| Vintage Pulp | Apr 26 2024 |
Every top notch private investigator knows the best clues are found in bed.
We wanted to show you another poster painted by John Solie, who was responsible for numerous blaxploitation, sexploitation, and action promos, all executed at the extremely high level you see here with his one sheet for Stacey. His other notable efforts include those for The Arena, Star Crash, Hit Man, and Hollywood Boulevard. You can click his keywords at bottom to see everything we've shared from him.
Naturally we watched Stacey and it's a cheesy detective tale starring erstwhile Playboy centerfold Anne Randall, who plays a model-turned-private dick hired to investigate a rich woman's extended family before any of them are allowed to be included in her will. Randall arrives just in time for intrigue and murder. Private investigators need to possess a Class C license in order to legally take on clients. The C on Randall's license probably stands for “casual sex.”
Even so, there's not much here. The detective elements are uninspiring despite a noir style voiceover, and the sexual elements, even with Randall and co-star Anitra Ford in occasional undress, are not going to blow your skirt up. To put the overall nothingness of the movie in perspective, consider the fact that we couldn't find a copy with sharp enough resolution to make screenshots worthwhile, nor enough official production photos to make them worth sharing. That's how much of a historical afterthought it is.
In lieu of imagery you could use your imagination, but we recommend not bothering. Stacey resides at the low end of grindhouse cinema characterized by numerous bold and outrageous entries. In our opinion it's notable only for being the first exploitation effort by director Andy Sidaris, who would go on to helm boobalicious ’80s throwaways such as Malibu Express, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, and Savage Beach. Stacey premiered in the U.S. this month in 1973.
StaceyMalibu ExpressHard Ticket to HawaiiSavage BeachPlayboyAnne RandallAlan LandersJames WestmorelandCristina RainesAnitra FordMiki GarciaJohn SolieAndy Sidarisposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 23 2024 |
We recommend that you keep your distance—from the movie.
Japanese posters for U.S. film productions are sometimes so good we forget that the movies might not be. Case in point: the above poster was painted by the famed Japanese artist Seito, who was behind promos for films like Star Wars and Flesh Gordon. He produced this for the horror movie Rattlers, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1976 and reached Japan on an indeterminate date sometime afterward. The Japanese title is to the point:恐怖!蛇地獄means “Horror! Snake Hell.” The movie is its own special hell. It's about a bunch of rattlesnakes that run wild, and it's sssssssssssssssso bad. University of California herpetologist Sam Chew figures out how to deal with the offending reptiles, with the help of intrepid reporter Elisabet Chauvet, but nobody figured out how to deal with a bad script, a weak director, and a zero-charisma lead. You can let this one slide.
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 19 2024 |
When there's a killer on the loose you'd better sleep with one eye open.
This poster for While the City Sleeps doesn't impress with masterly art the way so many vintage promos do, but its simplicity is, in an oblique sort of way, we think, meant to echo tabloid covers from the era. RKO made a special poster in collaboration with Confidential magazine, which you'll see below. The movie's plot is pure tabloid fodder. A serial killer has slain women in New York City, leaving the cryptic message “Ask mother,” written on the walls of one murder scene. Vincent Price, owner of Kyne News Service, part of a media empire comprising ten newspapers, a wire service, and other interests, offers the position of executive director to three employees in order to draw them into cutthroat competition with each other. Soon it becomes clear that finding the identity of the “lipstick killer” is the winning move. Intrigue and subterfuge take over the office. Everyone gets involved, from senior editors to stringers to gossip columnist Ida Lupino, but the killer is too clever to be caught.
