HOMICIDE SQUAD

There's no reason killing has to be ugly.

We have something fun for you today, a collection of door panel promo posters made by Columbia Pictures for its 1967 cheeseball spy adventure The Ambushers, which was the third of four installments starring Dean Martin as secret agent Matt Helm. The films featured deadly women known as Slaygirls. There were many Slaygirls, but we’re reasonably sure only five ever graced these large posters for The Ambushers. That’s Penny Brahms above, and below you’ll find Marilyn Tindall, unidentified (possibly Karin Feddersen with her hair chopped off), Alena Johnston, and Jan Watson. You can see more from the Slaygirls, including a set of door panel posters made for The Wrecking Crewhere.

Who says they don't have any worth?

London born actress Penny Brahms looks like a million bucks—that’s one hundred million pennies—in this shot that appeared in the French magazine Moi. Brahms had a forgettable film career—her most noted roles were a brief appearance in 2001: A Space Odyssey and a co-starring turn in the sexploitation flick Lady Chatterly Versus Fanny Hill—but she looks like the biggest star in the firmament in this great shot. It’s from 1970. 

You can never have too much information.

Every time we see a cover of the Japanese celeb/cinema magazine Movie Information/Movie Pictorial we find ourselves thinking how cool they look. It’s a publication that goes all the way back to the early 1950s, and it had a few different periods, graphically speaking, but for some reason we always preferred these clean, colorful late-1960s early-1970s covers. So we thought we’d upload a few fronts and backs we’ve found over the years and see if you agree. As far as the name goes, we usually see the magazine referred to in English as Movie Pictorial, and in fact the back cover does say that, obviously. But the front cover writing definitely says “Movie Information.” So there you go. But we’ve actually turned screwing up these translations into a fine art, so we won’t be heartbroken if we’re wrong. Anyway, see below. And FYI, the girl in the scuba tank is Barbara Bouchet, so she’s on three covers. The scuba image is a promo shot from Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea. You can see two more front covers here and here.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

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.

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.

Cover art by Norman Saunders for Jay Hart's Tonight, She's Yours, published by Phantom Books in 1965.
Uncredited cover for Call Girl Central: 08~022, written by Frédéric Dard for Éditions de la Pensée Moderne and its Collection Tropiques, 1955.
Four pink Perry Mason covers with Robert McGinnis art for Pocket Books.
Unknown artist produces lurid cover for Indian true crime magazine Nutan Kahaniyan.

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