Vintage Pulp

March 3 2025

A TOTAL TRIP

Jet lag isn't the only problem with traveling from west to east.

A long time ago, at least as website time is reckoned, we wrote about the 1973 Christina Lindberg sexploitation kidnap flick Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, which was known in English as The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, or sometimes The Kyoto Connection. Above you see the tateken style poster for the film. Despite the title, Lindberg doesn’t travel much. She’s mostly imprisoned by a crazy cab driver. It was Toei Company’s attempt to make a pinku flick with a Western star, but the result wasn’t all that good. If you’re interested you can read we thought here.

The poster you see here isn’t much different than the standard and bo-ekibari posters we shared, but the reconfigured dimensions always make these versions worth a look. This also gives us a chance to circle back to Lindberg. Because she didn’t appear in many movies, and several of those are not available anywhere, there isn’t more we can post on her aside from her always brilliant promotional photos and magazine shots. We have plenty of those, and dutifully, another appears below. Hope it brightens your day.

Japan, Toei Company, Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, The Kyoto Connection, Christina Lindberg, sexploitation nudity, poster art, pinku, cinema

Vintage Pulp

March 3 2018

THE LINDBERG KIDNAPPING

First the airline loses her luggage. And now this.

Above you see an incredibly rare alternate poster for Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, aka The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, aka The Kyoto Connection. Notice how it promises SEX in big letters. That English word appeared on many Japanese promos of the era, as we’ve documented before. Basically, the movie is about a Swedish woman who visits Japan and is abducted by a wacko taxi driver. See the original poster and read what we wrote about the flick at this link.

Japan, Sweden, Toei Company, Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, The Kyoto Connection, Christina Lindberg, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, pinku

Vintage Pulp

March 3 2011

TRAVELING WITHOUT MOVING

Don't let the title fool you—this flick goes practically nowhere.

One of the elements we like about pinku films—aside from the action, the visuals, and the glimpse into a culture not our own—is that the women who have suffered all sorts of degradations at the hands of men inevitably massacre their tormentors in the last reel. When that doesn’t happen, we’re cheated of the final catharsis, which makes us party to the abuse rather than cheerleaders for the abused’s emancipation. We don’t need to be shown that the world is cruel—we just want to see something done about it, if only in the realm of violent fantasy.

Thus Sadao Nakajima’s Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, aka The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, aka The Kyoto Connection doesn’t quite deliver for us. It’s a rather simple film, and it has nothing to do with traveling around. Quite the opposite, actually. The porn star in question is held captive in a room most of the movie and repeatedly abused by a rather disturbed taxi driver for whom she eventually develops feelings. Psychologists, so we hear, call this sort of emotional inversion Stockholm Syndrome. We call it a letdown, even though we understand there’s an attempt to make a serious point here.

At least the movie has Christina Lindberg in the title role, so that’s a substantial silver lining. The poster above is one you can find on many websites, but we suspect only we have the rare two-panel version below. Too bad the printers produced such a shitty image. We can only assume that upon seeing a nude Christina Lindberg, they printed the posters one-handed while abusing themselves. Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, aka The Pornstar Travels Around Japan opened in Japan today in 1973.

Japan, Toei Company, Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô, The Pornstar Travels Around Japan, The Kyoto Connection, Sadao Nakajima, Christina Lindberg, pinku, sexploitation, movie review, nudity

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

July 16

1941—DiMaggio Hit Streak Reaches 56

New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his fifty-sixth consecutive game. The streak would end the next game, against the Cleveland Indians, but the mark DiMaggio set still stands, and in fact has never been seriously threatened. It is generally thought to be one of the few truly unbreakable baseball records.

July 15

1939—Adams Completes Around-the-World Air Journey

American Clara Adams becomes the first woman passenger to complete an around the world air journey. Her voyage began and ended in New York City, with stops in Lisbon, Marseilles, Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Honolulu, and San Francisco.

July 15

1955—Nobel Prize Winners Unite Against Nukes

Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, which reads in part: We think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of [nuclear] weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.

July 14

1921—Sacco & Vanzetti Convicted

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are convicted in Dedham, Massachusetts of killing their shoe company’s paymaster. Even at the time there are serious questions about their guilt, and whether they are being railroaded because of their Italian ethnicity and anarchist political beliefs.

July 13

1933—Eugenics Becomes Official German Policy

Adolf Hitler signs the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, and Germany begins sterilizing those they believe carry hereditary illnesses, and those they consider impure. By the end of WWII more than 400,000 are sterilized, including criminals, alcoholics, the mentally ill, Jews, and people of mixed German-African heritage.

July 13

1955—Ruth Ellis Executed

Former model Ruth Ellis is hanged at Holloway Prison in London for the murder of her lover, British race car driver David Blakely. She is the last woman executed in the United Kingdom.

July 13

1966—Richard Speck Rampage

Richard Speck breaks into a Chicago townhouse where he systematically rapes and kills eight student nurses. The only survivor hides under a bed the entire night.

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