At least until intrepid Pulitzer Prize winning television reporter Dana Andrews airs a scornful and taunting broadcast, deliberately setting up his own fiancée as bait. He doesn't even ask her permission. Well, he does, but only after arranging to publish their engagement announcement in the New York Sentinel right next to a story about the killer. Reckless? Yes. Presumptuous? For sure. There are intertwined plotlines here, but Andrews using his true love as a lure was the most interesting aspect for us. He isn't the only heel on display. The movie is ostensibly about a serial killer, but is really a framework for exposing backbiting and cynical ambition in the big city. Director Fritz Lang, in what was his penultimate U.S. film, explores the cruel banality of what, these days, some call “hustle culture,” and brings the production to a conclusion that's, in the words of Thomas Mitchell's character, “Neat, but nasty.” Our words are: a mandatory watch. While the City Sleeps had a special world premiere today in 1956.
Edit: Vintage movies are excellent windows into bygone customs and practices. There's a great moment in this one. Rhonda Fleming and James Craig are chatting in her apartment late one night when the doorbell unexpectedly buzzes. They look at each other confused for a second, then Fleming says, “It's probably the drugstore. That was the last bottle of Scotch.”You know, there were a lot of things wrong with the mid-century era. But there were a few things right too. Getting the all-night drugstore to deliver booze has to be one of the most right things we've ever heard of, so we give thanks to While the City Drinks—er Sleeps—for clueing us in, and suggest you call your congressional rep immediately and ask for a law allowing pharmacies to deliver alcohol. If not for yourself, do it for the children.
New York CityRKO Radio PicturesConfidentialWhile the City SleepsDana AndrewsRhonda FlemingGeorge SandersHoward DuffVincent PriceJohn Barrymore Jr.Ida LupinoSally ForrestFritz Langposter artcinematabloidmovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 18 2024 |
Oshida makes her mark and it looks like a swastika.
Above is a bo-ekibari style poster for the pinky violence actioner Furyô banchô: Ikkaku senkin, aka Wolves of the City: Fast Money. This piece is cousin to the standard sheet for the film we shared a couple of years ago. Just as when we showed you that one we haven't located the movie yet, but we'll keep working on it, if only to find out why star Reiko Oshida has a swastika on her back. We're guessing she's in a motorcycle gang, and it's their emblem. Furyô banchô: Ikkaku senkin premiered today in 1970. You can see the other poster here, and that entry also discusses briefly the swastika symbol in Japanese culture.
JapanToei CompanyFuryô banchô: Ikkaku senkinWolves of the City: Fast MoneyWolves of the City: Instant FortuneTatsuo UmemiyaReiko OshidaBunta Sugawaraposter artcinemapinky violencepinku
| 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
| Modern Pulp | Apr 13 2024 |
Nygren and friends teach moviegoers all about natural selection.
We'll return to paperback covers tomorrow, but for the moment we're running with the same sort of material we posted a couple of days ago, because as the weather warms thoughts naturally turn to sensual pleasures. We can't think of a movie more sensual than Emmanuelle IV. Set in our planet's most sensual country, steamy Brazil, it was the entry in the Emmanuelle series that ushered original lead Sylvia Kristel out the studio gate, and brought in the first of several new Emmanuelles, in this case Swedish actress Mia Nygren.
This West German poster, on which the film is titled Die orgien der Emmanuelle, or “the orgies of Emmanuelle,” caught our eye because—well, for several reasons—but mainly because Nygren is pushed into the background by Camella Donner, aka Camella Thomas. Why is that so interesting? Because she isn't in the cast. She probably wasn't even on the same continent. We guess the West German distributors wanted to sex up the poster a bit more. Donner would have been a great addition to the film, but even without her it was fun. Ridiculous, stupid, carnivalesque fun. They don't make 'em like that anymore. Emmanuelle IV premiered in West Germany today in 1984.
West GermanySwedenDie orgien der EmmanuelleEmmanuelle IVMia NygrenSylvia KristelCamella DonnerCamella Thomasposter artcinemasexploitationnudity
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 10 2024 |
It's the same old story. Take a trip to the tropics, lose every bit of self control.
