Is it freezing in here or are you as excited about this examination as I am?
In ’60s sleaze fiction no subject is taboo, including doctors turning examinations into sexual opportunities, as on this uncredited cover for Woman's Doctor by Lauris Haney. Sleaze fiction was a subset of mid-century literature, so one shouldn't look at covers like this as pervasive. They do pop up on Pulp Intl. often, though, because the art is nearly always outrageous, and we can't resist it. On a scale of one to ten, this one sits at about level four outrageousness. Just for reference, because you want to know, we rate this a six and this maybe a seven. We don't upload the eights, nines, or tens. At least not yet. Woman's Doctor came from Magnet Books in 1960, and was originally used in a slightly different form for the cover of Joe Weiss and Ralph Dean's 1959 sleazer Anything Goes.
You may now return to the full upright position. Heh. I never get tired of saying that. Mid-century sexploitation fiction left no profession untapped for tawdry thrills. You can put Naked Angels in the airline sleaze bin, along with the classic Bronson's 19 Year Old Stewardess and others. The story here actually follows a specific naked angel, and the twists and turns of her love life both in air and on the ground in various cities and countries. We may put together a small collection of covers from this genre sometime. 1959 on this one, with uncredited art.
Just a woman and her will to survive. This cover for The Passionate Tigress by John Saxon, aka James Noble Gifford, has art signed “Border.” We’ve never heard of him or her before, and as you can imagine, we can’t possibly hope to isolate a person with a name like that using internet searches. The people at the Greenleaf Classics website think this could be Ernest Chiriaka, and we agree the resemblance is uncanny, but absent confirmation this illustrator goes in the mystery category. 1959 on this.
Pacino's violent thriller tells us that sometimes playing a role involves finding out who you really are. We just saw this movie for the first time a few months ago and it falls squarely into the category: could-not-be-made-today. That doesn’t automatically make it good, but it just so happens this is a pretty good flick. You’ve got a young, intense Al Pacino, noirish direction from William Friedkin of Exorcist fame, and a story focused on sex, drugs, and violence. Basically, Pacino plays a cop who goes undercover in New York City’s gay BDSM subculture. He’s looking for a killer, which requires him to play the role of an available, leather-clad party boy. But there’s deep cover, and then there’s deep cover. When you cross the line trouble always results. The art above comes from a promotional pamphlet, and it conveys the mood of the film quite nicely. We recommend it, with a reservation—if you’re progressive-minded, you’ll probably hate it. But you know that going in. Whenever Hollywood portrays a so-called subculture for a genre flick, it’s an affront to those being portrayed, whether gay, Chinese, black, female, religious, Texan, environmentalist, Iraqi, or what have you. Could Hollywood make films that portrayed all these segments of society in only positive terms? Sure, but who’d go see them? So bring on the action, and we’ll deal with the caricatures by agreeing that they’re just living cartoons, designed to offer some thrills and chills. Cruising premiered in the U.S. today in 1980.
|
|
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
|
|
|
It's easy. We have an uploader that makes it a snap. Use it to submit your art, text, header, and subhead. Your post can be funny, serious, or anything in between, as long as it's vintage pulp. You'll get a byline and experience the fleeting pride of free authorship. We'll edit your post for typos, but the rest is up to you. Click here to give us your best shot.
|
|