How many Laura Gemser Emanuelle movies were there? That depends on how you count them.
This is an alternate poster for Laura Gemser’s sexploitation flick Emanuelle – Perché violenza alle donne?, known in English as Emanuelle Around the World. Officially, Gemser starred as Emanuelle in nine films, but she headlined others titled Emanuelle-something playing characters not named Emanuelle. For example, in Emmanuelle 2: La antivirgen, Sylvia Kristel played Emanuelle, while Gemser was a masseuse. Another example: 1976’s Velluto nero was known as Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle in the U.S., but Gemser played a character named Laura. Some people count these among Gemser’s Emanuelle films. The point is, the number can vary depending on who you ask. There were a lot—that’s all we know.
We discussedEmanuelle – Perché violenza alle donne? last year, so we want to pivot to the art today. This poster is similar to the other one, but the secondary elements are different. It looks a bit like the work of Sandro Symeoni (we didn’t mention it previously, but we thought so then too). Symeoni painted in several distinct styles, but take a look here and here, and see if we don’t have a point. However, this will remain unattributed until someone with more expertise than us weighs in, which generally happens sooner or later. Below, Gemser weighs in first. Verdict: about a hundred pounds. Emanuelle – Perché violenza alle donne? premiered today in 1977.
Anyone for barbecue? 1970s disaster epic charbroils entire city.
City on Fire is a good old fashioned ’70s disaster movie, and we have to tell you, it’s been ages since we’ve seen one. We’re talking rentals at Blockbuster ages. We never had a chance to see one in a cinema, but we have to wonder if a big room with a booming Sensurround system is what City on Fire needs to make it enjoyable, because on our television the movie didn’t get the job done.
Everything starts when three kids accidentally set a blaze while trying to smoke cigarettes, but the real firestorm ignites when a disgruntled oil refinery employee gets sacked, decides as revenge to sabotage the works. He twists some valves and whatnot, causing flammables to run through the city sewers. The stuff combusts and the rest, as they say, is hysteria.
The cast of this flick is outstanding. Leslie Nielsen is the mayor, Henry Fonda a fire chief, Ava Gardner an on-air news personality, Barry Newman an emergency room physician, and Shelley Winters a nurse. Their perspectives continually alternate as the city-eating fire runs rampant. To pull off the incendiary visuals the filmmakers use models of skyscrapers, rear projection, and practical fire stunts of types that died with the advent of computer graphics.
While we appreciated the work that went into the movie, and some of the cinematography was spectacular, we were largely unmoved. Maybe it needed Hindenburg correspondent Herbert Morrison to narrate: “Oh, the humanity!” However, we were very moved by the poster art, which is another top effort by John Solie. City on Fire was made in Canada and, after opening in Europe, premiered in the Great White North today in 1979.
Burt Reynolds' iconic character loses his bite in sequel to gritty 1973 debut.
We talked about Burt Reynolds’ 1973 actioner White Lightning a few weeks ago, and though we mentioned that the sequel Gator isn’t nearly as good, what it did have was promo art painted by Robert McGinnis. That’s Lauren Hutton wrapped around Burt. She was transitioning from top tier modeling to acting and ended up in some good flicks, including American Gigolo, Welcome to L.A., The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, and The Gambler. She deserved better than Gator. As for Burt, he once said he was as good in roles like these as any actor could have been. He literally said Robert De Niro couldn’t have played the part of Gator McCluskey. And as great as DeNiro has been, Burt had a point. You gotta love the guy.
Whatever Lola wants Lola gets—except a decent script and a sufficient budget.
A low rent poster usually indicates a low rent movie. The poster you see here for Lola Falana’s crime drama Lady Cocoa, which premiered today in 1975, is obviously underwhelming. Sometimes, though, digging into the dusty archive of cheap cinema yields forgotten gems. But not in this instance. You know you’re in trouble with Lady Cocoa right from the opening theme, which is a sort of mash-up between a disco song and, “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Literally, that’s the chorus. We’ve come across some terrible theme songs (who can forget the indelible strains of “Flare-Up”?—but this one might take the booby prize.
Falana plays a Reno gangster’s girlfriend who’s spent eighteen months in prison for reasons that are obscure, possibly because she’s insanely annoying. She’s released into protective custody when she finally decides to testify against her man. She doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of her decision, but there’s a reason for that—she has no intention of testifying. She just wants out of the joint for a while. She has total confidence her boyfriend will intuit this, but she’s wrong—kingpins don’t become kingpins through trust. He sends assassins to perforate her, and the movie becomes a standard witness protection actioner. While this basic plot has been done many times, it has rarely been done with dialogue so poor.
Gene Washington: “I remember when I got it in Nam.”
Falana: “Nam?”
Gene Washington: “Yeah. Vietnam.”
Let’s fix that exchange of dialogue for them:
Gene Washington: “I remember when I got it in Nam.”
Falana: “It?”
Gene Washington: “Yeah. Syphilitic meningitis.”
