Vintage Pulp

October 21 2024

DANY INSATIABLY

The line between the ravager and the ravaged gets pretty thin.

This Japanese poster was made for Dany la ravageuse, a French sexploitation movie known in English as Dany the Ravager, which premiered in Japan today in 1972. Is it just us, or does Dany the Ravager sound like the name of a Marvel character? Well, Sandra Julien as the titular Dany certainly has a super effect on those around her. She hitchhikes from Paris to the Côte d’Azur and gets into a series of adventures. In one, a driver fantasizes about getting naked and netting butterflies in the woods with her (we have some brilliant production photos of that below). In another, she spends quality naked time lakeside with another woman. In the next she’s picked up by two fugitive gangsters who soon turn on each other over her. And in yet another she meets a couple of hustlers in Monaco who pull the ole switcheroo in the dark so Julien ends up in bed with the wrong guy. It’s played for laughs, but still, it’s rapey.

Overall, the movie is brainless sexploitation, but not of the most pleasant variety, exemplified by a backseat sexual assault in the fugitives episode that turns into mutual attraction. It’s always jarring to experience cinema made before any form of social change took hold, whether change around what consitutued rape, or changes around portraying people of color, or changes around humor and ableism. Our favorite movies from the sexploitation genre feature women in control of their fictional adventures. However, on the opposite side of the social change coin, Dany la ravageuse is unflinching in its approach to male frontal nudity, so in that respect it was well ahead of its time. We think it’s worthy of deeper discussion academically, but as pure entertainment, unless you adore Julien or want to see a lot of French countryside, you can take a pass.

Japan, France, Paris, Monaco, Japan, Dany la ravageuse, Dany the Ravager, Sandra Julien, Jacqueline Laurent, sexploitation, poster art, cinema, nudity, movie review

Vintage Pulp

January 1 2023

A YACHT OF TROUBLE

Crime capers of the rich and infamous.

David Dodge’s 1956 novel Angel’s Ransom takes place in the principality of Monaco, a part of the world the author knew well, along with the rest of the French Riviera. Authentic local details distinguish this kidnapping and ransom thriller, as a group of crooks snatch a yacht called Angel and try to shake down its flamboyantly wealthy owner for 3.5 million francs. Unwillingly along for the ride are the boat’s captain, a beautiful guest, a playboy and his distinguished wife, and a Paris showgirl dragged into the plot to assist the criminals. The crooks force the yacht owner to write a bank draft, send a man to Geneva with it, then take the boat out to sea to await word that the draft has been honored. If anything goes wrong, everyone gets to be fish food.

Dodge is a great writer, and this one is good too, though slightly less perfect coming from the master of international intrigue, due to the simple reason that setting most of the action on a boat confines his normally free ranging fiction. But the book is still well written and masterfully paced, with an array of diverse characters to sustain reader interest. If you’re going to read any Dodge novel set in this diamonds and champagne milieu we recommend To Catch a Thief—of course—over Angel’s Ransom, but you could do far worse than to read any of his international thrillers, including this one. We’ll be returning to Monaco with Dodge. He wrote an entire travel book about the French Riviera, ironically titled (because he was a budget traveller), The Rich Man’s Guide to the Riviera. We have it and will report back later.

Monaco, Dell Publications, David Dodge, Robert McGinnis, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

October 11 2021

TOURIST TRAP

Shit, that waiter is fast! The meal sucked and his service was worse, but maybe we should have tipped him anyway.

This cover for the 1965 Ace Edition of Martha Albrand’s 1959 novel A Day in Monte Carlo caught our eye for a couple of reasons. One is the nice art by an unknown, but the other is because we’re almost finished with David Dodge’s 1952 travel book The Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, and it encompasses the south of France. Why read a 70 year-old travel book? We knew it would be like a priceless time capsule—and it is. We’ll get to it a bit later, but suffice to say it made us see this cover as two vacationers stiffing a waiter who’s now chasing them with a scimitar. As you’d expect, however, this is actually an espionage novel, and a well reviewed one.

But sadly, A Day in Monte Carlo, which you might categorize as romantic suspense, is silly. Its main flaw is that the central relationship between American spycatcher Mark and French dancer Fleur is built on the gimmick of love at first sight. They meet, fall in love within minutes, and agree to marry before half a day has passed. After that point one of the main sources of plot tension becomes: how can Mark carry on a love affair and still chase the great and mysterious Timgad, mastermind behind the Algerian rebel movement, who flits from the Sahel to the Riviera with the ease of a migratory hawk? Well, there’s an answer to that, though not a good one.

Albrand was something of an expert at this type of fiction, having published other novels in the same vein, but reputations can deceive. A great writer, perhaps, could pull all this off, but Albrand, whose go-to lines are things like, “Oh, Mark, I was so afraid. Is it really worth it to love this much?” is not a great writer. At least not in this book. We’ve actually seen her compared to the aforementioned David Dodge, who in addition to travel books wrote fiction classics like To Catch a Thief. But while Dodge wrote with wit, panache, and a touch of romance, he also wrote with gravity and grit. A Day in Monte Carlo needs a dose of the latter two qualities. Onward and upward.

France, Algeria, Monte Carlo, Monaco, Ace Books, Martha Albrand, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

August 26 2021

GRACE UNDER PRESSURE

She didn't make it to the top of Hollywood just to accept being second banana in Monaco.

Yes, people were stupidly fawning over the rich long before 2021, as this issue of the tabloid Exposed published this month in 1957 proves. There are stories on one percenters ranging from Princess Grace of Monaco on down. Of course, there’s an aspirational innocence to these old stories, because very few people, if any, begrudged the rich anything in this era. Those times have gone. Companies make hundreds of billions now and pay zero taxes. The rich have a thousand ways to hide their income, to the tune of 40 trillion dollars in cash hidden in tax havens around the world.

