Femmes Fatales

October 21 2024

KILLER SMILE

I've heard about angry, disaffected shooters, but personally I've always been the exact opposite.

Above: a colorized black and white photo of German actress Sabine Sinjen made when she was filming the 1963 western Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi, known in English Pirates of the Mississippi. Sinjen accumulated about seventy credits, mostly on television. We’ve seen Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi referred to as a spaghetti western, which raises the question of whether the label can be applied to a film that’s German made. For purists, the answer is no. Such films would have to be Italian or Italian-Spanish productions shot in Italy and/or Spain. But many films with a spaghetti western feel and look were shot in Greece, the south of Portugal, Turkey, or really any place that offered a dry landscape. Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi was shot in the former Yugoslavia. The aforementioned purists would call it a Eurowestern, which is fine with us.

West Germany, Germany, Yugoslavia, Die Flußpiraten vom Mississippi, Pirates of the Mississippi, Sabine Sinjen, spaghetti western

Vintage Pulp

March 31 2023

A TRIP TO AFRICKA

Yugo wherever you can to find good art.

Something unusual we ran across recently. Above you see a Yugoslavian poster for AfriÄka veza, an Italian film originally made in 1973 as Contratto carnale, released in English as The African Deal, and shot in Ghana. The poster is unusual because, though its text is Croatian, the actual art very much echoes vintage Ghanaian movie posters, such as here and here. We’ve never seen a Yugoslavian poster in this style. Our opinion is that because the movie was made in Ghana and was certainly released there at some point, the art was painted for a Ghanaian poster then borrowed by the Yugoslavian distributors Inex Film. We talked about Contratto carnale a few years back. It starred George Hilton, Calvin Lockhart, beautiful Anita Strindberg, and yummy Yanti Somer, was originally released in 1973, and premiered in Yugoslavia sometime in 1976.

Yugoslavia, Croatia, Ghana, AfriÄka veza, Contratto carnale, The African Deal, George Hilton, Calvin Lockhart, Yanti Somer, Anita Strindberg, poster art, cinema, exyu

Vintage Pulp

March 23 2022

FANTOM MENACE

Who was that masked woman? Nobody knows.

Above: a striking Yugoslavian poster in the Croatian language for Žena Fantom, better known as Phantom Lady. Again we see how Yugoslavian artists thought differently about promos. Adding a mask to the dark central figure gives the image, painted by Sasa Nikolic, just the feel of mystery it needs for a movie about a woman who can’t be found but holds the key to the hero’s redemption. There’s no exact release date known for Phantom Lady in Yugoslavia, but the poster is dated 1969. See what we wrote about the movie here.

Yugoslavia, Žena Fantom, Phantom Lady, Sasa Nikolic, poster art, cinema, exyu

Hollywoodland

June 20 2019

FROM MUSCLE BEACH TO MURDER

Pageant winner fulfilled show business and personal ambitions. Then things went wrong.

Beauty pageants are a bit silly, perhaps, but the participants are generally ambitious people who see them as stepping stones to show business or modeling. And in mid-century Los Angeles in particular, even minor pageants occasionally led to stardom. In the above photos high school student Barbara Thomason wins the crown of Miss Muscle Beach 1954. Listed at 5 foot 3 inches and 110 pounds, she was a body-building enthusiast, and in the shot just below she celebrates her hard fought win by pumping a bit of iron while photographers click away and a crowd watches.

Did Thomason’s victory lead to bigger things? Maybe not directly, but it probably helped. She was a habitual pageant participant who also won Miss Huntington Beach, Miss Van Ness, Miss Bay Beach, Miss Southwest Los Angeles, Miss Pacific Coast, Queen of Southern California,

and ten other titles. All that winning finally got her noticed by Hollywood movers and shakers. In 1955, performing under the name Carolyn Mitchell, she made her acting debut on the television show Crossroads, and in 1958 co-starred in two Roger Corman b-movies, The Crybaby Killer and Dragstrip Riot.

