Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

CHILDREN AND MARRIAGE

The doctor's advice was startling, but truly enquiring minds wanted the dirt on Novak.

This cover of National Enquirer published today in 1967 has, like all tabloids strove for, a sensational headline: The Pill: ‘Give It to all Girls over 13’. Back during the 1960s it was probably somewhat eyebrow-raising. In contrast, if even the lowliest magazine did it today we think there would be a full scale thermonuclear explosion of outrage, complete with fallout in the form of screaming pundits, grandstanding politicians, and vengeful ministers.

With any other newsprint style tabloid you’d know this splashline was total fiction, but Enquirer had a bit more credibility in this tier, so it’s probably an actual quote from an actual doctor. But because this image came off Ebay we don’t have the inside of the paper, so we can’t tell you who it was.

We have the back, though, and that’s good because the reason we were interested in this is because of Kim Novak. Enquirer touts an exclusive from journo Walter Benson: Kim Novak Reveals Her Plan to Marry.

Kim Novak, the lonely star who tried marriage and hated it, is getting married again. She will wed bearded restaurant owner Joel Thomas this fall. No exact date for the wedding has been set yet, but in an exclusive

interview last month Kim told this Enquirer reporter: “This is the real thing. This is real love. Until now I never knew what love was. I thought I knew, but I didn’t. Until now life had passed me by. I was lonely, mixed up, unhappy.

Joel has changed all that. He lives for me, I live for him, and we’re going to get married in the fall. Every man I have ever known has wanted to know every damn little thing about my past—where I lived, who I dated, and what I did when he wasn’t around. Joel is different. He loves me for what I am now, not what I’ve been before.”

That’s so heartwarming. One problem—she never married the guy. Maybe because he looked like a bad magician from a cut-rate circus. See below.

Kim deserved—and got—better (we’re totally making that up—we don’t know anything about Thomas, but again, just look at the guy). Novak had married mid-level actor Richard Johnson in 1965, but the union lasted only a year. She didn’t marry again until 1976, when she tied the knot with veterinarian Robert Malloy. She was still with him when he died in 2020, so we’d call that a success, especially in Hollywood terms. Novak is ninety-two at the moment, is among the most revered golden age Hollywood stars, and probably hasn’t thought about Joel Thomas since the turn of the millennium. Want to see more of her in the tabloids? She was an obsession. Check here, here, here, here, and here.

National Enquirer, Kim Novak, Joel Thomas, Richard Johnson, Walter Benson, tabloid

PLUS TWO

Sommer and Koscina add up to one great day.


We’ve looked at the output of Italian illustrator Jean Mascii a few times. Above you see his work again, this time on a poster for the James Bond-style adventure Plus féroces que les mâles, which first showed in France today in 1967 but had its global premiere months earlier in England as Deadlier Than the Male. Over four decades, working from the early ’50s until the late ’80s, Mascii painted almost 1,500 movie posters, hundreds of book covers, and a copious amount of print advertising. You can click his keywords at bottom to see a few more posters we’ve shared on our site, or click here to take the express lane to one of his very best.

The “deadlier” in Deadlier Than the Male refers to co-stars Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina, two of the more beautiful products of the mid-century era, who play assassins. We’ve shared posters for the film from Japan—twice—and the former Yugoslavia. Returning to it yet again is mainly an excuse to share some of the many production photos we’ve found—to go along with this one, this one, and this one. Today we’re restricting ourselves to only Sommer and Koscina’s bikini shots, because the skin and smiles say summertime to us. There are drawbacks to movie stardom, so we hear, but some days surely must be just fine.
France, Italy, Plus féroces que les mâles, Deadlier Than the Male, Jean Mascii, Richard Johnson, Elke Sommer, Sylva Koscina, poster art, cinema

SEAFOOD STEW

There's something very fishy going on.


