It's well known that those who keep learning into adulthood lead more fulfilling lives.
It’s been a long while since we’ve visited with Yuki Kazamatsuri. Onna kyôshi: Yogoreta hôkago, known in English as Female Teacher: Dirty Afternoon, the fourth entry in the Female Teacher series, is a pretty basic roman porno movie, with Kazamatsuri playing a teacher with a difficult past called upon to help highly sexed, extremely beautiful, and emotionally problematic student Ayako Ôta get back onto the straight and narrow. All good, but when Kazamatsuri begins to suspect that Ôta’s itinerant father is a rapist from her own past, things get weird. With Kazamatsuri’s kinky problems she probably isn’t the person to offer a stable example to Ôta, but that’s kind of the point here. Let she who does not have degrading sex throw the first stone. We can’t say Onna kyôshi: Yogoreta hôkago is good, but its stars certainly are. It premiered in Japan today in 1981.
Honor and humanity are always the first casualties.
Above you see a poster for a Japanese film called Jingi naki tatakai: Sôshûhen, known in English as Battles without Honor and Humanity. Aside from having one of the great titles in cinematic history (though it’s also known less poetically as The Yakuza Papers), this is a landmark production from Toei Company, helmed by director Kinji Fukasaku, and starring Bunta Sugawara, Hiroki Matsukata, Kunie Tanaka, and Gorô Ibuki. It was the first of what turned out to be a five film series, all adapted from Weekly Sankei newspaper articles by journalist Kōichi Iiboshi that were themselves distillations of material originally written by an actual yakuza named Kōzō Minō.
The movies are a deep dive into organized crime in postwar Japan, and in this first entry various yakuza clan allegiances and hatreds are formed in the shattered and lawless cities controlled by the occupying U.S. soldiers, who are themselves without many scruples. Sugawara becomes enmeshed in violence that leads to his imprisonment, there to become blood brothers with a yakuza footsoldier. Upon release from jail Sugawara goes to work for the same clan as his friend, and this group becomes the feared Yamamori crime family.
From that point the movie follows the fortunes and misfortunes of various families vying for supremacy, as loyalties shift and betrayals beget betrayals. This will probably be hard to follow for most viewers, as many characters have been introduced in rapid succession during the opening minutes, but the focus is always on Sugawara. The story plays out over years, with important characters singled out via freeze frame when they die, and noted with onscreen titles: December 17, 1949: _______ died. By the film’s final frame, a clean conclusion has not been reached (hence sequels).
From the movie’s opening credits, shown atop an image of the nuked core of Hiroshima and the skeletal dome of the Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, to its narrated interstitials, and its overlays of subtitles, there’s a historical feel here and a weightiness that had perhaps been unseen to that point in yakuza dramas. While the film is often called the Japanese version of The Godfather, it isn’t the same type of movie and isn’t on the same technical level. It may occupy a similar place in Japanese cinema culture, but Battles without Honor and Humanity is its own thing. A very good thing, and a mandatory watch for fans of Japanese film. It premiered today in 1973.
In Japan Catholics make up about 0.3% of the population. In Japanese film, Catholics make up pretty close to 100% of the religion-based sexploitation depicted in Nikkatsu Studios’ roman porno catalog. We’ve commented on this fascination a few times over the years, and there’s no answer for its popularity except that it’s probably seen as exotic by audiences, and it’s a fetish that’s safe to explore because 0.3% of the population have exactly zero power to efficaciously protest the films. Western movies also explored nun sexuality, but examples were fewer. We’ve come across at least thirty Japanese nunsploitation movies, dating from the 1960s and into the ’90s. Shûdôjo Runa no kokuhaku, known in English as Cloistered Nun: Runa’s Confession, is therefore part of a decades-long trend.
Luna Takamura, after three years in a nunnery, moves in with the half-sister who stole her boyfriend and prompted her flight into the arms of the church. Her sister is still with this man, and the two plan to get married. Well—maybe she plans to get married. Anyway, as a woman of God, Takamura has supposedly forgiven everything. She’s working on behalf of her order trying to sell ten hectares of land so the profits can be used for further proselytization, and—wouldn’t you know it?—Mr. Cheater can get together enough money to buy it. He’s up to no good with this deal, and Takamura’s sis is a sexual scammer shaking down men for cash, but this slippery pair may be outdone, because the serene look in our godly nun’s eyes signal some ideas centered around vengeance for three years ago.
