Vintage Pulp

August 29 2024

URBAN HEAT EFFECT

Anyone for barbecue? 1970s disaster epic charbroils entire city.

City on Fire is a good old fashioned ’70s disaster movie, and we have to tell you, it’s been ages since we’ve seen one. We’re talking rentals at Blockbuster ages. We never had a chance to see one in a cinema, but we have to wonder if a big room with a booming Sensurround system is what City on Fire needs to make it enjoyable, because on our television the movie didn’t get the job done.

Everything starts when three kids accidentally set a blaze while trying to smoke cigarettes, but the real firestorm ignites when a disgruntled oil refinery employee gets sacked, decides as revenge to sabotage the works. He twists some valves and whatnot, causing flammables to run through the city sewers. The stuff combusts and the rest, as they say, is hysteria.

The cast of this flick is outstanding. Leslie Nielsen is the mayor, Henry Fonda a fire chief, Ava Gardner an on-air news personality, Barry Newman an emergency room physician, and Shelley Winters a nurse. Their perspectives continually alternate as the city-eating fire runs rampant. To pull off the incendiary visuals the filmmakers use models of skyscrapers, rear projection, and practical fire stunts of types that died with the advent of computer graphics.

While we appreciated the work that went into the movie, and some of the cinematography was spectacular, we were largely unmoved. Maybe it needed Hindenburg correspondent Herbert Morrison to narrate: “Oh, the humanity!” However, we were very moved by the poster art, which is another top effort by John Solie. City on Fire was made in Canada and, after opening in Europe, premiered in the Great White North today in 1979.

Avco Embassy Pictures, City on Fire, Barry Newman, Leslie Nielsen, Ava Gardner, Susan Clark, James Franciscus, Shelley Winters, Henry Fonda, John Solie, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

July 22 2024

EAT, DRINK, AND BE BURIED

Your usual server won't be with you tonight. She's come down with a small case of murder.

The Swinging Barmaids, which splashed across U.S. screens for the first time this month in 1975, is one of those movies with a deliberately misleading title. Rather than the breezy erotic romp you’d expect, it’s a thriller about an insane serial killer who stalks a group of waitresses working in a Los Angeles go-go bar. The problems commence when Dyanne Thorne (yes, she made movies aside from the Ilsa atrocities) is stabbed to death, setting off an inept police investigation, while the killer sets his crazy sights on more victims. He’s the classic maladjusted loner you find in ’70s grindhouse filcks. You know the type: “You’re the first girl I ever met that wasn’t dirty underneath.” What type of woman wouldn’t immediately leave town after hearing something like that? Answer: a woman in a bad movie.

Eventually, to facilitate his homicidal efforts, Mr. Maladjustment gets a job as a dishwasher at the bar. More killings eventually lead to the unveiling of this wolf in the fold, and his inevitable perforation with 12-gauge buckshot. That isn’t a spoiler. His death is the entire point of the film. Well, that and boobs. But the problem is that this is all mounted perfunctorily, is poorly written, visually lackluster, narratively sluggish, and devoid of actorly charisma. In fact, if not for the nudity, you’d think The Swinging Barmaids was a minor television movie. The best thing going for it is the above poster art by the incomparable John Solie. Check, please.

Los Angeles, The Swinging Barmaids, Bruce Watson, Laura Hippe, Katie Saylor, William Smith, Renie Radich, Dyanne Thorne, John Solie, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

April 26 2024

LAY DETECTOR

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.

Stacey, Malibu Express, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Savage Beach, Playboy, Anne Randall, Alan Landers, James Westmoreland, Cristina Raines, Anitra Ford, Miki Garcia, John Solie, Andy Sidaris, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

December 4 2023

HARD TO HANDLE

It's nobody's business but their own.

Manhandlers, right? It’s a good title for a sexploitation movie, and John Solie painted a nice promo poster, but the actual product is a limp drama with dopy comedic episodes about a woman played by Cara Burgess who inherits her mobbed up uncle’s L.A. massage parlor and finds that it’s a front for a brothel. Her uncle was killed for being uncooperative with the mafia, and now they come after her, trying to intimidate her into signing away half of the place’s profits. One the one hand, she’d supposedly net a nice income just for looking the other way and doing nothing. On the other, she’d be giving in to organized crime. The answer? Fill both hands with scented oil, massage the mob into a sense of false security, then make her move. None of it is as interesting as it sounds, at no point are machine guns wielded, and for sexploitation the extracurriculars aren’t very erotic, even with Judy Brown and Rosalind Miles in support. You can give this one a pass. The Manhandlers premiered—and went limp at the box office—today in 1974.

Los Angeles, The Manhandlers, Cara Burgess, Judy Brown, Rosalind Miles, John Solie, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

July 23 2023

AFTER A FASHION MODEL

Hopefully there's a direct correlation between runway experience and runaway capability.

Master illustrator John Solie made this promo poster for the low budget exploitation flick Cover Girl Models, and it’s another example of his incomparable work. The movie, on the other hand, is very comparable—it’s similar to 1973’s Fly Me, but with models instead of flight attendants. Cirio Santiago, a legend in the exploitation field, directed both movies, and the plots develop in identical fashion, as a trio of carefree women travel to Asia for work and accidentally become embroiled in a criminal plot. In the case of Cover Girl Models, spies want to secretly transport microfilm, so they arrange to have it sewn into one of the model’s dresses. But when the seam rips and the microfilm disappears, bad men come after her.

The three models are played by Pat Anderson, Lindsay Bloom, and Tara Strohmeier, with John Kramer as their photographer and Mary Woronov as their agent. You’ll also see a few familiar faces from other made-in-Asia grindhouse productions, such as Vic Diaz and Tony Ferrer. None of this group are extremely talented, however the point is for the lead actresses to look beautiful, and they do that well, especially Anderson. We can’t call the movie good. Nobody could and be serious. But like many exploitation efforts it’s funny in parts. Unintentionally, we mean. Therefore, you know the drill here—watch it with friends and booze, and it might turn out to be one of the more enjoyable nights you’ve had in a while. Cover Girl Models premiered today in 1975.

Hong Kong, New World Pictures, Cover Girl Models, Pat Anderson, Lindsay Bloom, Tara Strohmeier, John Kramer, Mary Woronov, Vic Diaz, Tony Ferrer, John Solie, sexploitation, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

August 13 2021

TO LAUGH OR DIE IN L.A.

Blaxploitation flick goes slapstick and the result is bold but bad.

This poster for the blaxploitation flick Darktown Strutters, aka Get Down and Boogie, was painted by top talent John Solie and is a high quality piece of art. The movie it promotes, conversely, is a low quality piece of art, one of those efforts any rational assessment concludes is an utter disaster, but which has advocates, among them Quentin Tarantino. The advocates are wrong. Tarantino—and it pains us to say this—is wrong.

This musical-alleged-comedy about a female motorcycle gang in L.A. battling the owner of a fried chicken franchise is about as entertaining as watching a circus clown punch himself repeatedly in the nose. If you watch it with your Vaudevillian cortex activated you might get a few bemused laughs. And if you dig into it with a pickaxe and mining helmet you might find commentary upon cultural appropriation, feminism, capitalism, and law enforcement.

But if you examine it from a technical point of view you’ll simply cringe, even factoring in its highly limiting three-day shooting schedule. Since when does lofty intent stand in for basic execution? We missed that memo. But we do love the poster, and we like the promo image below. It shows Edna Richardson, Bettye Sweet, Shirley Washington and, front and center, Trina Parks, who thankfully had other opportunities to show her actual talent. Darktown Strutters premiered in the U.S. today in 1975.

Darktown Strutters, Get Down and Boogie, Trina Parks, Edna Richardson, Bettye Sweet, Shirley Washington, Roger E. Mosley, John Solie, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

June 8 2021

SHAFT COMES AGAIN

He scored big in 1971. In 1972 he returned for a double dip.

Once you go blaxploitation you never go back. At least for a day or two. Above is the U.S. promo poster for another movie from the genre, 1972’s Shaft’s Big Score, starring the legendary Richard Roundtree. Shaft is obviously a name meant to conjure sex, so it makes sense that the poster is so phallic, with Roundtree sticking that long black rod in the viewer’s face. Shaft’s Big Score was the sequel to 1971’s Shaft, which was a landmark in American cinema that hammered home the growing realization in Hollywood that there was money to be made by showing audiences people like themselves. White audiences had lived that reality since the first moving pictures, but mostly never considered the privilege they were enjoying. Shaft helped demonstrate that all people liked it, and helped define the future for film studios. The focus was black, the cast was diverse, and the money rolled in. Which brought about Shaft’s Big Score. We’ve seen better movies, but we’ve sure seen worse too. You can read what we thought about it here.

Shaft's Big Score, Shaft, Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Drew Bundini Brown, Kathy Imrie, John Solie, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation

Vintage Pulp

May 1 2021

CUTTING CLASSMATES

Welcome to the school of hard knocks and sharp knives.

How does an interest in bad cinema start? For us it began with Switchblade Sisters. We’d seen scores of bad movies growing up and through college, but after those years we moved toward mainstream movies and well reviewed indie cinema. Sometime after we started our magazine we received a comp ticket to a late night showing of Switchblade Sisters. It was an old b-movie also known as The Jezebels being re-released by Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder Pictures, and we watched it in a landmark cinema packed with people primed to have a raucous time. It was a hell of a night*, and the afterparty was good too.

