Modern Pulp, Sex Files

October 4 2022

HOLEY TRINITY

There's never a cop around to perform a cavity search when you need one.

You probably suspect at a glance that this is a Japanese poster for an x-rated movie, and you’d be right. It was made for Trinity Brown, starring Sharon Kelly, aka Colleen Brennan, who’s backed by a supporting cast of stalwart porn studs and b-level starlets. This is the fourth movie of Kelly’s we’ve looked at, after Love, Lust and Violence, Gosh!, Scream in the Streets, and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. Do we have a special affinity for her? Not really. But the Japanese did, apparently. We’ve found Japanese posters for many of her flicks. They’ve retitled this one 弾を握る女, which means “woman holding a bullet.” Or possibly they’ve retitled it SEXリボルバー, which means “sex revolver.” The rest says, “Right now, a miraculous comeback, Sharon Kelly. A trap of terrifying passion, the scent of lavender drifting in the cloudy darkness. A man never forgets the smell of Sharon.” Indeed.

You can always expect a plotline with vintage porn, and in this case Kelly plays a tough L.A. cop partnered with John Leslie, who she also happens to be banging off-duty. The two are assigned a murder case in which a strip club owner is thought to have shot a local gangster. Brennan and Leslie delve into the world of exotic dancers and show business to unravel the mystery. It isn’t much of a mystery—psst the gangster’s girl set him up—but getting to the end is reasonably fun.

Generally vintage porn features realistic sexual performances, without a lot of asinine screaming and backbreaking positions. It was made before the medium became festishistic performance art, and takes itself seriously as erotica for normal people. This particular flick was made without any of the most inspiring porn beauties from the era (Ginger Lynn, Angel, Shauna Grant, Jody Swafford, Annette Haven, et al), so it’s possible some viewers might be aesthetically nonplussed by Kelly and company, but everything is real, rather than silicone, and that’s worth something. We’ll discuss some of those top stars again, and Kelly will be back too, on yet another Japanese poster we have. Trinity Brown premiered in the U.S. in 1984 and reached Japan today in 1986.

Japan, Los Angeles, Trinity Brown, Love Lust and Violence, Gosh!, Scream in the Streets, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Colleen Brennan, Sharon Kelly, John Leslie, Joey Silvera, Kimberly Carson, Jamie Gillis, Tamara Longley, poster art, cinema, movie review, xxx

Vintage Pulp

July 10 2020

HAREM SCARE ‘EM

The queen of sexual torture takes her talents to the Middle East.

Today is the day we finally complete the trifecta of Ilsa movies with Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, for which you see two Japanese posters above. The movie premiered in the U.S. in March 1976, and opened in Japan today that same year. The Japanese titles of Western movies are sometimes like lists of ingredients. The translation of アラブ女地獄悪魔のハーレム is “Arab hell devil harem.” Even with that clear warning, Japanese audiences—who aren’t fazed by much—must have said, “These Yank filmmakers are fucking crazy.” Which is to say that the Ilsa trilogy is among the most irredeemable sexploitation cinema ever produced, the type of stuff that will never, ever be made again, at least not in the U.S., where every instance of cinematic nudity is a political event. Generally, we decry that, but only when it keeps realistic and healthy sexual interactions from being shown onscreen. Harem Keeper is not healthy. Not on any level.

But we digress. This was the second installment of the Ilsa trio, and all starred Dyanne Thorne. She reprises her role as the cruel dominatrix Ilsa, and this time she’s in charge of a sheik’s harem. She rules this desert roost with utter cruelty, indulging in random acts of corporal punishment, and assisting her boss as he derives both income and pleasure from auctioning kidnapped women to wealthy pervs. Ilsa and the sheik discover that their little set-up has been infiltrated when they catch a spy sent by the granite-jawed Max Thayer, who later himself arrives on the scene and is quickly a prized guest in Ilsa’s bed. We could get into the major subplot involving war with a rival sheik, but suffice it to say that the entire plot is just an excuse to string together set pieces featuring vile faux-violence and silly faux-sex. How low does the movie sink? At one point Ilsa uses her incomparable creativity to implant a harem girl with an explosive diaphragm that will detonate during intercourse. It’s no electrified dildo (see installment one), but it’s close.

Yes, Ilsa is cruel as hell, but it’s nothing excellent sex won’t cure. That’s right up Thayer the Layer’s alley. He works his way to Ilsa’s creamy center, at which point she decides to switch allegiances and betray her sheik. Will she get away with this outrage? Well, we’ve already mentioned there were three Ilsa movies and this was the second, so theoretically, she gets away with it. On the other hand, she died at the end of the first movie, so you never know. Regardless, without putting too fine a point on it, this is a terrible movie. But the participation of porn actress Colleen Brennan, nudie model Uschi Digard, and blaxploitation beauties Tanya Boyd and Marilyn Joi as Ilsa’s usually-topless enforcers, make this worth a guilty watch. Just don’t let anyone know you did it, or you might lose your job, your friends, your family, and even your cat—and cats generally don’t give a fuck. But that’s how bad this flick is. We have a ton of promo images below. Some came from an interesting French-Canadian website called Cinepix. You can check it out here.

Japan, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Dyanne Thorne, Max Thayer, Tanya Boyd, Marilyn Joi, Uschi Digard, Colleen Brennan, Sharon Kelly, Jerry Delony, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, women in prison, movie review, nudity

Vintage Pulp

June 13 2016

YOU GOTTI BE KIDDING

Colleen Brennan headlines history's worst mafia flick.

