Vintage Pulp

June 28 2024

UNMADE IN CHINA

Cross country train thriller never quite reaches its destination.

Our interest in Peking Express was wholly due to Corinne Calvet, who we’ve seen in promo images, but never speaking and moving. The movie, which was an update of 1932’s Shanghai Express, is an overcooked spy adventure with cheesy, anti-commie filling, making for a creation that’s hard to swallow. Joseph Cotten arrives in Shanghai as a World Health Organization specialist on a mission to operate on some bigwig general. On a Peking bound train he encounters two complications—his ex-flame Calvet, and attempted murder. The latter has to do with the smuggling of contraband inside WHO crates. Soon both Cotten and Calvet are held prisoner by ringleader Marvin Miller (playing a Chinese military officer named Kwon) who wants to engineer a hostage exchange.

The movie ultimately portrays Miller as a money-grubbing bandit willing to betray wife, party, and country for personal gain. Threats and torture are his methods of persuasion, along with a hefty dose of general sneakiness. He spouts some of the worst dialogue ever, often starting with, “We Chinese…” But he doesn’t get the worst line. We just about upchucked on this, spoken about Miller by a saintly priest played by Edmund Gwenn: “If only he had as much devotion to God’s cause we would never have to worry about the world.” Really? Is that so? History says otherwise. To add insult to cognitive dissonance, the soundtrack contains some of the worst villain music imaginable. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin must have worn out an entire brass section recording it.

We’re fine, in principle, with the main plotline. The seemingly contradictory idea of a villain driven by a mix of entrepreneurial greed and communist doctrine is fertile. The crosscurrent of the WHO trying to save lives in a country where many are suspicious of its mandate struck us as relevant. But the operatic dimensions of the characters backfire to infantilise the movie’s messages. We suspect that the average Christian would find Gwenn’s missionary priest a pompous cardboard cut-out. The average communist would laugh the entire enterprise off as delusional b-grade propaganda. And the typical thief would judge Miller to be an incompetent boob. What would the typical Chinese person think? We can’t say, but our special consulting critic Angela the sunbear, whose native habitat includes China, might be able to enlighten us. And finally, what do fans of Corinne Calvet think? We thought: What a waste.
Thanks for throwing that China question my way, boys. I disliked the movie, and I extend an invitation to any who want to understand the complicated reasons why to discuss it with me over grubs and beetles.

China, Peking Express, Joseph Cotten, Corinne Calvet, Edmund Gwenn, Marvin Miller, Benson Fong, poster art, cinema, communism, movie review

Vintage Pulp

January 18 2023

SEAFOOD STEW

There's something very fishy going on.

This promo poster just screams winner, don’t you think? If it isn’t a good movie, it’s got to be deliciously terrible. It was made for L’isola degli uomini pesce, known in English as The Island of the Fishmen, a movie that starred Richard Johnson, Barbara Bach, and Claudio Cassinelli. No surprise what it’s about, thanks to the title, but nothing is spoiled—the fishmen show up within the first few minutes of the film when a group of convicts in a lifeboat are attacked and the five survivors end up stranded on a swampy island. Since the fishmen hunt there, the attrition rate on this parcel of land is a bitch. Two cons are killed almost immediately upon arrival, and a third barely survives a pit trap. They soon learn humans live there too—paranoid misanthrope Richard Johnson, his companion Barbara Bach, their servant Beryl Cunninghman, and others, all residing in and around a baroque slave plantation house.

Johnson, who is a quack scientist, is trying to train the fishmen for what shall here remain undisclosed purposes. It involves going deep underwater where humans can’t survive—but strangely, not so deep that Johnson can’t simply drop down in his unpressurized wooden submersible and watch them at work. It’s all a crock, even for bad sci-fi. But there are three points of note with the film: first, you can actually see that some budget went into creating the fishmen; second, Johnson speaking in a constipated Dick Dastardly voice is flat hilarious; and third, Barbara Bach is Barbara Bach. Or maybe we should have listed her first. The producers at Dania Film, perhaps realizing Fishmen was a total woofer, rode Bach hard, putting out a bunch of skinful promotional photos and getting her a Fishmen-themed nude shoot in Ciné-Revue. There’s always a silver lining in 1970s exploitation cinema—and on Pulp Intl. L’isola degli uomini pesce premiered in Italy today in 1979.

Italy, L'isola degli uomini pesce, The Island of the Fishmen, Ciné-Revue, Barbara Bach, Claudio Cassinelli, Richard Johnson, Joseph Cotten, Beryl Cunningham, poster art, cinema, horror, sci-fi, sexploitation, nudity, movie review

Vintage Pulp

August 16 2013

REASONABLE DOUBT

The truth of a man is always revealed by the shape of the shadow he casts.

Above, a Swedish poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Skuggan av ett tvivel, staring Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright, and originally released in the U.S. as Shadow of a Doubt. The Swedish premiere of the movie was today in 1943, which might be a surprising fact for some, considering the ongoing calamity that was World War II, but Sweden was neutral during the conflict—or perhaps a better way to phrase it is to say it was occasionally helpful to both the Axis and Allies. Anyway, this is an excellent poster that tells the entire story of the film—an outwardly normal man is really a monster, and in the art casts a misshapen shadow that only one young, intuitive woman can see. The line across the top says, “One of Hitchcock’s best!” Of course, he would rise to even greater heights during the 1950s and 1960s, but some still regard this as top five Hitchcock. Us? Not so much, but see it and judge for yourself.

Sweden, World War II, Skuggan av ett tvivel, Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright, poster art, cinema

Vintage Pulp

December 8 2011

VALUABLE CITIZEN

Vintage website uncovers rare lobby cards for timeless Orson Welles classic.

Above is a rare Citizen Kane lobby card, produced for the film’s West German run, which, as you might imagine, didn’t occur until well after World War II for the 1941-produced film. This shot has Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. It was sent over by our friends at National Road Books, and as always, we appreciate their generosity, especially with items this rare (the text in the inset box reads: “Descriptor: especially valuable”). See more ~~here~~, including a rare shot of Dorothy Comingore.

West Germany, Citizen Kane, Orson Welles, Dorothy Comingore, Joseph Cotten, cinema

Vintage Pulp

September 3 2010

VIENNESE WALTZ

The Third Man is a stiff drink, with a twist of Lime.

The 1949 film noir The Third Man is a best-case-scenario of what can happen when great talents collaborate. Carol Reed directs, Orson Welles, Alida Valli and Joseph Cotten act from a screenplay penned by master storyteller Graham Greene, and the cinematographer is Robert Krasker. Krasker won an Academy Award for his work here, and when you see the velvety blacks and knifing shadows of his nighttime set-ups, as well as the famed scenes shot in the cavernous Vienna sewers and bombed out quadrants of the city center, you’ll understand why. The story involves a pulp writer named Holly Martins who arrives in a partitioned post-war Vienna only to find that his friend Harry Lime is dead, run down by a truck. When Martins learns that the police are disinterested in the circumstances of Lime’s demise, he decides to do what one of his pulp characters would do—take matters into his own hands. But nothing adds up. He learns that Lime died instantly, or survived long enough to utter a few last words. He finds that Lime was a racketeer, or possibly not. And he discovers that two men were present when Lime died—or possibly three. That third man seems to be the key to the mystery, but he proves to be damnably elusive. We can’t recommend this film highly enough. Above you see a pair of rare Japanese posters from The Third Man’s premiere in Tokyo today in 1952.

Japan, Austria, Vienna, Orson Welles, Graham Greene, Carol Reed, Alida Valli, Joseph Cotten, film noir, poster art, cinema, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

September 6

1901—McKinley Fatally Shot

Polish-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds U.S. President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies September 12, and Czolgosz is later executed.

September 5

1939—U.S. Declares Neutrality in WW II

The Neutrality Acts, which had been passed in the 1930s when the United States considered foreign conflicts undesirable, prompts the nation to declare neutrality in World War II. The policy ended with the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941, which allowed the U.S. to sell, lend or give war materials to allied nations.

September 5

1972—Munich Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, a paramilitary group calling itself Black September takes members of the Israeli olympic team hostage. Eventually the group, which represents the first glimpse of terrorists for most people in the Western world, kill eleven of the hostages along with one West German police officer during a rescue attempt by West German police that devolves into a firefight. Five of the eight members of Black September are also killed.

September 4

1957—U.S. National Guard Used Against Students

The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilizes the National Guard to prevent nine African-American students known as the Little Rock Nine from enrolling in high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

September 3

1941—Auschwitz Begins Gassing Prisoners

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps, becomes an extermination camp when it begins using poison gas to kill prisoners en masse. The camp commandant, Rudolf HÃ¶ss, later testifies at the Nuremberg Trials that he believes perhaps 3 million people died at Auschwitz, but the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum revises the figure to about 1 million.