Vintage Pulp

June 21 2024

BELLES DE LA NUIT

The French know how to put on a show, and the Japanese know how to put on a poster.

Here’s a fantastic poster we’ve had sitting around for a while made for the Japanese run of the French film Ah! les belles bacchantes!, which was changed here to Hadaka no megami, or “the naked goddess,” and in English was known as Ah! The Beautiful Priestesses of Bacchus, Peek-a-Boo!, and other titles. Basically it follows a provincial morals cop played by Louis de Funès who decides to take a close look at the local cabaret revue expecting to shut it down, but due to a series of wacky events during the rehearsals he ends up appearing in the show.

This will be the first time this poster has ever been online, but it isn’t the first time we’ve talked about the movie. We wrote about it eight years ago and shared a different, equally rare promo. You’ll notice that the Japanese title is different, but the French title in the upper right corner is the same. Ah! les belles bacchantes! is an extremely interesting historical curio, effervescent and sexy, evidencing how much more advanced the French were concering the human body than puritans in the U.S. It premiered in France the autumn of 1954 and reached Japan today in 1955. We also have two other posters in the same beautiful style that you can see here and here.

Japan, France, Ah! les belles bacchantes!, Ah! The Beautiful Priestesses of Bacchus, Peek-A-Boo!, Femmes de Paris, Louis de Funès, poster art, cinema, burlesque

Vintage Pulp

June 21 2016

TAKING A PEEK

French musical comedy looks at the follies, foibles and failures of a terminally chaotic burlesque production.

This beautiful and rare Japanese poster was made to promote the French burlesque comedy Ah! Les belles bacchantes!, which was known in English by the titles Peek-a-Boo, The Beautiful Priestesses of Bacchus, and Femmes de Paris. We managed to locate a copy and basically you get a comedy about a cop who decides to look into reports of sexual dancing at a local cabaret. The movie stars Louis de Funès as the cop, Colette Brosset as an aspiring dancer, and Les Bluebell Girls du Lido. The image on the poster features one of those Bluebell Girls personifying La nuit, or the Night, and as impressive as she looks on paper, you should see her in the movie. Other dancers portray the Sun, the Moon, and so forth. We’d go so far as to say that sequence alone was worth the time spent watching Ah! Les belles bacchantes. But is it actually a good movie? Sure—if you like ventriloquists, leopards, pratfalls, brawls, and sputtering doubletakes. In other words, it’s very silly, and very likeable. It opened in France in 1954 and reached Japan today in 1955.

Japan, France, Femmes de Paris, The Beautiful Priestesses of Bacchus, Louis de Funès, Robert Dhéry, Colette Brosset, Raymond Bussières, Les Bluebell Girls du Lido, poster art, cinema, burlesque, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 6

1966—LSD Declared Illegal in U.S.

LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.

October 5

1945—Hollywood Black Friday

A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.

October 4

1957—Sputnik Circles Earth

The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.

October 4

1970—Janis Joplin Overdoses

American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.

October 3

1908—Pravda Founded

The newspaper Pravda is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles living in Vienna. The name means “truth” and the paper serves as an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.

October 3

1957—Ferlinghetti Wins Obscenity Case

An obscenity trial brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the counterculture City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reaches its conclusion when Judge Clayton Horn rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl is not obscene.

October 3

1995—Simpson Acquitted

After a long trial watched by millions of people worldwide, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson subsequently loses a civil suit and is ordered to pay millions in damages.