Femmes Fatales

June 7 2025

CARTOONISHLY BEAUTIFUL

Just the sight of her makes people feel more animated.

The immortal Pam Grier, star of seminal ’70s action cinema, ’80s cinema and television, and an underrated ’90s Quentin Tarantino crime movie, watches a portable television in this semi-nude promo image made in 1971. We have another shot from this session and we can see what she’s watching. It’s The Flintstones. Which makes sense—sometimes Grier seems like she must have come out of an animator’s imagination like Jessica Rabbit. At this point she’d appeared on the big screen in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, The Big Doll House, and, depending on what time of year this was shot, maybe Women in Cages. She’d soon graduate to starring roles and become the brightest light in blaxploitation cinema.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, The Big Doll House, Women in Cages, The Flintstones, Pam Grier, blaxploitation, nudity

Femmes Fatales

August 19 2024

JUST TO BE GRIER

I hear they made a black panther movie. And it's not about me. How weird.

Above: a 1974 photo of Pam Grier from Players magazine, wearing a leather outfit from her movie Foxy Brown. Not much to be said here except that she looks her absolute best.

Foxy Brown, Players Magazine, Pam Grier, blaxploitation

Intl. Notebook

April 5 2024

OUTFOXED

She's a rare example of prey that's more dangerous than her predators.

Above is a fun pressbook cover for the legendary Pam Grier’s classic action movie Foxy Brown, a tangled tale of drug dealers, crooked cops, loan sharks, and narcs, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1974. When pressed against the wall Grier gets just as vicious as her screen foes. She even sets one guy on fire and runs another over—with a plane. There are no holds barred in blaxploitation cinema.

Below we also have various lobby cards from the film. These are interesting because they’re made from production photos that you don’t typically see online. It’s too bad Grier’s blaxploitation/action phase was short, because she was good in the films, even when the films weren’t good enough for her. But every artist seeks to hone their craft, so we imagine she got tired of such roles. That’s okay—her output, though limited, is always fun to re-watch.

As a side note, the hazards of blogging during the unethical digital age are amply illustrated here. Users on both Alamy and Getty attempt to assert copyright on these items, but movie promos are made for non-copyright holders to publicize the works depicted, and despite claims to the contrary individuals can’t hold copyright on them. There are probably hundreds or thousands of these reproductions out there, all individually possessed, so a specific person claiming copyright is nonsensical on the face of it. Only the issuing studio holds copyright.

Even so, we occasionally get threatening e-mails from digital photo resellers. They’re AI generated and automatically sent, which means they’ll only increase in number as time goes by. We have a form e-mail we send back demanding proof of copyright. We never get a reply to it. Shockingly. We’ll say this though—one day corporate greed will kill the blogging culture the same way it’s killed most everything else. But that day isn’t today. Read what we thought about Foxy Brown here.

Foxy Brown, American International Pictures, Pam Grier, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation

Vintage Pulp

January 24 2024

QUEEN OF THAILAND

Grier is ready for a battle royal.

Above you see a rare Thai poster for Pam Grier’s 1975 detective thriller Sheba, Baby. The text refers to Grier as the “queen of hearts,” and the “queen of private eyes,” which we think is rather nice. But why stop there? Since the distributors at Go Brother Film were so eager to crown her, let’s cover all bases and go with the Queen of Thailand—with respect to Suthida Bajrasudhabimalalakshana. The poster has a date of some sort, but we can’t interpret it. Since the movie didn’t make it to Europe until late 1976 at the earliest, we’re inclined to think the date refers to a Thai premiere in ’77 or ’78. There’s also a signature that we can’t read. It’s a shame not to be able to give the artist credit, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Read more about Sheba, Baby here, and see a cool Egyptian promo poster for it here.

Thailand, Sheba Baby, Pam Grier, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation

Femmes Fatales

July 26 2023

EVERYTHING ON HOLD

Let's have phone sex. First I'll send you a photo to inspire you. It should be in your mailbox in three or four days.

Above you see a rare image from Players magazine circa 1974 of cinema legend Pam Grier using a device known as a rotary telephone. It’s a great shot of both her and the museum piece. A couple of other frames from her hang-out session exist that were used in the offshoot publication Players Girls Pictorial in 1976.