See? Much better. Poor Lola never had a chance in this one. But there are a few items of note. Falana, who’s really cute even playing a grating harpy, spends a lot of the movie in a towel and flashes a backside that’ll leave a permanent impression. Late in the program she and co-star Gene Washington share a real-deal hot tango of a tongue kiss, which is something you rarely see actors do. And one of the assassins is played by Joe Greene, as in Mean Joe Greene, as in the Pittsburgh Steelers. If he’d sacked the producers before they had a chance to make the movie, Hollywood would have given him an honorary Oscar. No such luck.
Despite your ample sexual charms I’m irrationally annoyed I have to bodyguard you.
Still hate me?
Abso-goddamned-lutely.
You sure?
I can’t even budge I’m so filled with loathing.
What if I let you slowly rub this lotion all over me, we enjoy some leisurely oral sex, then fuck like beasts?
Computer scientists go back to drawing board after first self-aware robot is arrested for sexual harassment.
This rare promo poster is signed by Italian illustrator Giuliano Nistri, who we think only produced the background, considering it’s obviously a production image. The movie is Saturn 3, a sort of forgotten British sci-fi adventure from the early 1980s. How to describe it. A little bit Star Wars, a little bit Alien, and a little bit 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably how it was pitched to the studios. The actual result was a little more like b-movies such as Star Crash and BattleBeyond the Stars. But it starred Kirk Douglas, helped launch Harvey Keitel, and had Farrah Fawcett, seen here being brutally suspended by the movie’s deranged AI robot.
The immediate post-Star Wars period was a time when even well known performers had to look twice at cheeseball sci-fi scripts. No actor wanted to miss out on the next cultural phenomenon. That’s the only way to explain Douglas’s involvement. Sadly for him, Saturn 3 came up about 887 million miles short of achieving any lasting impact. Other than a convincingly scary robot, Douglas’s naked ass, and Fawcett wearing a series of negligees and other scanty items, it didn’t offer much of note. At least back then. But these days, the AI that copies its programmer’s worst traits seems plenty relevant. After its U.S. premiere in February 1980, Saturn 3 made a controlled burn into Italy today the same year.
This photo-illustrated poster was made for the 1948 suspense thriller Night Has a Thousand Eyes, which demands to be watched if for no other reason than its lyrical title. The awesome Edward G. Robinson plays a phony psychic who’s thrown for a loop when he unexpectedly starts to have real visions—or seems to. Has he merely refined his scam, or can he really see the future? He tells Gail Russell she’s fated to die in mere days but claims he wants to help her avoid her destiny. She believes the prediction, but her beau and a handful of cops keep trying to pin various crimes on Robinson as Russell’s clock dwindles to zero hour. The base ingredients here—the good cast, experienced director John Farrow, a source novel by William Irish, aka Cornell Woolrich, aka George Hopley—were probably pre-destined to produce something worthwhile. We’d say the novel is better, but as adaptations go Night Has a Thousand Eyes mostly works. We sense that… Wait! It’s becoming clear… It’s you! With a bowl of popcorn and a beer! Watching the movie!
It's not that there's no way out. It's that not enough people want to leave.
Movies that take on the subject of race generally aren’t popular. No Way Out, for which you see a promo poster above, was a prestige production but was only the 87th highest grossing film of its year (both Twelve Years a Slave and Green Book were in the same range for their years). Somewhere in the eighties isn’t terrible, but No Way Out still lagged behind such immortal efforts as Yellow Cab Man, Wabash Avenue, and Bright Leaf.
The plot sets up almost immediately: a pair of robbers are shot, captured by police, and conducted in handcuffs to a hospital for medical attention. Sidney Poitier is the doctor they draw. One of the robbers, Richard Widmark, is a virulent racist. He’s so hateful that he keeps trying to convince his suffering brother not to cooperate with Poitier. The problem is his brother has more than just a gunshot wound, though only Poitier can see it.
When baby bro dies due to complications from a previously undiagnosed longterm illness, Widmark is devastated, but always the opportunist, he turns the tables at that point. Poitier can’t prove he didn’t kill the brother through malpractice unless there’s an autopsy, and Widmark won’t agree to one. What develops is a battle of wills—Poitier’s quiet dignity, polite exterior, and superhuman patience that normal people simply don’t have (he’d play this role over and over) against Widmark’s frothing and irrational hatred.
There’s a lot to unpack here. No Way Out goes after racism with a power jab and a flying spin kick. It’s unsubtle. That makes sense because racism is unsubtle, you might say. No—there are blatant strains, but largely, it is subtle. For example, after decades of backward movement U.S. schools are as segregated right now as they were in 1968, and U.S. neighborhoods are highly segregated too. How did that happen? Easy. The processes of racism have been folded inside the mechanisms of the market and the dynamics of individual choice. Gentrification is just one example of a subsequent result.
After No Way Out was released today in 1950 it took another fourteen years—an entire generation as most people measure them—before the U.S. passed the Civil Rights Act. But the legislation has been constantly chipped at or even had sections outright struck down, contributing to the aforementioned segregation, and all sorts of other damage. The laws stood just long enough for the belief that things were better to become culturally entrenched, then they were decimated. Now people hold obsolete beliefs about equality, and have a hard time seeing that many things are getting worse.
