vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Elvire Audray was one of the more faces famous in 1980s Italian b-cinema, appearing films such as Lys, Nosferatu a Venezia, and the cannibal movie White Slave, which we discussed a while back. Here she gets her day off to a good start in a few photos made around 1985.
Amazonia: Kopfjagd im Regenwald, for which you see a West German promo poster above, was originally Italian made as Schiave bianche: Violenza in Amazzonia, and was titled in English White Slave. We really enjoy lost world movies and this one looked like it fit the bill—fierce looking blonde woman on the poster holding a sword, jungle setting—so we tracked down a copy and had a look. We were imagining something along the lines of those entertaining ’80s actioners that all ended with big battle sequences and climactic decapitations. It was only after acquiring the film that we learned it was also known by another title—Cannibal Holocaust 2: The Catherine Miles Story. Uh oh. We are less fond of cannibal movies than lost world movies, but we forged ahead, bravely, with popcorn and beer.
Basically, a woman played by Elivire Audray is kidnapped by Amazon tribesmen and must submit to tribal customs in order to survive. But considering the fact that various loin-clothed alpha males soon begin to fight to possess her, the real question might be whether the tribe can survive her. All of this is wrapped inside a murder trial taking place after Audray’s rescue, where a courtroom learns not only every sordid, sexual detail of her time with her tribe, but that her very presence in the jungle may have been part of a conspiracy, and her kidnapping might have been in reality a rescue. We can’t really recommend this movie, but its eventual anti-capitalist twist is interesting, and at least you get to see plenty of Audray, below. Amazonia: Kopfjagd im Regenwald premiered in Italy in 1985 and opened in West Germany today in 1986.
The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.
Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.
Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.
NBC radio broadcasts the cop drama Dragnet for the first time. It was created by, produced by, and starred Jack Webb as Joe Friday. The show would later go on to become a successful television program, also starring Webb.
Veronica Lake, beautiful blonde icon of 1940s Hollywood and one of film noir’s most beloved fatales, dies in Burlington, Vermont of hepatitis and renal failure due to long term alcoholism. After Hollywood, she had drifted between cheap hotels in Brooklyn and New York City and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. A New York Post article briefly revived interest in her, but at the time of her death she was broke and forgotten.