Something else different about the rich of yesterday—they didn’t have dick-shaped rocket ships. Instead they had dick shaped yachts. And that’s what the feud hinted at on the cover between Grace Kelly and Tina Onassis was about—in part at least. It was also about who threw the best parties, who had the richest and most influential friends, who had the best designer clothes, and who was the greatest beauty. Of course, Kelly was legendarily lovely, but because beauty marries money even when the money is as butt-ugly as Aristotle Onassis, Tina was no slouch.

Exposed tells us of one competitive episode the night Kelly was celebrating the birth of her daughter Caroline, which had happened a day earlier. Kelly lived in Grimaldi Palace, overlooking Monaco harbor, where Aristotle Onassis lived on an 1,800 ton former Canadian navy destroyer retrofitted as a luxury yacht. The night of Kelly’s celebration Onassis left his boat totally dark in the harbor, then at one point flipped a switch that illuminated hundreds of light bulbs strung from prow to stern. Kelly’s clan took it as an attempt to show her up. Sounds petty, right? Well, Exposed was a tabloid, and its readers absolutely devoured stories showing that they and the next door neighbor they hated weren’t so very different from the one percent.

After that boat episode, according to Exposed, Kelly and Onassis barely saw each other in tiny Monaco, such was their determination to avoid each other. Again, the half-century old public obsession with these two seems quaint compared to people’s interest in the Musks and Bransons of today. There are opinions and facts, and here is a fact—the U.S. is falling apart and miniscule taxes on the rich and corporations are the reason. During the year this issue of Exposed was published, a year many people now cast their misty eyes toward with longing and nostalgia, the tax rate for top income earners was 91%. No wonder things functioned so well, eh? High taxes kept the government flush and the rich weak.

But the highlight of the issue as far as we’re concerned is Vikki Dougan, who we told you would return to Pulp Intl. soon, and who shows up at a party thrown by Hollywood astrologer Carroll Righter wearing one of her infamous buttcrack baring backless dresses. Exposed indeed. Since this is about as low as her gowns went, we zoomed in a bit so you can get a good look at the San Fernando Valley. Dougan by the way, is still around at age 92. Elsewhere in Exposed you get Joan Collins and her romances, restaurateur Mike Romanoff and his legal troubles, Paulette Goddard and her love of money, and vice in New York City. Thirty scans below.

Vintage Pulp

December 24 2008

FRENCH TRYSTS

I've already had nine episodes. Once I have you my season will be complete.

Above you see a cover for Mack Reynolds’ Episode on the Riviera, published in 1961 by Monarch Books. If you check Reynolds’ Wikipedia profile it tells you that he wrote five sex novels from 1961 to 1964, and that this is one of them. Everyone’s got bills to pay, right? Well, we don’t know about the other four, but this one isn’t a sex novel, or even a sleaze novel. While the language is bit more frank than usual and a couple of then-esoteric acts are implied, it’s actually a David Dodge influenced lightweight drama, and it’s as confidently put across as anything Dodge ever wrote.

Most of the action takes place at French Riviera casinos, beaches, and parties, and in main character Steve Cogswell’s travel agency, one of whose customers a particular summer week is Nadine Whiteley, a woman determined to solve what she perceives as her own sexual problem by having an anonymous affair with any suitable swinging dick she stumbles across. Cogswell seems to fit the bill, has his own sexual quirks. Just when these two look set to get together, both their exes arrive from the U.S—Nadine’s to blackmail her into marriage so he can get his mitts on her money, and Steve’s to win him back after she’s betrayed him with his best friend. While the sexual problems of both characters are imperfectly handled, overall this one is a winner, an easy and effervescent summer read.

France, Beaulieu, Monaco, Monte Carlo, Mack Reynolds, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

March 23

2011—Elizabeth Taylor Dies

American actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose career began at age 12 when she starred in National Velvet, and who would eventually be nominated for five Academy Awards as best actress and win for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, dies of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles. During her life she had been hospitalized more than 70 times.

March 22

1963—Profumo Denies Affair

In England, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denies any impropriety with showgirl Christine Keeler and threatens to sue anyone repeating the allegations. The accusations involve not just infidelity, but the possibility acquaintances of Keeler might be trying to ply Profumo for nuclear secrets. In June, Profumo finally resigns from the government after confessing his sexual involvement with Keeler and admitting he lied to parliament.

March 22

1978—Karl Wallenda Falls to His Death

World famous German daredevil and high-wire walker Karl Wallenda, founder of the acrobatic troupe The Flying Wallendas, falls to his death attempting to walk on a cable strung between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Wallenda is seventy-three years old at the time, but it is a 30 mph wind, rather than age, that is generally blamed for sending him from the wire.

March 22

2006—Swedish Spy Stig Wennerstrom Dies

Swedish air force colonel Stig Wennerström, who had been convicted in the 1970s of passing Swedish, U.S. and NATO secrets to the Soviet Union over the course of fifteen years, dies in an old age home at the age of ninety-nine. The Wennerström affair, as some called it, was at the time one of the biggest scandals of the Cold War.

March 21

1963—Alcatraz Closes

The federal penitentiary located on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closes. The island had been home to a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison over the years. In 1972, it would become a national recreation area open to tourists, and it would receive national landmark designations in 1976 and 1986.

March 20

1916—Einstein Publishes General Relativity

German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity. Among the effects of the theory are phenomena such as the curvature of space-time, the bending of rays of light in gravitational fields, faster than light universe expansion, and the warping of space time around a rotating body.