This is why movies about race usually don’t age well. Yes, it’s partly due to outdated sentiments, language, characterizations, and story arcs, but it’s also because they presume improvement in problems that, as it turned out, never went away, but were merely reconstituted in ways that can be invisible to people today, and which vintage movies were never designed to elucidate. No Way Out is to racism as Romeo and Juliet is to love. It’s big and bold and scores some points, but it mostly comes across as obvious. Don’t get us wrong—it’s a damn good movie. But it’s also no longer relevant to the issue it examines.
Ambition proves to be fatal in Billy Wilder's classic drama.
This poster was made for the classic drama Sunset Boulevard, a true trailblazer of a film, the story of how a desperately broke writer becomes the kept man of a faded screen star—the immortal silent film queen Norma Desmond. The role of Desmond is played by Gloria Swanson, who at first seems eccentrically lost in her own glorious past, but eventually reveals herself as deranged and dangerous. It’s a difficult, bizarro role, highly stylized, requiring utter conviction and complete faith in script and direction. While the movie is considered a film noir, it’s also a mix of melodrama, black comedy, Hollywood satire, and suspense. With all these ingredients the entire production could have fallen in like a house of cards, and probably would have four times out of five, but director Billy Wilder, along with Swanson, William Holden, and Erich von Stroheim, give everything they have. Swanson’s acting is operatically over-the-top, deliberately so, even cringefully so, but she crafts an all-time screen role. No matter how bonkers she gets, you never stop pitying her, and that’s the key. Sunset Boulevard, a film that walks the highest wire of believability without losing its balance, is a mandatory watch. It premiered today in 1950.
Above: an alternate poster for the Italian lost world adventure Le Amazzoni – Donne d’amore e di guerra, known in English as Battle of the Amazons. The warrior on this and the previous poster reminds us of Raquel Welch, but she wasn’t in the movie. Instead it featured Lucretia Love, Paolo Tedesco, and Solvi Stubing, which is nothing to complain about. What is worth complaint is that we can’t find out who painted the poster. But we’ll keep digging. Meanwhile you can check out the first poster here, and a fun Japanese poster here. Le Amazzoni – Donne d’amore e di guerra premiered in Italy today in 1973.
Chaos comes shirtless, hairy, and hella dangerous in White Lightning.
Burt Reynolds occupied a unique place in the pantheon of Hollywood stars, playing numerous smarmy good ole boys on the wrong side of the law. He had touched upon such roles earlier than in White Lightning, but this film, which premiered today in 1973, was the beginning of him basically cornering that market. It was the debut of his iconic character Gator McCluskey, hell hot driver and moonshiner nonpareil, who finagles a release from prison to help the FBI take down the crooked sherrif of Bogan County, Arkansas. The sherrif, played by Ned Beatty, has killed Gator’s younger brother for no other reason than that he was an anti-war protestor, prompting Gator to deal himself to the Feds to get revenge.
White Lightning has the same gritty feel you find in so many ’70s dramas, with its low saturation film stock and grainy look. Narratively it’s gritty too, with numerous portryals considered polarizing today. It presents Arkansans largely as clueless hicks, with opportunistic scofflaws mixed in. It’s anti-government and anti-diversity. Jennifer Billingsly is a two-timing nympho who waxes nostalgic about deflowering a nine year-old boy. And Beatty is a real beaut, railing against school integration, the NAACP, the ACLU, hippies, and the right of blacks to vote. He’s dumb as hell, but animal-clever.
Burt struts his way along the path to bloody vengeance and shows why he became such a huge star. His portrayal of McCluskey mixes swagger with an elemental kindness, a steely resolve with a core of easy humor. It isn’t all in the script. He was simply a natural. Today White Lightning would upset certain rural viewers, most progressive viewers, viewers of numerous ethnicities, and women, yet as an artifact of its era it’s hard to beat. It’s also unique in Reynolds’ ouevre. The 1976 sequel Gator, as well as later rum-running adventure flicks like Smokey and the Bandit, would lean heavily into comedy, to their detriment. Of the grouping, only White Lightning can be considered legitmately good. But anything with Reynolds—and we mean anything—is worth watching.
A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.
1957—Sputnik Circles Earth
The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.
1970—Janis Joplin Overdoses
American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.
1908—Pravda Founded
The newspaper Pravda is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles living in Vienna. The name means “truth” and the paper serves as an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.
1957—Ferlinghetti Wins Obscenity Case
An obscenity trial brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the counterculture City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reaches its conclusion when Judge Clayton Horn rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl is not obscene.
1995—Simpson Acquitted
After a long trial watched by millions of people worldwide, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson subsequently loses a civil suit and is ordered to pay millions in damages.
1919—Wilson Suffers Stroke
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed. He is confined to bed for weeks, but eventually resumes his duties, though his participation is little more than perfunctory. Wilson remains disabled throughout the remainder of his term in office, and the rest of his life.
