Vintage Pulp

November 29 2019

FATAL VISION

Murder is in the eye of the beholder.

Above are three beautiful posters for L’occhio che uccide, or “the eye that kills,” which premiered in Italy today in 1961. The movie was originally called Peeping Tom when released in Britain in 1960. The second and third posters are signed by Renato Casaro, while the top one is unsigned. But it resembles his work, so what the heck—let’s say he painted all three until someone corrects us. This movie was a career killer, a bizarre and confounding thriller that irreparably damaged the ambitions of director Michael Powell, but which today has ardent advocates. In the mood for a voyeur mass murderer who tries to turn his killings into art? See our write-up here, and check out a Japanese poster for the flick here.

Italy, Britain, L'occhio che uccide, Peeping Tom, Michael Powell, Renato Casaro, poster art, cinema

Sex Files

October 2 2016

JEEPERS, PEEPER

Sometimes you just can't help looking.

We dug into our pile of adult film posters and found this eye-catching promo for the film Peeping Tom. It starred Jerry Butler, Kimberly Carson, Nina Hartley, Shanna McCullough, and others. The poster star is Leslie Winston, who probably never looked better in a photo than she does here. We’re curious whether the promo was made to push a cinematic release of the film, but we doubt it. As far as what happens in the movie, it’s self-explanatory, no? Jerry Butler is a peeping tom. Not much in the way of subplots, though Carson plays his conscience, egging him on in his dubious pursuit of thrills as he spies on couples, ludicrously, from behind columns and potted ferns.

The film’s end card, aiming for a veneer of the scientific, informs viewers that, “At present there are 15 million peeping toms and 1,000 being created every day.” To which we say the U.S.’s rapidly growing Sex Offender Registry has a lot of catching up to do. Of course, since you can end up on it for flashing your boobs or urinating in public, maybe catching up is only a matter of time. Peeping Tom first appeared in 1986 and premiered—or became available for purchase on videocassette—in Japan today in 1988. We have more of these Japanese promos scattered around the site, most easily found by clicking the keyword “xxx” just below, and we’ve put together a collection of ten we’ll be uploading later this month.

Peeping Tom, Jerry Butler, Kimberly Carson, Nina Hartley, Shanna McCullough, Leslie Winston, poster art, cinema, xxx, movie review

Vintage Pulp

July 27 2016

NIGHT STALKER

Sometimes a devoted following is a bad thing.

Above: a Japanese poster for the British thriller Peeping Tom, which we talked about in detail here. The movie premiered in the UK in 1960, and opened in Japan as Chi wo sû kamerathis month in 1961.

Japan, Britain, Chi wo sû kamera, Peeping Tom, poster art, cinema

Vintage Pulp

January 31 2016

SNUFF’S ENUFF

1960 thriller combined voyeurism, repression, child abuse, and sexual crime long before the public was ready.

Hollywood lore is sprinkled with tales of maligned cinematic masterpieces. British director Michael Powell’s 1960 voyeuristic thriller Peeping Tom is one of them—a film so savagely reviewed that it irreparably damaged what had been an acclaimed directorial career. While Powell should not have suffered so brutal a fate, his film’s rebranding as a work of incandescent genius is also not fully deserved. In the end Peeping Tom is a perfectly decent piece of filmmaking, amazingly forward-looking but also flawed. It deals with a man-child obsessed with filming women at the moment the fear of death appears in their eyes, and our villain does this of course by murdering them, and he manages to kill, film, and keep his subjects in frame at all times by using a spear-like contraption attached to his camera tripod. As you can probably guess, his carefully balanced existence is upset by the arrival of a prospective love interest, and we know from the moment she appears that she’ll be in front of his lens at some point.

In the U.S., Peeping Tom came after Alfred Hitchcock’s similar Psycho, but it Britain it arrived first. Censorship was slipping in British cinema, but to get a sense of how prudish authorities still were, consider the fact that Hitchcock’s movie caused controversy not only for its shower

murder and for showing Janet Leigh in her bra and in bed with a man, but for being the first film to show a flushing toilet—an affront to bluenoses though the contents were merely a torn up note. Peeping Tom pushed the envelope farther and did it first, showing the killer Mark Lewis preying on sex workers and nude models, showing nudie reel star Pamela Green sprawled topless on a bed just before her murder, and drawing out the killings to agonizing length as Lewis coaxes the perfect expression of terror from his victims. Powell develops his killer to the extent that the audience must understand him as a human, and uses point-of-view to make the character’s films-within-the-film the equivalent of snuff movies.