We ran across this Italian locandina for the shot-in-the-Dominican Republic sexploitation flick Il pavone nero, known in English as Voodoo Sexy, and thought it made a nice alternate promo to the one we posted years back. The movie premiered in Italy today in 1975, and with a title like Voodoo Sexy you know what it's about: white skin + tropical heat = a total loss of inhibitions. Flicks of this ilk were an unofficial subgenre of ’70s and ’80s cinema. We love them, and you know why? Because they aren't wildly inaccurate in terms of northerners going crazy down south. The star of this one was German actress Karin Schubert, and that's the other reason we revisited the film—it gave us an excuse to share the photo of her below. Hope it helps you get over hump day.
ItalyDominican RepublicGermanyIl pavone neroVoodoo SexyKarin SchubertChris AvramDon Powellposter artcinemasexploitationnudity
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 9 2024 |
Vince waxes philosophical and discovers the secret of life—death.
House of Wax, which was produced by Warner Brothers and premiered today in 1953, was the first 3D production by any major studio. It's a period piece set in Victorian New York City starring Vincent Price as the creator and half owner of a historical wax museum. Unfortunately, his focus on history leaves the public nonplussed, and his partner Roy Roberts, who needs capital, sets the place aflame for the insurance money. Price is burned and driven insane. Well, actually he was insane before the fire, but in a cute way. He talked to his wax figures and thought they talked back.
But after the fire he's a barking psychopath, running around nighttime Gotham behatted and cloaked like Lamont Cranston. His goal? Revenge, of course, a craving solved early in the proceedings when he pitches Roberts down an elevator shaft with a rope around his neck. But what next? What does one do once vengeance is thine? Well, you build a new wax museum, except this time you surrender to prurient tastes and create displays of modern murder and the macabre. Screw that high-minded history crap.
Everything goes fine until Phyllis Kirk begins to suspect that the extraordinary realism of the wax figures is due to more than just artistic talent. Her suspicion is a screenwriter's concoction—there's no way a person could realistically make the leap Kirk does in believing Price guilty of heinous crimes. The script literally calls it a woman's intuition. Well, okay. But in our experience that's a myth, and it's possibly even insulting when used as substitute for intelligence, so maybe just put a realistic clue in the script and write Kirk's character as very smart instead. In any case, she's definitely nosy as hell, and that's the beginning of the end for vicious Vince.
House of Wax has many things going for it. The sets and costumes are extravagant, the early fire sequence with its melting wax figures is genuinely unsettling, the WarnerColor developing process is attractive, and the acting is uniformly competent, even by that six-foot three-inch Hillshire Farms ham Price. And it's fun to watch Charles Buchinsky, aka Charles Bronson, as the mute assistant Igor. In the end the House of Wax works. Add popcorn, a few friends, and about of case of beer and you'll have a great Saturday night.
New York CityWarner Bros.House of WaxVincent PriceCharles BronsonCharles BuchinskyFrank LovejoyPhyllis KirkCarolyn JonesAndre de Tothposter artcinemahorrormovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 7 2024 |
The lone stranger rides again.
We usually watch movies in the order we're able to acquire them, so as a matter of availability we ended up watching parts one and three in the Rika the Mixed Blood Girl trilogy without having seen the middle entry. Last night we remedied that and screened part two, Konketsuji Rika: Hitoriyuku sasuraitabi, known in English as Rica 2: Lonely Wanderer. You see a rare tateken style poster for the film above—along with a nice zoom—that you won't find anywhere but on Pulp Intl. We already expounded upon the change in spelling of Rika's name in the English title a while back. Shorter version: we don't know why Rica makes more sense than Rika. Probably it doesn't. Take it up with the honchos at Kindai Eiga Kyokai.
Rika 2/Rica 2 stars Rika Aoki and she's once again required to right wrongs, as she escapes from the frying pan of reform school and lands in the fire of urban crime and other hazards endemic to pinku cinema. The main plot involves a ship that exploded and sank in Misawa harbor, and a survivor—Rika's friend Hanako—who's in a mental hospital as a result. But Hanako is mentally fine. She's actually hiding in the one place hired killers can't reach her. Turns out the ship was yakuza owned, and everyone who survived is being hunted down. Rika goes to the police and demands an investigation, but the cops are yakuza owned too. Why must everyone who survived the ship disaster be killed? How high does the conspiracy go?