But she put her career on hold when she met and married a star—Mickey Rooney, who was nearly seventeen years her senior and nearly two inches her junior. Their union had problems from the beginning. The couple married secretly in Mexico because Rooney was still awaiting a divorce from actress Elaine Mahnken. They would have to wait almost two years before the law allowed them to wed in the U.S. Legalities, though doubtless bothersome, were the least of their problems. During the next six years, during which Thomason bore four children, Rooney indulged in numerous affairs.

It should probably be noted here that Thomason was Rooney’s fifth wife. Among the predecessors were goddesses like Ava Gardner and Martha Vickers. We don’t know what Thomason’s expectations of marriage were, but clearly Rooney didn’t know the meaning of the phrase “for better or worse.” The affairs continued, and eventually Thomason did the same with a temperamental Yugoslavian actor named Milos Milosevic, who performed under the name Milos Milos. But what was good for goose was not

good for the gander—Rooney found out about these international relations, moved out of the Brentwood house he shared with Thomason, and filed for divorce, charging mental cruelty. The nerve, right?

On the morning of January 31, 1966, while Rooney was in St. John’s Hospital recovering from an intestinal infection he’d picked up in the Philippines, Thomason and Milosevic were found together on the bathroom floor of the Brentwood house, dead. Milosevic had shot Thomason under the chin and killed himself with a temple shot using a chrome-plated .38 Rooney had bought in 1964. The consensus is Thomason had decided to dump Milosevic and he flipped out.

The photos below show Thomason on Muscle Beach during her halcyon years there, a mere teenager, frolicking in the sun, filled with youthful hopes for a good life. She won beauty titles, acted in films, married an icon, and had four children. Any of those accomplishments would have been good legacies. Instead her death at twenty-nine overshadowed all the rest, and she’s remembered as another celebrity murder victim, Hollywood style, which is always somehow both sensational and banal.

Yugoslavia, Philippines, Los Angeles, Crossroads, The Crybaby Killer, Dragstrip Riot, Barbara Thomason, Carolyn Mitchell, Mickey Rooney, Elaine Mahnken, Milos Milosevic, Milos Milos, Ava Gardner, Martha Vickers, murder, suicide

Vintage Pulp

January 14 2018

YUGO CRAZY

The Bates Motel offers room service with that personal touch.

When we wrote about Psycho a while back we came across this Yugoslavian poster which we’re sharing today, finally. Usually we write about films on their release dates but there isn’t an exact one known for Yugoslavia. It arrived there in 1963, though, three years after its U.S. run. This two tone poster is about as low rent as it gets, but it’s still effective, we think.

Yugoslavia, Psycho, poster art, cinema, horror, exyu

Vintage Pulp

February 12 2017

A LONCAR NAMED DESIRE

Virtuoso poster artist finds inspiration in Serb star.

Above you see a poster from the former Yugoslavia, in Serbo-Croatian (we think), for the film Devojka za zabavu, starring Beba Lončar. We haven’t watched this, so no summary, but it’s available should you feel the urge. We’re primarily interested in the art. The poster says this is a Španjolski film, or Spanish film, and indeed it was originally made in Spain as Amor en un espejo, and titled in the U.S. Cover Girl. The poster was adapted from the Spanish promo art painted by Carlos Escobar, who signed his work as Esc. On the Spanish version his signature is prominent, but the Yugoslavians decided to wipe it out for some reason. We already showed one example of Escobar’s talent featuring Sharon Tate, and it may be one of the most beautiful of the hundreds of posters to adorn Pulp Intl. over the years. This one, which uses the lovely Lončar as a model, is also good. Evidence of what a big star the Serb actress was in her native Yugoslavia exists in her name, thrice repeated above the film’s title, which is not how the Spanish poster was set up. Check out the Tate promo here. And check out Lončar here. Amor en un espejo premiered in Spain today in 1968.