This promo poster just screams winner, don’t you think? If it isn’t a good movie, it’s got to be deliciously terrible. It was made for L’isola degli uomini pesce, known in English as The Island of the Fishmen, a movie that starred Richard Johnson, Barbara Bach, and Claudio Cassinelli. No surprise what it’s about, thanks to the title, but nothing is spoiled—the fishmen show up within the first few minutes of the film when a group of convicts in a lifeboat are attacked and the five survivors end up stranded on a swampy island. Since the fishmen hunt there, the attrition rate on this parcel of land is a bitch. Two cons are killed almost immediately upon arrival, and a third barely survives a pit trap. They soon learn humans live there too—paranoid misanthrope Richard Johnson, his companion Barbara Bach, their servant Beryl Cunninghman, and others, all residing in and around a baroque slave plantation house.

Johnson, who is a quack scientist, is trying to train the fishmen for what shall here remain undisclosed purposes. It involves going deep underwater where humans can’t survive—but strangely, not so deep that Johnson can’t simply drop down in his unpressurized wooden submersible and watch them at work. It’s all a crock, even for bad sci-fi. But there are three points of note with the film: first, you can actually see that some budget went into creating the fishmen; second, Johnson speaking in a constipated Dick Dastardly voice is flat hilarious; and third, Barbara Bach is Barbara Bach. Or maybe we should have listed her first. The producers at Dania Film, perhaps realizing Fishmen was a total woofer, rode Bach hard, putting out a bunch of skinful promotional photos and getting her a Fishmen-themed nude shoot in Ciné-Revue. There’s always a silver lining in 1970s exploitation cinema—and on Pulp Intl. L’isola degli uomini pesce premiered in Italy today in 1979.
Italy, L'isola degli uomini pesce, The Island of the Fishmen, Ciné-Revue, Barbara Bach, Claudio Cassinelli, Richard Johnson, Joseph Cotten, Beryl Cunningham, poster art, cinema, horror, sci-fi, sexploitation, nudity, movie review

SOME MOVIES DON’T

Umpteenth Bond riff is cuter than most but a lot dumber too.


The Bond franchise could be the most imitated in cinema history. Most of the copycats came during the late 1960s. The serious ones are often unwatchable, but the tongue-in-cheek varieties sometimes manage to entertain. The most entertaining aspect of the Bond inspired Some Girls Do is the theme song by Lee Vanderbilt. Which is not a knock on the movie. It’s just that the song is that good. We immediately went searching for a version to have as our very own but there isn’t one, at least not one from the film, or one without serious sound issues. We’re going to keep looking, though. The movie has another plus—the above promo poster made for Belgium, where it was known by the Dutch title God vergeeft… zij nooit, and the French title Dieu pardonne… elles jamais!

As far as the actual film goes, it stars Richard Johnson as Hugh Bond—er, we mean Hugh Drummond—and he’s sent to deal with unknown forces determined to stop the development of the world’s first supersonic airliner. You get beautiful women with shady intentions, spy gadgets of dubious efficacy, robot femmes fatales, and a super villain hiding in his (almost) impregnable lair. Johnson is reprising his role from 1967’s Deadlier than the Male, another pretty cute, marginally enjoyable Bond copy, but here sequelitis has set in—which is to say, this movie is not quite as charming, nor as funny, nor as thrilling as the first. So ultimately, while some girls do, some movies don’t, and most viewers shouldn’t. Not unless you have a seriously unquenchable ’60s spy movie thirst. If so, Some Girls Do might do the trick.

Belgium, God vergeeft... zij nooit, Dieu pardonne... elles jamais!, Some Girls Do, Richard Johnson, Daliah Lavi, Beba Lončar, Sydne Rome, Yutte Stensgaard, Lee Vanderbilt, poster art, cinema, movie review

BRINK OF EXTINCTION

Males top the endangered species list in 1967 spy thriller.


We’ve shared a lot of art, including a previous Japanese poster, from the James Bond knockoff Deadlier than the Male without ever actually talking about the movie. Today seems like an opportune time, since we’re already on the subject of Bond clones. The film, which premiered in Japan today in 1967 after opening in the the UK earlier in the year, starred Richard Johnson, who actually came close to landing the role of Bond thanks to the interest of Dr. No director Terence Young. It didn’t happen, though, and Connery as Bond makes more sense when you see Johnson, who’s older, skinnier, shorter, and in less pristine shape. But he has panache, and that may be why Young wanted him. Instead he got Connery, and Johnson got the consolation prize of playing Hugh Drummond, a character that originates in H.C. McNeile novels from the 1920s, but who’s updated to the ’60s in order to deal with a Cold War plot to steal rockets and divert them for nefarious means.