Rika handles her business with moral outrage and violence, but she also has time for a musical number or two. She's the Dylan of the Misawa nightclub district. Check out her lyrical stylings:
As with the other films, some of the action in Rika 2/Rica 2 veers into slapstick. Also like the other films, there are racial and political digressions, and they aren't subtle. For instance, when Rika and a friend are accosted by Americans at one point, the group consists of one cowboy, one hippie, one guy dressed in a suit, etc. Later Rika is told point blank that it's lucky she's half white, because being half black like her friend Hanako would make her even more inferior to anyone fully Japanese. These are villains talking to her. The movie's default setting is anti-racist, which of course is correct and moral, but it's funny how what's considered racist evolves over time. Hanako is played by Japanese actress Masami Souda in shoe polish and an afro wig. Oops! For pinku cinema, it's just another day. But all-in-all, a reasonably fun one. Konketsuji Rika: Hitoriyuku sasuraitabi premiered in Japan today in 1973.
JapanKindai Eiga KyokaiKonketsuji Rika: Hitoriyuku sasuraitabiRica 2: Lonely WandererRika AokiMasami Soudapinkuposter artcinemamovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Apr 7 2024 |
People are being eaten by sharks but the hipsters of the Mexican Riviera are too groovy to care.
¡Tintorera!, for which you see a poster above, is often presumed to be within the pantheon of Jaws knockoffs, and that's true, but barely. There's a giant shark, and it eats a few people, but ¡Tintorera! couldn't be more different in tone than Spielberg's blockbuster. It's a counterculture movie set in and around Cancún, Tulum, and the Rivera Maya. A considerable amount of script is spent exploring free love and utopian lifestyles. Shark hunters Andrés Garcia and Hugo Stiglitz fashion an exclusive three-way relationship with Susan George. They also mix and match with Laura Lyons and Jennifer Ashley, and each bed down on consecutive nights with Fiona Lewis, which catalyzes a transformation from professional rivals to friends. Discussions of sexual sharing and finding new ways to live take up far more running time than anything to do with sharks.
But sharks there indeed are—specifically, a large tiger shark whose first victim is Lewis. She's eaten during a nude swim, which is another resemblance to Jaws. But to give a sense of how different ¡Tintorera! really is, consider that Lewis appears to be the movie's star during its first half hour, and when she vanishes no trace of her is ever found and nobody much cares that she's gone. They assume she left the country. In cinema's imaginary countercultureworld, who has time to ask questions? The focus of the film shifts to Garcia and Stiglitz's rivalry-cum-friendship. Shortly afterward, Susan George arrives, and the focus shifts again, onto the aformentioned threesome. But then she leaves, and suddenly Lyons and Ashley are the main love interests. Then one of them is eaten too. This round robin approach, in our experience, is unique in a film that isn't anthological or episodic, and it's jarring, to be sure.
Another aspect of ¡Tintorera! that might jar is it usage of real sharks and extremely practical special effects. Many actual sharks are killed. A loggerhead turtle is killed via throat cutting and hung over the side of a boat to make a blood trail. We don't think the Mexican filmmakers Conacite Uno and Productora Filmica Real added a disclaimer to the credits about no animals being harmed. Somehow they got a shark to swim around with a fake human torso sticking out of its mouth. Another shark is made to carry around a human lower body trailing yards of intestines. We don't know how the filmmakers achieved these striking scenes, but they look very real. So if all of what we've written doesn't make the film's slender free love plot sound enticing, maybe watch it for the gory efx. You'll marvel. ¡Tintorera! premiered in Mexico today in 1977.
MexicoCancúnTulum¡Tintorera!Tintorera: Killer SharkAndrés GarciaHugo StiglitzSusan GeorgeFiona LewisLaura LyonsPriscilla Barnesposter artcinemamovie review
