Survived another year. And so have you. So let’s open 2013 by catching up with the Goodtime Weekly Calendar. We missed two weeks while we were in Morocco, and those pages are below. Above you see the January 1 page of this great publication, which also happens to be the cover, and it features model/actress/centerfold June Wilkinson shot by film director Russ Meyer. The photo is a variation of another Wilkinson image that appears inside the calendar later in the year. The images below are credited to Ron Vogel and L.W., whoever he is. Obviously, there's a three week backlog of jokes, but by now we’ve established that most of them are not in any way amusing, so rather than transcribe the entire collection, we’ve selected what we hope are the most interesting. Enjoy.

Another day, another unknown talent. The above promo poster was painted by a French artist who signed his work “Hukel.” We’ve found references to him online, but no details unfortunately—not even a full name. However, we know he was active for at least four decades, because he painted the poster for 1981’s Cannonball Run, as well as this quirky 1960 advertising poster. The masterpiece above is the Yugoslavian poster for the French prison drama Tous peuvent me tuer, which was released in English as Anyone Can Kill. The movie starred Anouk Aimée, she of the renowned hawk eyebrows, which are lovingly reproduced by the artist. We will try to dig up more Hukel pieces, or at least a bit of info, and if we find anything you can be sure we’ll share.  

Update: While we did see some websites that referred to this person as "Hukel" (such as the link we provided above), we now see that he is actually Clément Hurel. We've located a small selection of his work here, and he even has a French Wikipedia page that tells us he was born in 1927 and died in 2008 after a career designing scores of movie posters. Once again, this highlights a problem with the internet—i.e., nobody knows what the hell they're actually talking about. You'd think Carter's Price Guide to Antiques (where we got the "Hukel" info) would have their shit straight, but we guess that's too much to expect in this day and age. The lesson? Check, double-check, triple-check, and don't assume that someone with a fancy title is automatically more informed than you. After all the errors we've found online, we really should know better than to fall into that trap. Anyway, we now know who Clément Hurel is, and we'll have more art from him soon.

Above is a nice panel length poster for 1972’s Sukeban berûsu: mesubachi no chosen, aka Girl Boss Blues: Queen Bee’s Challenge, the second entry in the Girl Boss series made by Toei Studios in the early 1970s. This one stars Reiko Ike (before the tattoo), along with Chiyoko Kazama, and Miki Sugimoto in an appearance just lengthy enough for her to get a couple of bottles of cola sprayed up her ya-ya. If you can wrest your eyes from the constantly recurring tableaux of perfect skin, there is a plot, and it involves a pair of girl gangsters/bitter rivals captured by a yakuza boss and subjected to various sadistic tortures (including that old Japanese favorite—rope bondage, aka kinbaku-bi). Of course, the abuse in these films is inevitably followed by much deserved revenge against the evil males, up close and bloody. But it isn’t all violence and vengeance. There are some effective moments of comedy, and of course, the film is beautifully shot. All-in-all, Sukeban berûsu: mesubachi no chosen is a must-see for pinku fans. You’ll learn exactly how effective a handful of soap foam can be for covering a woman’s bush.

If there’s one indisputably true statement about Japanese cinema, it’s this: they will try anything. 1974’s Hana to hebi, aka Flower and Snake, is a bondage comedy based on a novel by Oniroku Dan, who specialized in S&M fiction. For the screen version, Nikkatsu Studios recruited reliable sexploitation queen Naomi Tani, who had already appeared in a previous version of the same film entitled Hana to hebi yori: niku no shiiku, aka Flower and Snake: Rearing the Flesh. Where that version was a mere pinku film, this new version would be a roman porno—which simply meant Nikkatsu would spend more money in an effort to elevate the genre into something mainstream Japanese would accept. In the film, Tani plays an aristocratic wife who asks for a divorce but instead is forced into bondage and submission by a man hired for the task by her husband. She experiences a sexual awakening, the employee forms an emotional bond, and complications ensue from there. We haven’t read the novel, but apparently it’s very different from the film and its adaptation was a source of friction between studio and author. But it didn’t matter—Hana to hebi was a smash. It was the first of Nikkatsu’s many roman porno flicks, and the first of what would become a Hana to hebi franchise. It premiered in Japan today in 1974.