The list of technical achievements goes on—Powell deftly manages to make Peeping Tom brutal without spilling a drop of blood, and his visual approach is engrossing. So why isn’t the movie a 10? Well, there are a few glaring script incongruities, some of the acting is below professional level, the killer seems careless for someone that has been at it for a while, and the idea of so obviously disturbed a man—stuttering, mumbling, visibly shying from any form of human contact—being able to attract

evan a woman as kind and credulous as Anna Massey just doesn’t ring true. There are men who are projects, and there are men who are lost causes—are we right, girls? That’s what the Pulp Intl. girlfriends say anyway. But Peeping Tom is a film every cinephile should see. The moral objections of contemporary critics seem quaint now—many hated being forced to experience the murders from the killer’s perspective, but the viewer’s loss of choice echoes the killer’s helplessness to control himself, and that may very well be Powell’s best trick.

The Noir City Film Festival ends tonight with a pairing of Peeping Tom with the Michelangelo Antonioni classic Blow-Up, which means here at Pulp Intl. we’ll close the book on the fest and move back into the more diverse subject matter that usually makes up our website. We wanted to use Noir City as an excuse to delve into the film noir catalog and we managed to watch sixteen of the

twenty-five films on the schedule—some for the second or third time—and write about twelve of them.

This all made for a quite enjoyable week, with much wine drunk and popcorn noshed (we have a Whirley popcorn maker we had sent over from the States that does a bang-up job), but it was also a bit of work. At this point we doubt we’ll go through all the considerable effort of screening next year’s Noir City slate, but you never know. Next January is a long, long way off—or at least, it should seem that way if you’re living life the way you should. We’ll marinate on it and see.

Britain, Peeping Tom, Psycho, Michael Powell, Carl Boehm, Karlheinz Böhm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer, Pamela Green, Alfred Hitchcock, poster art, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

January 22

1946—CIA Forerunner Created

U.S. president Harry S. Truman establishes the Central Intelligence Group or CIG, an interim authority that lasts until the Central Intelligence Agency is established in September of 1947.

January 22

1957—George Metesky Is Arrested

The New York City “Mad Bomber,” a man named George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and charged with planting more than 30 bombs. Metesky was angry about events surrounding a workplace injury suffered years earlier. Of the thirty-three known bombs he planted, twenty-two exploded, injuring fifteen people. He was apprehended based on an early use of offender profiling and because of clues given in letters he wrote to a newspaper. At trial he was found legally insane and committed to a state mental hospital.

January 21

1950—Alger Hiss Is Convicted of Perjury

American lawyer Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury in connection with an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), at which he was questioned about being a Soviet spy. Hiss served forty-four months in prison, but maintained his innocence and fought his perjury conviction until his death in 1996 at age 92.

January 21

1977—Carter Pardons War Fugitives

U.S. President Jimmy Carter pardons nearly all of the country’s Vietnam War draft evaders, many of whom had emigrated to Canada. He had made the pardon pledge during his election campaign, and he fulfilled his promise the day after he took office.

January 19

1915—Claude Patents Neon Tube

French inventor Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube, in which an inert gas is made to glow various colors through the introduction of an electrical current. His invention is immediately seized upon as a way to create eye catching advertising, and the neon sign comes into existence to forever change the visual landscape of cities.

January 19

1937—Hughes Sets Air Record

Millionaire industrialist, film producer and aviator Howard Hughes sets a new air record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds. During his life he set multiple world air-speed records, for which he won many awards, including America’s Congressional Gold Medal.

INCLEMENT WEATHER

Two Spanish covers from Ediciones G.P. for Peter Cheyney's Huracan en las Bahamas, better known as Dark Bahama.

DON GIOVANNI

Giovanni Benvenuti was one of Italy's most prolific paperback cover artists. His unique style is on display in multiple collections within our website.

WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT