchamp but it was written by Robert Silverberg. If you're thinking this is somehow a diamond in the rough we'll tell you bluntly it's not distinguishable from most other light sleaze. It's fun and quick, though, with lots of heavy drinking, strip poker, and round robin intercourse. It's 1962 copyright, with Paul Rader cover art of one of his best temptresses, an aspect that contributes to the book's collectibility.
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