Plotwise, what you get with Switchblade Sisters is a juvenile delinquent flick about a high school gang called the Silver Daggers and its women’s auxiliary the Dagger Debs. Robbie Lee plays the head Deb, while Joanne Nail plays a new girl brought into the gang. Everything is fun and games until jealousy rears its ugly head due to the fact that Lee thinks her man, who’s the leader of the Silver Daggers, wants the new girl. Matters deteriorate when Nail sets off a war between the Silver Daggers and a rival gang. These are seriously murderous clans, fully intent on killing each other. Gunplay abounds, blood flows copiously, and the lesson is— Well, we aren’t sure. Say no to gangs, we guess.

Switchblade Sisters is atrociously acted in parts, and mediocrely acted in all the other parts, but Robbie Lee deserves special mention for making a three course meal of her role, delivering every line as if she has a case of lockjaw. Someone must have told her tough people speak through clenched teeth. But so do constipated people. Someone should have told her that too. But some movies are more than the sum of their parts, and Switchblade Sisters falls into that category. It’s terrible, but uproarious. Dumb, but immensely entertaining. We can’t think of many better films to watch with friends. And that’s worth a lot in this crazy world. Switchblade Sisters originally premiered today in 1975.

*The best part of that premiere night was actually showing up for the film. The promotional company had reserved a row of seats for local reviewers. PSGP was our magazine’s movie critic. He showed up in this packed cinema and took a reserved seat. Some fratboy-looking chump in the row behind him leaned forward and told him, “These seats are reserved.” It’s here we should mention that PSGP doesn’t look like what most people would think of as a film critic, so he knew exactly what was happening—this moron, who was not anyone of any importance or authority, and had no connection whatsoever to the premiere except he probably won tickets from a radio giveaway, took a look at PSGP and decided to play citizen enforcer.

Fratboy chump got up and told the people running the premiere that someone had invaded the reserved seats. PSGP saw it happen. Fratboy flagged down someone, had a conversation while pointing directly at PSGP, and probably felt full of power for calling the cinema cops. PSGP savored the next moment, when the guy was told the evil seat inavder was in fact one of the invited critics and was sitting in exactly the right place. Fratboy moron, crestfallen, went back to his seat, and PSGP, without turning around, said, “That didn’t work out the way you hoped, huh?” He got good mileage from the story at the afterparty. And the fratboy? He wasn’t invited.

Centaur Pictures, Rolling Thunder Pictures, Switchblade Sisters, The Jezebels, Joanne Nail, Robbie Lee, Monica Gayle, Marlene Clark, Jack Hill, Quentin Tarantino, John Solie, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

December 20 2020

HEAVY HITTER

Which is louder—his shotgun or his wardrobe?

Above you see two posters for the blaxploitation flick Hit Man, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1972 and stars NFL player-turned-actor Bernie Casey as a man from Oakland who blows into L.A. to investigate his brother’s murder. His brother ran a used car lot, but had gotten on the bad side of some local criminals. How he did that, who these bad people are, and what they’re up to are the questions at the crux of the narrative, and when Casey finally learns the truth he’s horrified and infuriated in equal measure, which turns him into a leisure-suited revenant with murder in his eyes and a gun in his hands.

What is neither horrifying nor infuriating is that Pam Grier is in this, which makes it a must watch in our book, and she holds nothing back, sporting a quantum leap forward in afro science, and proving once again that she was a fearless performer. Nevertheless, she and Casey can’t make Hit Man good despite their best efforts. But on the other hand, it isn’t awful either, and in the middle isn’t a bad place to be in b-cinema, considering how deeply terrible the films can get.

Hit Man has a couple of miscellaneous notes of interest. A bit of filming takes place at Watts Towers, Simon Rodia’s italo folk art monument that was designated a historic site in 1990. We’ve seen the place in person and we loved it because its mosaics reminded us of the type you see on modernist architecture in Barcelona. The production photo of Grier in a long black dress, below, was shot at the site. It’s one of the most famous images of her, and one of the most badass too.

Hit Man also makes use of a location called Africa America, an open air animal preserve of the type made famous by Tiger King. We can’t find any trace online that it ever existed, so there’s no way to know for sure whether it was a real zoo, an MGM set, or something in between, such as a private ranch dressed up for filming. But it plays an important role in the plot, as do its hungry lions. If they’d eaten a few of the worst script pages, and a couple of bad supporting actors, and maybe Casey’s purple leisure suit, Hit Man might be better than just okay. But lions are finicky like all cats, and most amateur film critics.

