| Vintage Pulp | Apr 16 2024 |
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
TexasNew World PicturesJackson County JailYvette MimieuxTommy Lee JonesCliff EmmichHoward HessemanRoger CormanGene Cormanwomen in prisonposter artcinemamovie review
| Intl. Notebook | Apr 5 2024 |
She's a rare example of prey that's more dangerous than her predators.
Above is a fun pressbook cover for the legendary Pam Grier's classic action movie Foxy Brown, a tangled tale of drug dealers, crooked cops, loan sharks, and narcs, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1974. When pressed against the wall Grier gets just as vicious as her screen foes. She even sets one guy on fire and runs another over—with a plane. There are no holds barred in blaxploitation cinema.
Below we also have various lobby cards from the film. These are interesting because they're made from production photos that you don't typically see online. It's too bad Grier's blaxploitation/action phase was short, because she was good in the films, even when the films weren't good enough for her. But every artist seeks to hone their craft, so we imagine she got tired of such roles. That's okay—her output, though limited, is always fun to re-watch.
As a side note, the hazards of blogging during the unethical digital age are amply illustrated here. Users on both Alamy and Getty attempt to assert copyright on these items, but movie promos are made for non-copyright holders to publicize the works depicted, and despite claims to the contrary individuals can't hold copyright on them. There are probably hundreds or thousands of these reproductions out there, all individually possessed, so a specific person claiming copyright is nonsensical on the face of it. Only the issuing studio holds copyright.
Even so, we occasionally get threatening e-mails from digital photo resellers. They're AI generated and automatically sent, which means they'll only increase in number as time goes by. We have a form e-mail we send back demanding proof of copyright. We never get a reply to it. Shockingly. We'll say this though—one day corporate greed will kill the blogging culture the same way it's killed most everything else. But that day isn't today. Read what we thought about Foxy Brown here.
| Vintage Pulp | Mar 25 2024 |
In the land of the blind the one-eyed woman is queen.
We've done a lot on Sandro Symeoni, which means that just for the sake of completeness we can't overlook these. They're his Italian posters for the Christina Lindberg grindhouse classic Thriller, which was originally made in Sweden as Thriller - en grym film, and in English speaking countries was known as Thriller: A Cruel Picture and They Call Her One Eye. We've already talked about it, and its star.
SwedenItalyThriller - en grym filmThriller: A Cruel PictureThey Call Her One EyeChristina LindbergSandro Symeoniposter artcinemasexploitation
| Femmes Fatales | Mar 4 2024 |
Zip your pants and keep them zipped, Harry. I'm going to bed and you aren't coming with me.
Above is U.S. actress Joan Perry in a promo image made for her 1936 crime drama Shakedown. She appeared in about twenty films beginning in 1935 and was out of acting by 1941, when she married Columbia Pictures co-founder and president Harry Cohn, one of the most hated and feared men in Hollywood. Cohn allegedly attacked actresses, demanded and received sex for film roles, and infamously had mob acquaintances threaten to kill Sammy Davis, Jr. if he kept canoodling with Kim Novak. Perry stayed wedded to the guy for seventeen years, until his death. Afterward, she married twice more, but one union lasted only two years, and the other lasted three. Which goes to show that you never can tell about relationships—or for that matter, people.
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 18 2024 |
Caffaro knows how to Handle her business.
Why do we spend our valuable time watching exploitation movies? Well, because we watch all pulp related genres of movies, from film noir to horror. So why discriminate? We also watch such movies (which is a set we figure includes sexploitation, blaxploitation, women-in-prison, and more) because owing to their sexual, racial, and political aspects, their like will probably never be made again. Last month we completed our look at Cheri Caffaro's infamous Ginger McAllister sexploitation-spy trilogy. Now we're moving on to her later work in Too Hot To Handle, which premiered today in 1977.