Grier saw nudity as liberating and empowering. In a Rolling Stone interview she said, about the choice to appear unclothed in films, “I wanted to make people start seeing women of color, because we weren’t the epitome of sexual attraction for the male audience, in movies, magazines, anything. I said, How come we don’t see women of color in Hollywood and see them beautifully, like Fellini and Bertolucci and Bergman see women?”

With her boldness Grier helped change the paradigm of onscreen sexuality a bit, and today her images are among the most coveted out there, with magazines in which she appeared nude often auctioning for more than a hundred dollars. Tall, angular, and lovely, she went from actress to cultural icon and maintains that status today. You can see all kinds of Grier in the website. Just click her keywords below.

Players Magazine, Players Girls Pictorial, Pam Grier, blaxploitation, nudity

Femmes Fatales

April 18 2023

CONCRETE JUNGLE

The dress doesn't work as camouflage, but as a fashion statement it's tops.

Pam Grier posed for this photo when she was making the a-list crime drama Fort Apache, The Bronx, which was headlined by superstar Paul Newman. Grier was far down the cast list, playing a drug addict prostitute. It was quite a demotion from her starring roles during the blaxploitation era, but the movie was a big hit. She’d finally be toplisted in a mainstream Hollywood movie when Quentin Tarantino cast her in 1997’s Jackie Brown, and it was worth the wait. This shot is from 1981.

New York City, Fort Apache The Bronx, Jackie Brown, Pam Grier, Paul Newman, Qunrtin Tarantino, blaxploitation

Vintage Pulp

January 19 2023

MAMA’S GIRLS

Unlike mama's boys, they're fully able to take care of themselves.

Ages ago we shared a Turkish poster for the blaxploitation flick Black Mama, White Mama, with Pam Grier and Margaret Markov. Today we’re sharing the U.S. promo, as well as a nice production photo of the stars. The movie, which premiered today in 1972, was a regendering of The Defiant Ones, but done with a lot more skin and a lot less budget. Even so, it was pretty fun, as women-in-prison flicks go—if you start with modest expectations. You can see more promos from the film here.

Black Mama White Mama, Pam Grier, Margaret Markov, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, women in prison, blaxploitation

Vintage Pulp

July 2 2022

PASS THE BUCKTOWN

Anyone hoping for a relaxing weekend should probably choose a different place.

We’ve featured several blaxploitation posters by George Akimoto, so you could be forgiven for thinking the above effort was also painted by him, especially because it’s in a similar photo-realistic style, but it’s actually the art of Robert C. Kinyon, a new name to our website. He painted it for the Fred Williamson actioner Bucktown, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1975. We’ve uploaded close-ups below so you can see some of the nice elements Kinyon included, especially the urban street scene with its overlapping, multi-colored neon lights. We’ll be keeping a watch for more art from him.

Obviously we watched this movie, and plotwise Williamson arrives in the eponymous Bucktown to bury his brother, who died of pneumonia. Included in his estate is the local nightspot Club Alabam. Williamson wants to sell it and get out of town, until he discovers his brother died of pneumonia alright—after being beaten and left in the freezing rain for refusing to pay off the local cops. Turns out Bucktown is crooked from the top of the police department all the way down to the bottom of the county clerk’s office. Only the mayor is clean, but he’s helpless.

The Bucktown cartel tries to shake down Williamson for money owed by his brother, as well as for future nightclub profits, but he isn’t the type to be intimidated, so he calls in some out-of-town help. A trainload of northern hustlers arrive and soon it’s open warfare as Williamson’s backup crew starts shooting down crooked lawmen. It’s pretty clear, though, that he’s going to have trouble with his helpers. That trouble is worse than he imagined. Once the local law is eliminated his pals take over the town and Williamson is basically back at square one. Lesson: power corrupts.

Pam Grier is in this, which is only half the reason we watched it. The other is Williamson, who we’ve come to regard as a great screen presence. Grier co-stars as a justice-minded local girl who quickly falls into bed with him. Her early roles usually allowed her to play it tough, but here she’s a worried girlfriend—a part that doesn’t fit her well or use her talents properly. Even so, she’s still the lovely Miss Grier and she gets plenty of screen time. Also aboard is the reliable Thalmus Rasulala as head of the out-of-town invaders, and Carl Weathers as of one of his gunmen.