Turkey, Spain, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Devojka za zabavu, Amor en un espejo, Cover Girl, Desanka Lončar, Beba Lončar, Carlos Escobar, exyu, poster art, cinema

Musiquarium

June 13 2016

MONROE FOR A SPIN

If only the music were as flawless as the cover art.

Here’s little curio from the former Yugoslavia—a record sleeve from Serb pop-rock artist Boris Bizetić with a Marilyn Monroe cover motif. We’ve seen her image rather poorly used on album covers, but this one is nice, we think, if almost certainly unlicensed. And the music? Hah hah. We dare you.

Yugoslavia, Serbia, Boris Bizetić, Marilyn Monroe, album art, exyu

Vintage Pulp

September 13 2015

TEAM SPEAR IT

Making the world a safer place one skewered man at a time.

Above and below you see some Yugoslavian promo cards for Opasnije od muškaraca, aka Deadlier Than the Male, a film we’ve talked about a few times before. The text is in Serbian, and you’ll notice it describes the movie as “AmeriÄki.” Actually, it was British. But Brits, Americans, who can tell them apart, really? We imagine the Yugoslavian distributors of the film knew quite well it came from Britain-based Greater Films Ltd., but that they labeled it AmeriÄki to make it more marketable. As if Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina aren’t sufficient. See more from the film here.

Yugoslavia, Britain, Greater Films Ltd., Opasnije od muškaraca, Deadlier Than the Male, Elke Sommer, Sylva Koscina, poster art, cinema, exyu

Femmes Fatales

May 29 2015

ARCHITECTURALLY SOUND

Building a better future through movies.

María Baxa was born in 1946 in Belgrade, which in today’s deconstructed Yugoslavia makes her Serb. She appeared in a few Serbian-language films, then ascended into Italian cinema, appearing in productions such as Il commissario Verrazzano with Janet Agren and Patrizia Gori, and Incontri molto… ravvicinati del quarto tipo, aka Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. According to Michele Giordano’s 2000 retrospective La commedia erotica Italiana: vent’anni di cinema sexy, Baxa left the movies in the late 1980s and became an architect. This shot is from 1970.

Yugoslavia, Serbia, Italy, Belgrade, Il commissario Verrazzano Incontri molto... ravvicinati del quarto tipo, Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind, La commedia erotica Italiana: vent’anni di cinema sexy, María Baxa, Janet Agren, Patrizia Gori, cinema, nudity

Vintage Pulp

January 19 2015

A COOL MILLION

The languages were different but we’re pretty sure the appreciation for Raquel Welch was the same.

We’re looping back to the former Yugoslavia today, this time with a rare film program for Raquel Welch’s One Million Years B.C. If it seems we just talked about this movie, you’re right. We shared a promo from the film last week. What you see above is the front of a dual language promo pamphlet, half written in… well we aren’t sure. The language situation is complicated there. Half in Serbo-Croatian and half in Slovenian, we think. Feel free to correct us. In any case, it’s a pretty cool little item.

Yugoslavia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Pred Milijon Leti, Pred Milion Godina, One Million Years B.C., Raquel Welch, exyu, cinema

ABOUT

EMAIL

LEGAL

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

December 2

1954—Joseph McCarthy Disciplined by Senate

In the United States, after standing idly by during years of communist witch hunts in Hollywood and beyond, the U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for conduct bringing the Senate into dishonor and disrepute. The vote ruined McCarthy’s career.

December 1

1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott

In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.

November 30

1936—Crystal Palace Gutted by Fire

In London, the landmark structure Crystal Palace, a 900,000 square foot glass and steel exhibition hall erected in 1851, is destroyed by fire. The Palace had been moved once and fallen into disrepair, and at the time of the fire was not in use. Two water towers survived the blaze, but these were later demolished, leaving no remnants of the original structure.

November 29

1963—Warren Commission Formed

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However the long report that is finally issued does little to settle questions about the assassination, and today surveys show that only a small minority of Americans agree with the Commission’s conclusions.