These two promos were made for the Japanese premiere of Mafia Girls, aka Love, Lust, and Violence, a grindhouse production that starred porn actress Colleen Brennan working under the name Sara Bloom and remaining fully garbed until the last three minutes. How do we describe this one? Plotwise, a general and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff calls on a badass ex-soldier to take on the Chicago mafia, a motley crew that spends most hours of the day either watching live porno or getting blowjobs in a massage parlor. The movie is visually ambitious yet totally inept, which is a difficult combo to achieve, but director Norbert Meisel, a cast of b-grade co-stars, and several disinterested porno queens botch matters to such a degree that a comedic classic is the result. Imagine sweat, sideburns, semi-erect dicks, and pear-shaped bodies mixed with bad technical execution from acting to Z, and you’ll have an idea what to expect. We cannot recommend this, but it provided some killer laughs. Mafia Girls premiered today in 1975, and its censored Japanese release occurred some years later.

Japan, Chicago, Mafia Girls, Gangster Girls, Love Lust and Violence, Sharon Kelly, Colleen Brennan, Sara Bloom, Norbert Meisel, poster art, cinema, movie review, xxx

Sex Files

December 31 2015

INSIDERS OUTED

Got a little porn in your past? Don't worry—the internet will find it.

This Japanese poster promoting a double bill of 1974’s Gosh! (aka Alice Goodbody) and 1975’s The Fireworks Woman features softcore/hardcore actress Sharon Kelly/Colleen Brennan front and center, but she appeared in only one of the films. The other starred Jennifer Jordan, aka Sarah Nicholson, who also appears on the poster, though in the background. Gosh! is a softcore comedy directed by Tom Scheuer featuring Kelly/Brennan as a waitress/wide-eyed ingénue trying to survive/succeed as an actress in Hollywood, while The Fireworks Woman is a fully hardcore tale about a man who joins the priesthood to escape an incestuous relationship with his sister. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t work. It was helmed by Wes Craven—yes, that Wes Craven—under the pseudonym Abe Snake. Porn, whether softcore or hardcore, just makes people want to hide in fake personas, doesn’t it? Scheuer was the only one who didn’t bother and he never worked in cinema again, so the incognitos had it right. But the beauty of the internet is that everyone gets outed in the end. Schwarzeneggar, Stallone, Cameron Diaz, everyone. Happy New Year.

Japan, Gosh!, Alice Goodbody, The Fireworks Woman, Sharon Kelly, Colleen Brennan, Tom Scheuer, Wes Craven, Abe Snake, Cameron Diaz, Arnold Schwarzenegger, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, xxx

Vintage Pulp

April 23 2014

PRIMAL SCREAM

Make all the noise you want. Nobody is listening.

The rare promo you see here is the Japanese poster for Carl Monson’s thriller A Scream in the Streets. We’ve seen this movie described as the first cop buddy picture. We don’t know if it was the first, but the dynamic is there—a straight-laced family man partnered with a wild hothead, their relationship residing at the core of a plot involving murder and mayhem in Los Angeles. So yes, it’s a buddy movie perhaps, but just barely—A Scream in the Streets is in actuality a sexploitation movie that spends far more time on the down and dirty than on crime solving, something you can probably deduce from the fact that the promo features a nude Sharon Kelly, aka Colleen Brennan, and by the fact that the alternate promo below features an even more nude Kelly/Brennan.

While not hardcore, A Scream in the Streets was certainly too extreme to receive an R, and today it remains unrated, a garish display of flesh, blood, and profanity, as the cop combo wend their way through Los Angeles during a hot summer week rife with sleaze and crime, trying to keep the city from imploding as they also track a killer who targets women while dressed as one. If there’s a lesson in the movie at all it may be that it’s pointless to try and go unsullied by such rampant depravity—you can try not to touch it, but it’ll reach out and touch you. Either that or the lesson is if it looks like a man dressed as a woman and acts like a man dressed as a woman, it’s probably going to try and kill you—even if you’re a cop. A Scream in the Streets premiered in the U.S. first, then in Japan today in 1973.

Japan, Los Angeles, A Scream in the Streets, Carl Monson, Colleen Brennan, Sharon Kelly, poster art, cinema, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

May 13

1960—Gary Cooper Dies

American film actor Gary Cooper, who harnessed an understated, often stoic style in numerous adventure films and westerns, including Sergeant York, For Whom the Bell Tolls, High Noon, and Alias Jesse James, dies of prostate, intestinal, lung and bone cancer. For his contributions to American cinema Cooper received a plaque on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is considered one of top movie stars of all time.

May 12

1957—Von Stroheim Dies

German film director and actor Erich von Stroheim, who as an actor was noted for his arrogant Teutonic character parts which led him to become a renowned cinematic villain with the nickname “The Man You Love to Hate”, dies in Maurepas, France at the age of 71.

May 11

1960—Adolf Eichmann Is Captured

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents abduct fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who had been living under the assumed name and working for Mercedes-Benz. Eichman is taken to Israel to face trial on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He is found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962, and is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court.

May 11

2010—Last Ziegfeld Follies Girl Dies

Doris Eaton Travis, who was the last surviving Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, dies at age 106. The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. Inspired by the Folies Bergères of Paris, they enjoyed a successful run on Broadway, became a radio program in 1932 and 1936, and were adapted into a musical motion picture in 1946 starring Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball, and Lena Horne.

May 10

1924—Hoover Becomes FBI Director

In the U.S., J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a position he retains until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. But he also used the agency to grind a number of personal axes and far exceeded its legal mandate to amass secret files on political and civil rights leaders. Because of his abuses, FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms.

May 10

1977—Joan Crawford Dies

American actress Joan Crawford, who began her show business career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies, but soon became one of Hollywood’s most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, dies of a heart attack at her New York City apartment while ill with pancreatic cancer.