Well, we said we’d explore Japanese bondage arts a bit more, so here’s a nice beginning—a collection of colorful SM magazines from the 1970s. We’ll show you what’s inside one of these later. 

There’s been a lot of death on the website recently, so today we’re reversing the trend by bringing back one of our earliest femmes fatales, Scottish actress Caroline Munro. We suspect every woman learns instinctively and early how to cover herself this way when the situation requires, the same way every guy knows how to cover his nuts at an early age. They're protective manuvers that might be embedded in the DNA. Just a random thought. Anyway, Munro appeared such films as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The Spy Who Loved Me, and the awesome Starcrash, which we'll get to later. She was born today in 1950. 

Are you getting a sense of déjà vu? Well, you’re not crazy. This does have an identical bondage theme and color palette as a poster we shared last week. The main difference is that this victim has shaved her armpits, which is good, because you always want to look your best for a torturing. The film here is Kifujin shibari tsubo, aka Noble Lady Bound Vase, and it stars Naomi Tani, who we’re going to get know real well on this site. She was Japan’s queen of bondage cinema, garnering notoriety for her roles in flicks like Wife To Be Sacrificed and Colorful Bed of Violent Desire, before retiring to become a restaurant owner. As we mentioned before, though we like pinku films, harder ones are not exactly our cup of T&A. We do realize that rope bondage is considered fine art in Japan, but as Americans—even ones who have spent years abroad—we can’t completely shake a lifetime of conditioning that makes us see something weird here. But on the other hand, we seriously doubt the Japanese can understand why we glorify violence to such an extent in American cinema. So we won’t judge them if they don’t judge us. One of the reasons we started this site was to explore how art varies from culture to culture, and so of course we’ll keep discussing these films, but we’ll also be looking seriously into the Japanese bondage arts kinbaku-bi and shibari. Hope you’re looking forward to that. Now we have to go shoot some people. Kifujin shibari tsubo opened in Japan today in 1977

Hana to hebi: kyûkyoku nawa chôkyô was released with the English title Flower and Snake 5: Rope Magic, which is is a very pretty collection of nouns for an exercise in torture porn. Fairly hard torture porn, too, probably because by the time this was made by Nikkatsu Studios, adult video was taking a major bite out of Japan’s pinku market. The plot here is simple: a gambler with debts loses his wife and daughter to the Yakuza, who proceed to humiliate the women in various fiendish ways. There’s an escape attempt that goes awry, but basically the story is just a framework for increasingly devilish forms of sexual degradation. You got your dildos. You got your hot wax. You got your urine. This is soooo not our thing. But what is our thing is the promo art, which is just lovely, even while evincing the film’s highly dubious nature. Experienced pinku fans, or those into the Japanese art of Kinbaku-bi (beautiful bondage) may dig this movie. All others proceed with caution. Hana to hebi: kyûkyoku nawa chôkyô, premiered in Japan today in 1987.     

The above promo art is for the Japanese sexploitation flick Dan Oniroku nawa to hada, aka Rope and Skin. It’s one of many films based on the work of S&M author Oniroku Dan. This one concerns a card-dealing employee of a yakuza clan who plans to leave her criminal life behind and marry a chef. And that’s all fine and dandy, but when she exposes the leader of a rival clan as a card cheat, his revenge leaves her love murdered. Things get worse when she attempts to free a girl from prostitution, but ends up captured and tortured. But you can’t keep a good avenging angel down, and that means eventually she’s sprung and of course immediately sets about getting a little payback—toplessly, with mucho arterial spray. Rope and Skin would be Tani's last film after a career that included such efforts as Wet Vase, A New Wife’s Hell, and She-Beasts & Warm Bodies. Whenever we watch these gorefests we’re both repelled (there’s a lot of torture) and attracted (there’s a lot of nudity), but mostly just amazed (did we mention that torture thing?). Rope and Skin/Dan Oniroku nawa to hada premiered in Japan today in 1979.