Set in and around Manila, Caffaro plays an experienced and wealthy assassin named Samantha Fox who takes on a difficult triple-contract. In order to succeed she'll need all her skills of disguise, deception, and sexuality. Meanwhile the cops are on her trail. When one of the investigators gets close—real close—Caffaro takes a liking to him and, passing herself off as her alter ego Melinda Burroughs, tries to navigate sleeping with the enemy while fulfilling her murderous obligations.
All Caffaro movies are low budget, and all are bad. This one is poorly written and acted, and as usual there's a touch of the kinky, both in front of the camera, as well as behind, as Caffaro's husband Don Schain directs her getting her squeezebox fondled by hairy co-star Aharon Ipalé. That's called commitment to the product and your art—or alternatively, finding a way to monetize your spouse-sharing fantasies. It didn't improve the movie.
The only surprise here was that former top European star Corinne Calvet somehow got suckered into playing a brothel owner named Madame Ruanda, later dying as one of Caffaro's targets. Alas, Corinne—sexploitation is a welcoming mistress for those desperate to pay bills, but next time we recommend a loan shark. The vig is a bitch but at least you get to hang onto your dignity. But even if Too Hot To Handle was too bad for Calvet to be in, it isn't too bad for you to watch. Caffaro is weirdly great. In the sexploitation realm nobody did more with less.
PhilippinesManilaNew World PicturesToo Hot To HandleCheri CaffaroAharon IpaléVic DiazCorinne CalvetDon Schainposter artcinemasexploitationmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Dec 21 2023 |
Rise by the camera, fall by the camera.
Above is a promo poster for the 1950 drama Shakedown made for the Italian market, where it was called Jack il ricattatore, or “Jack the blackmailer.” It stars Howard Duff as a photographer whose ambition pushes him across the line into criminality. We talked about it a while back. The poster is signed by an artist we can't identify—it looks like “e-pic.” We've seen other work by this person, but we don't have a real name or any other biographical info. This is a nice effort, so we'll an eye out.
| Hollywoodland | Dec 10 2023 |
If you want to be taken seriously bring serious backup.
This promo image, with a Columbia Pictures serial number in the lower lefthand corner, was made for the 1949 crime drama Mary Ryan, Detective, and shows Paul Bryar, Marsha Hunt, Ben Welden, and William Phillips. We love the shot, and because of it we'll watch the movie and report back.
| Femmes Fatales | Oct 21 2023 |
You don't know jack-o'-lantern.
How many people have made jack-o'-lanterns without knowing anything about them? Plenty, we bet. The term comes from an Irish myth about a man named Stingy Jack (sometimes Jack the Smith, Drunk Jack, or Flaky Jack), a folkloric deceiver whose lies and tricks resulted in him having to wander the world after his death, admitted to neither Heaven nor Hell, lighting his way with an ember inside a hollowed out rutabaga. We don't know if rutabagas were ever used for jack-o'-lanterns, but if they were the switch to pumpkins was a good one. Rutabagas aren't scary. Unless you have to eat them.
Posing with en enormous plaster jack-o'-lantern is U.S. actress Anne Nagel, whose Hollywood career spanned about twenty-five years. She acted in (including uncredited appearances) about a hundred films, among them the crime dramas Bungalow 13, Escape by Night, Armed Car Robbery, and The Trap. Nagel is a good femme fatale choice for this time of year because her personal life was even scarier than these photos. Her first husband committed suicide, she allegedly had problems with alcohol, she never accumulated much money despite her many screen performances, and she died of cancer at age fifty.
Here's the most frightening story of all. In 1947 she filed a $350,000 lawsuit against a surgeon who she claimed removed some of her reproductive organs in 1936 without consent when he performed an appendectomy on her. Could you even imagine? Nagel said she had no idea until shortly before filing suit more than a decade later, but the surgeon countered that Nagel knew exactly what he was going to do. We don't know how the case turned out, but given the era we bet she didn't win. These photos, no longer very scary after hearing that story, are from 1940.
| Modern Pulp | Oct 1 2023 |
Erin Moran and co-stars have some unhappy days in outer space.
