vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
As we’ve mentioned before, we rarely share boxcover art, but sometimes we make exceptions. This image is the DVD cover of the 1973 roman porno film Koi no karyudo yokubo, aka Love Hunter: Lust, but in poster form with all the informational text and logos removed. Mari Tanaka is the star, and we have plenty of her in the website, including in amazing images like these two. We’ll have more from her later, as well. Koi no karyudo yokubo premiered today in 1973.
We said we’d get back to Mari Tanaka and here she is again, sooner than you expected, we bet. This poster advertises her 1973 roman porno movie Koi no karyudo: yokubo, aka Love Hunter: Lust, which was a sequel to an earlier film titled simply Love Hunter. Tanaka had a small role in the first film, but in this one she’s the star, playing a stripper who is at one point arrested on obscenity charges. Nikkatsu Studios was doubtless inspired by its own experience being raided and seeing personnel hauled to court on obscenity charges associated with the first Love Hunter. The notoriety did not hurt, though—both the first and second installments were major successes, and a third was made later.
It’s worth noting, as we often do, that these roman porno films are actually softcore in nature, with no actual sex and no frontal nudity at all. We will admit though, that they can be provocative and even shocking. Or put another way, it’s amazing what a director will elect to show when told he/she cannot show genitalia or pubic hair. Charges loomed over the original Love Hunter for years, until it was finally deemed not obscene by Tokyo District Court in 1978. Below is a lovely image of Tanaka, and we can all agree it’s not obscene either, hopefully. As far as we can tell, this is the first appearance for the above poster on the internet. Koi no karyudo: yokubo premiered in Japan today in 1973.
American journalist, playwright, and author Richard Harding Davis dies of a heart attack at home in Philadelphia. Not widely known now, Davis was one of the most important and influential war correspondents ever, establishing his reputation by reporting on the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I, as well as his general travels to exotic lands.
In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is shot dead by government forces in the state of Morelos, after a carefully planned ambush. Following the killing, Zapata’s revolutionary movement and his Liberation Army of the South slowly fall apart, but his political influence lasts in Mexico to the present day.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York City by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Though Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s best known book today, it was not a success upon publication, and at the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald was mostly forgotten as a writer and considered himself to be a failure.
American clergyman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is buried five days after being shot dead on a Memphis, Tennessee motel balcony. April 7th had been declared a national day of mourning by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and King’s funeral on the 9th is attended by thousands of supporters, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
In Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta is sentenced to seven years in prison by the nation’s British rulers for being a member of the Mau Mau Society, an anti-colonial movement. Kenyatta would a decade later become independent Kenya’s first prime minister, and still later its first president.
Major League Baseball player Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run, surpassing Babe Ruth’s 39-year-old record. The record-breaking homer is hit off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and with that swing Aaron puts an exclamation mark on a twenty-four year journey that had begun with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro League, and would end with his selection to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