Nikkatsu filmmakers, in addition to an obsession with nuns, had an obsession with sexual assault. No means no meant nothing as far as they were concerned. We must caution about that. But as always, we make it a practice not to judge other cultures in any way that could be interpreted as high-handed. That would mean we thought ours is superior, and it manifestly isn’t. Japanese society has a reputation for sexism and misogyny, but we suspect its reckoning will eventually come. Roman porno movies will be exhibit A. However, roman porno, like other types of exploitation cinema such as blaxploitation and women-in-prison, often allows the mistreated to have their revenge. In that respect it’s an improvement on the real world. Shûdôjo Runa no kokuhaku premiered today in 1976.
You know, under other circumstances I feel we could have— Oh well. Maybe in the next life. Back off pigs or she's dead!
This poster for Mary Ryan, Detective is a collage of photos touched up by an artist, and the result certainly did its job—it made us want to watch the film. We did that last night and saw a crime drama in which Marsha Hunt plays a cop who goes undercover as a prison inmate in order to unmask a jewel theft ring. As part of her prep she’s taught some lingo and how to pick pockets, and uses the latter instruction to make criminals go starry-eyed over her skillset. Once she gets the info she needs in prison, she’s released and maneuvers her way to the top of the theft ring, ending up on a farm where the head crook is a countrified old gent with an ingenious method for smuggling jewels.
Naturally, Hunt’s undercover role drags her in deeper than she or her superiors would like, as she disappears entirely from sight, inducing panic in her department. But she’ll come out okay—a safe ending is part of the package with mid-century crime flicks. The only question is how exactly the conclusion will play out. The poster should give you a hint. There’s nothing outstanding about this film, but there are also no major missteps. For a b-movie that’s called unmitigated success. After a special premiere in New York City in November 1949, Mary Ryan, Detective went into general release today in 1950. We have some production photos below, and you can see one more at this link.
If the movie were as good as the poster it would be an all-time classic.
Basta Guadarla isn’t a movie that fits our expanded definition of pulp, but its promo poster is so nice we decided to share it anyway. The scan of this we found is more than two-thousand pixels wide, and we’re considering sticking it in a frame. We deduced that it was painted by Giuliano Nistri because he painted the second poster, which you see below, and signed it, which leads us to believe both are his work. The movie is about a peasant girl played by Maria Grazia Buccella who joins a traveling musical revue called Silver Boy. Such revues were a thing in Italy and were known as avanspettacoli.
As we’ve mentioned before, Italian comedies are terrifyingly bad, residing somewhere between low budget variety television and Vaudeville. Basta Guadarla is the same, but actually has some charms. The most important of those is humor that works intermittently, but it also benefits from the beautiful Buccella, who at the end wears an outfit similar to the one on the poster, except there’s less of it. Instead of bikini bottoms it’s more of a paste-on dealie with no sides, a very sexy get-up. Still, the movie isn’t good enough to be recommendable. It premiered today in 1970.
For Nick and Nora marriage and murder go together like Scotch and soda.
After the Thin Man, sequel to 1934’s seminal mystery-comedy The Thin Man, was the 1930s equivalent of a holiday event movie, premiering on Christmas Day 1936 with sky high expectations. It’s also set during the holidays, with its events bracketing New Year’s Eve. Because of the setting, general atmosphere, and romantic interplay between leads William Powell and Myrna Loy as spouses Nick and Nora Charles, the movie is pleasantly transporting, a good watch for the yuletide season. Most couples can’t even decide on pizza toppings together, but Nick and Nora laughingly solve murders.