Los Angeles, Watts, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, NFL, Hit Man, Bernie Casey, Pam Grier, Lisa Moore, Marilyn Joi, Roger E. Mosley, Simon Rodia, John Solie, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

March 9 2018

CRASH COURSE

Imperial battleship—suddenly give me godlike powers to win this war!

Whenever the subject of the worst movie ever made comes up you can count on everyone to have an opinion. When that discussion happens Starcrash is the film we mention. Generally people are skeptical. Everyone has their beloved favorites. Sometimes we’d have to prove our point, we’d end up renting this puppy to show to friends, and by the third reel any doubters were staring agape at the colossal implosion this movie is. It was a Star Wars knock-off, obviously, filmed in Italy and Switzerland with Marjoe Gortner and Caroline Munro in the leads, and written and directed by Luigi Cozzi working under the pseudonym Lewis Coates.

Whenever we watch this with friends the question always arises: did they mean it to be a good film? Yes. They did. But no. It isn’t. Not even remotely close. And that’s what makes Starcrash such a treasure. Not merely that it’s terrible, but that the filmmakers wrapped the production feeling good about what they’d done. They thought they’d made an exciting, visually stunning, somewhat humorous smash hit. It’s the sincerity of ambition that makes Starcrash, in our opinion, the best bad movie of all time. Worse (better) than Roadhouse, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and all the usual contenders. While Cozzi does an okay job directing, his script and budget sabotage him at the outset.

We’ll give you an example (yes, it’s a spoiler, but in a movie like this it doesn’t matter). Near the finale, with no previous indication that such a power existed, Christopher Plummer, the emperor of the galaxy, bellows this command: “Imperial battleship—halt the flow of time!” You can’t just suddenly go deus ex machina like that. It would make as much sense if Plummer shouted: “Imperial battleship—make my enemies’ dicks fall off!” He explains in a smirky aside, “You know, my son, I wouldn’t be Emperor of the Galaxy if I didn’t have some powers at my disposal.” That’s amazing. And don’t even get us started about how Cozzi forgot that space is a vacuum.

Get some friends over, get some booze flowing, get Starcrash rolling, and see if watching Gortner and Munro ham it up across a Christmas lighted galaxy isn’t one of the best movie nights you’ve ever had. One thing that isn’t terrible about it, at least, is the U.S. promo art by John Solie you see above and below. The international posters are nice too, though we don’t know if they were painted by Solie. We’ll show you those later. In the meantime you can see another beautiful Solie effort here. Since Starcrash was Italian made it premiered in Italy and West Germany before reaching the U.S. today in 1979.

This is not a light saber.

This is not like Princess Leia’s hologram.

He in no way resembles Darth Vader.

But to be fair, motifs in sci-fi repeat. In a universe of ideas, writers for some reason tend to think of the same stuff. Below are aspects of Starcrash that—suspiciously?—recurred in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back.

Han Solo’s deep freeze in carbonite in no way resembles this.

Princess Leia’s slave costume is not similar to this at all.

The ice planet Hoth is near here, but is a totally different planet.

And below are more production photos from the film. If these don’t make you want to watch it, well, you probably don’t have a pulse. Or possibly you just have good taste and think life’s too short to watch terrible films. Either way.

Starcrash, Marjoe Gortner, Caroline Munro, Nadia Cassini, David Hasselhoff, John Solie, Luigi Cozzi, Lewis Coates, Christopher Plummer, poster art, cinema, sci-fi, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

September 10

1935—Huey Long Assassinated

Governor of Louisiana Huey Long, one of the few truly leftist politicians in American history, is shot by Carl Austin Weiss in Baton Rouge. Long dies after two days in the hospital.

September 9

1956—Elvis Shakes Up Ed Sullivan

Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, performing his hit song “Don’t Be Cruel.” Ironically, a car accident prevented Sullivan from being present that night, and the show was guest-hosted by British actor Charles Laughton.

September 8

1966—Star Trek Airs for First Time

Star Trek, an American television series set in the twenty-third century and promoting socialist utopian ideals, premieres on NBC. The series is cancelled after three seasons without much fanfare, but in syndication becomes one of the most beloved television shows of all time.

September 8

1974—Ford Pardons Nixon

U.S. President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office, which coincidentally happen to include all those associated with the Watergate scandal.

September 7

1978—Giorgi Markov Assassinated

Bulgarian dissident Giorgi Markov is assassinated in a scene right out of a spy novel. As he’s waiting at a bus stop near Waterloo Bridge in London, he’s jabbed in the calf with an umbrella. The man holding the umbrella apologizes and walks away, but he is in reality a Bulgarian hired killer who has just injected a ricin pellet into Markov, who develops a high fever and dies three days later.