In the end you wind up with a movie the resides somewhere in the middle ranks of blaxploitation in terms of quality and entertainment value. It’s low budget, and only passably acted, but it offers up a vision of smalltown corruption right out of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. In both cases the hero might have been better off heading down the road, but in both cases they’re required to stick around and beget some brutal violence. Bucktown barely survives the onslaught, but it’s just another day in the realm of blaxploitation.

Bucktown, Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, Thalmus Rasulala, Tony King, Carl Weathers, Art Lund, Robert C. Kinyon, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

April 5 2022

GRIER AND PRESENT DANGER

Mess with a wild fox and you're bound to get bitten.

Above is the cover of a film brochure made for Pam Grier’s 1974 action flick Foxy Brown, worth sharing because the front and rear feature rare images, which you see in close-up below. These brochures contain production information for journalists and film distributors, along with photos such as those we shared when we wrote about the movie several years ago. To summarize: it’s a typically crazy blaxploitation romp in which Grier, at her dangerous best, runs over two guys with her car, sets a dude on fire, shoots several more, and runs over another guy with an airplane. They all really deserved it. Foxy Brown premiered in the U.S. today in 1974.

American International Pictures, Foxy Brown, Pam Grier, blaxploitation

Modern Pulp

January 15 2022

THE DEFIANT ONES

Gladiatorial combat is all fun and games until the gladiators decide you're the one who needs killing.

We’ve featured master fantasy artist Frank Frazetta a few times, so it seems only fair that we feature the yang to his yin, Peruvian born legend Boris Vallejo. Here you see his art on an amazing bias-cut promo poster for Naked Warriors, which is better known as The Arena, released this month in 1974 starring another legend, Pam Grier, along with occasional co-star, the lovely Margaret Markov. We’ve talked about the movie twice, shared its Italian and U.S. promo art, and shared rare promo images of Grier once or twice, or maybe even three or four times, as well as a beautiful centerfold of Markov. All of that imagery is worth a look.

Vallejo’s art is a nice fit for a tale of enslaved gladiators pitted against each other eventually defying their sadistic masters to fight for freedom. He painted when Corcorde Pictures acquired the rights to the film from MGM/UA for a VHS release in 1988. Concorde/New World was formed and run by schlockmeister Roger Corman, and that explains the black wedges at the top and bottom of the promo. When you do things

on the cheap as a matter of course like Corman did, tilting the art in an inelegant way to make the two figures fit a door panel format seems logical. We can imagine him: “Just lean the fucker left. Who cares about the blank spots?” And indeed, who does, really?

In addition to a great piece of art, as a bonus we’ve also uploaded some Arena production photos we found scattered around the internet over the years. Most of them were shot by Italian lensman Angelo Frontoni, whose work we’ve admired often. As it is a lusty sort of movie, some of the shots are a bit lusty too. We had these sitting about and didn’t have a real good excuse to share them until today, so from the good old days of ’70s sexploitation behold: Grier, Markov, Lucretia Love, Maria Pia Conte, Rosalba Neri, and others in barely-there gladiatorial gear—and sometimes less. We can’t say the film is perfect, but it’s definitely worth a watch.

Peru, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, United Artists, Concorde Pictures, The Arena, Naked Warriors, Pam Grier, Margaret Markov, Maria Pia Conte, Rosalba Neri, Lucretia Love, Roger Corman, Angelo Frontoni, sexploitation, poster art, cinema, nudity

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

July 11

1960—To Kill a Mockingbird Appears

Harper Lee’s racially charged novel To Kill a Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. The book is hailed as a classic, becomes an international bestseller, and spawns a movie starring Gregory Peck, but is the only novel Lee would ever publish.

July 11

1962—Nuke Test on Xmas Island

As part of the nuclear tests codenamed Operation Dominic, the United States detonates a one megaton bomb on Australian controlled Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. The island was a location for a series of American and British nuclear tests, and years later lawsuits claiming radiation damage to military personnel were filed, but none were settled in favor in the soldiers.

July 10

1940—The Battle of Britain Begins

The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.

July 9

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

July 8

1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House

Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.

DON’T RIDE THE WHITE HORSE

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.

BARN GIRLS

Two Spanish language digest novels from Argentine publishers Malinca Debora and Malinca Nueva Pandora.

Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.

LOVES OF A BLONDE