Here in movie two, Nick and Nora return home to San Francisco after solving movie one’s baffling NYC murder case, only to find Nora’s cousin involved in a love triangle that leads to a fatal shooting. Once again, functional alcoholic Nick sifts his way through a roster of suspects that include James Stewart, Elissa Landi, and Joseph Calleia, as Nora remains the sharp marital foil who, to quote the screenplay, doesn’t scold, doesn’t nag, and looks far too pretty in the mornings. She also can drink like a fish, a crucial skill when wedded to Nick. Everything climaxes with Nick explaining the crime to a roomful of suspects, one of whom, as required by the format, completely loses his shit when unmasked as the killer.
Unsurprisingly, audiences made After the Thin Man a hit, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences favored it with two Oscar nominations for best screenplay. It’s definitely clever. That was job one for the follow-up to the pithy The Thin Man, an all-time classic. Hiring the same writing and directorial team from the debut was a no-brainer for MGM. The entire group was elsewhere by the time the series ended—which may be one reason why it ended. But the decline of the franchise is a long way off yet. After the Thin Man is a fine night’s entertainment. Watch it with a full flute of bubbly and your Christmas lights twinkling.
You can't predict when it'll happen. You can only hope not to be there when it does.
We’re back to blaxploitation today. We screened the Fred Williamson actioner That Man Bolt last night, and you see its poster above with Fred in dual mode—in a tuxedo, and in a martial arts gi. Range, baby. Our range runs from t-shirts and shorts to t-shirts and jeans, but with good accessories. Williamson plays Jefferson Bolt, an ex-Special Forces captain-turned-industry best international courier, who’s strongarmed into carrying a million dollars from Hong Kong to Mexico City via Los Angeles.
Naturally, the moment he sets off people are trying to relieve him of the money, which he carries in a briefcase chained to his wrist. These aren’t ordinary thieves. It doesn’t take Williamson long to figure out that he’s being double-crossed. At first he thinks the million dollars is counterfeit, but he won’t know for sure what’s happening until after using fists, feet, and whatever happens to be handy to defeat the villains and get to the center of the plot.
There are several attractions to That Man Bolt. The most important is its ample budget. Location shooting took place not only in Hong Kong and Los Angeles, but Las Vegas, where Bolt is forced to make a detour. Another notable aspect is the film’s wide canvas and spy movie feel. Even more value is added by co-stars Teresa Graves and Miko Mayama, playing Bolt’s serial love interests. And lastly, there’s fair to decent action on land and water, including an extensive car chase that’s better than the usual fare.
You get the feeling Bolt was to be a recurring character, though it never happened. Even so, as blaxploitation movies go, That Man Bolt is a cut above. It has scope, good direction, humor that works, decent acting in parts, and a main character you can appreciate, mostly due to Williamson being a good screen presence. While many blaxploitation movies come bearing social commentary—which we consider indispensable to the form—Bolt mostly avoids it. That works out fine in this case, but let’s not make a habit of it. That Man Bolt premiered in the U.S. today in 1973.
Do you want to hide the truth? Locket away in the past.
This bright poster was made for The Locket, a noir adjacent psychological mystery that premiered today in 1946. Laraine Day and Gene Raymond play a couple about to be married. Raymond thinks himself to be the luckiest man alive, but just before the wedding a stranger arrives to tell Raymond that the perfect Day has a dark past involving not only secrets, but an uncontrollable obsession. The stranger says that in this past he and Day met and fell in love, then he was visited by a man who told him that—here it comes—Day had a dark past. That stranger, played by Robert Mitchum, then tells a story related to Day’s childhood.
The Locket is famed for its flashback within a flashback within a flashback structure, and though that sounds complex there’s no trouble keeping four layers of narrative straight. Layer two and three are the bulk of the movie, and those are the ones with Mitchum, one of Hollywood’s great golden stars, easily watchable in all contexts. With Mitchum doing his thing, the solid Day in the lead as the woman with, not a past, but pasts, and a structure that draws viewers in, The Locket is a winner. Its only flaw is that the audience expectations of the time (and/or the requirements of the Hays Code censorship regime) prevented an ending about four minutes earlier. Watch it and you’ll see what we mean.
So far he's shown little interest in the scratching post she bought him.