Galaxy of Terror, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1981, was produced by New World Pictures and Roger Corman, and you know what that means—no budget. Corman must have really licked his chops when he heard this pitch. In his genius, he probably realized immediately that he could avoid millions of dollars in costs by making his sets extra cheap and simply bathing them in darkness in order to save on production design. He also went cheap on script, direction, sound, music, special effects, and costuming. The result was one of many terrible outer space movies to hit multiplexes in the wake of Star Wars and Alien. This one is distinct in being influenced by both of those classics while sharing none of their advantages.
The plot deals with an intrepid crew of nine who embark on a military style rescue mission, seeking a ship lost in a distant star system on a planet called Organthus. After various travails, they land on the accursed world, find the lost ship, and make the mistake of entering it. Giant leeches, deadly shuriken, and other horrors bloodily whittle the crew down to an unfortunate few, at which point comes the infamous moment—which may be the only reason Galaxy of Terror is remembered—when poor Taaffe O'Connell is raped and killed by a giant maggot. The mission only goes farther downhill from there as Corman digs deep into the New World prop department for a couple of mothballed monsters to terrorize the survivors.
The thing about science fiction movies back then is that it was impossible to have an inkling of what the end result might be. Basically, the producers said, “Trust us, it'll look good.” The cast of Stars Wars took a leap of faith and were rewarded. The casts of imitator movies hoped to capture the same magic and failed over and over. Galaxy of Terror's budget of five million dollars probably sounded okay, considering Stars Wars cost eleven. The heady desire to roll the dice and hope for the best is probably what enticed co-star Erin Moran into taking a little moonlight ride from her hit television show Happy Days to appear in this turkey. Afterward, she may have considered a lobotomy to help her forget the entire ordeal.
There are, however, a few plusses to Galaxy of Terror. First, young production designer James Cameron probably learned that in sci-fi there's a budgetary floor beneath which disaster is assured, and would later make three of the best and most successful science fiction movies of all time (no, we're not counting Avatar). Second, co-star Zalman King probably realized sci-fi was for suckers, went softcore as a producer and director, and churned out such memorable (and now anachronistic) erotica as Red Shoe Diaries, Two Moon Junction, and Wild Orchid. And third, the poster art by Charo (not the singer) is nice. Also, the movie brought our special consulting critic Angela the Sunbear out of her cave. Watching Galaxy of Terror with her was really fun.
I think the crew should have stayed in hibernation.
New World PicturesGalaxy of TerrorHappy DaysEdward AlbertErin MoranRobert EnglundZalman KingSid HaigGrace ZabriskieTaaffe O'ConnellBernard BehrensRay WalstonRoger CormanJames CameronCharoposter artcinema movie reviewsci-fihorror
| Femmes Fatales | Jul 26 2023 |
Let's have phone sex. First I'll send you a photo to inspire you. It should be in your mailbox in three or four days.
Above you see a rare image from Players magazine circa 1974 of cinema legend Pam Grier using a device known as a rotary telephone. It's a great shot of both her and the museum piece. A couple of other frames from her hang-out session exist that were used in the offshoot publication Players Girls Pictorial in 1976.
Grier saw nudity as liberating and empowering. In a Rolling Stone interview she said, about the choice to appear unclothed in films, “I wanted to make people start seeing women of color, because we weren’t the epitome of sexual attraction for the male audience, in movies, magazines, anything. I said, How come we don’t see women of color in Hollywood and see them beautifully, like Fellini and Bertolucci and Bergman see women?”
With her boldness Grier helped change the paradigm of onscreen sexuality a bit, and today her images are among the most coveted out there, with magazines in which she appeared nude often auctioning for more than a hundred dollars. Tall, angular, and lovely, she went from actress to cultural icon and maintains that status today. You can see all kinds of Grier in the website. Just click her keywords below.
