vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above: A paticualrly nice Franco Picchioni cover for Per piacere, non toccate le signore!, written by Mark Wheeler for Edizioni MA-GA and published in 1965 as part of its Il Cerchio Rosso collection. The title means, “please don’t touch the ladies.” You can get more peeks at Picchioni by clicking his keywords below.
Italian illustrator Franco Picchioni conceived a balletic cover pose for John J. Everett’s Assi allo sbaraglio. If we tried this position everything we have would split down the middle, up to and including our pride. The title of the book translates to “aces in disarray,” so we’d be suffering from asses in disarray. But speaking of stretched to the limit, let’s stop with this strain of thought before it wears out completely. John J. Everett was a pseudonym, of course, but we don’t know for whom, and his novel is part of Edizioni MA-GA’s Il Cerchio Rosso collection, though we can’t pinpoint the year. Nothing is working for us today, but we’ll bend over backwards trying to find more info.
Seems like time for another cover from Italian illustrator Franco Picchioni, so here’s his always excellent work on Patrick McRoy’s Violenza in nero, from 1966 for publishers Edizioni MA-GA as part of its Il Cerchio Rosso collection. Haven’t we seen this pose from Picchioni before? Well, never mess with success. He even painted the same undergarment (a strapless teddy, we think). McRoy is an obvious pseudonym but we can’t track down his real name. Anyone with knowledge, feel free to enlighten us. And not just about books. We’re mixed up on a lot of stuff these days.
We’ve circled back to Italian illustrator Franco Picchioni again because we love his style, and he delivers once more on this cover for Requiem per un giornalista. Obviously, “giornalista” is Italian for “journalist,” so feel free insert your own quips about the press at this point. The book was written by Obvious Pseudonym, and it’s copyright 1970 for Edizioni MA-GA, a company that took cover art seriously after many other publishers had thrown in the towel. This is nice work from Picchioni. We also found a cleaner piece of the art. It isn’t that different, except you get to see the always neglected Rat no. 3, who was covered by text on the final version. You can see more from Picchioni by clicking his keywords below.
Above is an epic Italian poster for the film The Seven Year Itch, which in Italy was called Quando la moglie è in vacanza, or “when the wife is on vacation.” They probably changed the title because Italians don’t understand the concept of a seven year itch. They have a seven week itch—it happens about seven weeks before the wedding. The art here is by P. Franco, aka Franco Picchioni, whose work you can find more of by clicking his keywords below. There’s also a very interesting West German poster for the film here.
Above are three excellent posters for Dario Argento’s Il gatto a nove code, aka, Cat o’ Nine Tails. Only one bears a signature—P. Franco, who in everyday life was Franco Picchioni. We suspect he painted the others as well. With posters this great, plus Argento at the helm, we had to watch the movie, but while it’s a serviceable giallo with an interesting central murder mystery, it’s nothing to write home about. But it does have Karl Malden doing a bang-up job as a blind ex-newspaperman and James Franciscus as a solid lead.
And then there’s the heavenly French creature known as Catherine Spaak. You have to work pretty hard to somehow make a love scene featuring this stunner possibly the worst ever filmed, but Argento manages to make her romp with Franciscus as erotic as watching a hardware store clerk stack two wooden planks. Want your kids to avoid premarital sex? Have them watch this scene. They won’t even have a clue what happened.
The title of the movie refers to neither a cat nor a nine-tailed whip, but rather to the many leads that need to be investigated before the mystery can be unraveled. It could also describe Argento’s struggle to weave an involving narrative. In the end, even with his stylish direction framing the story, it’s Malden that carries this movie to the finish line. Plus he has a sword cane, which is always a bonus. Many Argento fans use the term “underrated” to describe this effort. That’s a euphemism for strictly average. Il gatto a nove code premiered in Italy today in 1971.
Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing.
After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini’s fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.
The Geheime Staatspolizei, aka Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. It begins under the administration of SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police, but by 1939 is administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security Office, and is a feared entity in every corner of Germany and beyond.
In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in widespread destruction and casualties. The Basque government reports 1,654 people killed, while later research suggests far fewer deaths, but regardless, Guernica is viewed as an example of terror bombing and other countries learn that Nazi Germany is committed to that tactic. The bombing also becomes inspiration for Pablo Picasso, resulting in a protest painting that is not only his most famous work, but one the most important pieces of art ever produced.
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise featuring such leads as Michael Keaton, George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Robert Pattinson, and Christian Bale.
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves.