I racconti del terrore is better known as Tales of Terror. It’s a three-part anthology film based on the writing of Edgar Allen Poe that starred Vicent Price as different characters in the three segments, and featured as co-stars Peter Lorre, Maggie Pierce, Basil Rathbone, Debra Paget, and others. The brilliant art here was painted by Renato Casaro and fits into the proud tradition of posters featuring horrible cats. You can see other examples here, here, here, and here. And just for the hell of it, here’s a poster featuring a horrible rat. It rhymes. Those are only a fraction of the historical total of horrible cat-rats on posters. As for Tales of Terror…
We won’t mince words—it’s bad. We feel the blame is mainly on director Roger Corman. Sure, Poe is melodramatic, but the movie is beyond. It’s stagy and overacted by all involved, most egregiously by Price, Lorre, and Pierce. The second segment, “The Black Cat,” is played semi-comically, but with Price and Lorre jousting hamo a hamo you’ll cringe more than laugh. We’ll admit, though, that its narrative—loosely based on Poe’s tale of the same name about a cuckolded husband who plots vengeance on his wife—contains a sidebar that manages to skewer snobby wine culture effectively. As wine drinkers we enjoyed that.
The third segment, based on Poe’s, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” has some glimmers of hope, but largely because Price, playing a dying man who’s weakening by the day, dials the cheese back from schloss to something in the range of maybe gorgonzola. There’s still a thick slab of ham underneath. However, everything we just wrote comes with a caveat: we’d had no drinks or other substances when we watched the movie. There’s possible potential for improvement if chemical compounds are coursing through your bloodstream. Tales of Terror opened in the U.S. July 1962, and premiered in Italy today the same year.
Mason and company go deep for answers to some of our oldest questions.
Journey to the Center of the Earth, derived from 1864 source material by French author Jules Verne, is an iconic adventure film that resides in the fun zone between known science and complete fancy. It premiered today in 1959 and starred James Mason, Pat Boone, and Arlene Dahl, who portray a set of intrepid explorers circa 1880 that travel to Iceland—a place we’ve spent some time and absolutely love—and plan to enter the Earth by lowering themselves into the stratovolcano Snæfellsjökull. They soon discover that there’s a competing explorer, as well as unknown parties willing to kill. They deal with those setbacks, but as Mason and his group consign themselves to the depths there’s someone dangerous on their trail.
This is an absurd movie, but it’s absurd fun. The speculative nature of what lies beneath the terrestrial crust is convincingly rendered thanks to fanciful sets, large scale matte backdrops, De Luxe color processing, and CinemaScope widescreen. When we say convincing, we mean it works because most of what you see is physically real, even if it’s largely plaster and paint. What didn’t work for us was cheesy-ass Boone as the movie’s shirtless sex appeal. Even the Pulp Intl. girlfriends thought he was too milquetoast (there’s a word you don’t see much anymore, but PI-1 did in fact utter it). For our part, we concentrated on Miss Dahl. Overall, Journey to the Center of the Earth is a good night of fun. Suspend disbelief and enjoy.
On the basis of alleged obscenity, United States Customs officials seize 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” that had been shipped from a London printer. The poem contained mention of illegal drugs and explicitly referred to sexual practices. A subsequent obscenity trial was brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran City Lights Bookstore, the poem’s domestic publisher. Nine literary experts testified on the poem’s behalf, and Ferlinghetti won the case when a judge decided that the poem was of redeeming social importance.
1975—King Faisal Is Assassinated
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia dies after his nephew Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed shoots him during a royal audience. As King Faisal bent forward to kiss his nephew the Prince pulled out a pistol and shot him under the chin and through the ear. King Faisal died in the hospital after surgery. The prince is later beheaded in the public square in Riyadh.
1981—Ronnie Biggs Rescued After Kidnapping
Fugitive thief Ronnie Biggs, a British citizen who was a member of the gang that pulled off the Great Train Robbery, is rescued by police in Barbados after being kidnapped. Biggs had been abducted a week earlier from a bar in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by members of a British security firm. Upon release he was returned to Brazil and continued to be a fugitive from British justice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