Like the Bond films, Deadlier than the Male offers a winning combination of action, quips, exotic scenery, and lightweight sexiness, but the film never quite rises to the upper echelons. Without the Bond budget it’s hard to bring a truly thrilling vision to life. At least the filmmakers were smart enough to frontload their assets by opening the proceedings with Elke Sommer, who’s second billed, but probably more important than Johnson in terms of increasing the film’s watchability. She has a physicality that makes her a nice fit playing an assassin in the employ of the film’s ultimate villain. Sylva Koscina co-stars as Sommer’s klepto sidekick, which doesn’t hurt. The pair’s nefarious deeds eventually draw Johnson to their mountaintop stronghold, and there viewers are treated to a final throwdown with the evil mastermind involving a mechanized, life-sized chessboard. While Deadlier than the Male doesn’t manage to out-Bond Bond, watch it with friends and beers and you’ll maximize its potential.
Japan, Deadlier Than the Male, Richard Johnson, Elke Sommer, Sylva Koscina, Kitty Swan, Terence Young, H. C. McNeile, poster art, cinema, movie review

HOUSE FLIPPING

“This place is amazing. Nice bay windows, original wood floors” Booooo.... get ooout! “Too bad we can't stay.”

French illustrator Roger Soubie has a long and impressive résumé. He painted more than 2,000 posters during a career spanning four decades, and produced iconic promos such as those for Lolita and The Unholy Wife. The above effort is for The Haunting, called in France La Maison du diable. Based on Shirley Jackson’s classic novel The Haunting of Hill House, it’s about an anthropologist who rents a creepy old mansion in order to determine whether it’s haunted. Of course it is—and it proceeds to seriously flip out the anthropologist and the witnesses he’s brought along to verify his findings.

Jackson wrote her chiller in 1959, and it’s considered by many to be the greatest haunted house tale of all time. Director Robert Wise uses zooms and odd angles to jar the audience but follows the novel’s plot closely, which was a good decision. Today his movie is likewise considered to be one of the finest in the horror genre. Horror has really improved with time, but The Haunting holds up nicely. If you haven’t seen it, know going in it’s fueled by atmosphere rather than events, but we think it’s worth a gander. After its 1963 Stateside premiere it opened in France today in 1964.

France, La Maison du diable, The Haunting, Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Robert Wise, Roger Soubie, Shirley Jackson, poster art, cinema, horror, movie review

ENDLESS SOMMER

It's impossible to be on the fence about Elke.


If you watch an Elke Sommer movie you notice immediately how athletic she looks. It was a trademark, and it made her unlike most of her mid-century peers. In fact, in the film Deadlier Than the Male her co-star Richard Johnson specifically disparages her body, opining, “Well, it’s not bad. A little bit muscular perhaps, but then you’ve got to expect that with the violent sort of exercise you undertake.” Sommer was ahead of her time, that’s all. Check here and here to see for yourself. This shot of her is from 1959 and appeared in the West German magazine Smart. 

Germany, Deadlier Than the Male, Smart Magazine, Elke Sommer, Richard Johnson
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1916—Richard Harding Davis Dies

American journalist, playwright, and author Richard Harding Davis dies of a heart attack at home in Philadelphia. Not widely known now, Davis was one of the most important and influential war correspondents ever, establishing his reputation by reporting on the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and World War I, as well as his general travels to exotic lands.

1919—Zapata Is Killed

In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is shot dead by government forces in the state of Morelos, after a carefully planned ambush. Following the killing, Zapata’s revolutionary movement and his Liberation Army of the South slowly fall apart, but his political influence lasts in Mexico to the present day.

1925—Great Gatsby Is Published

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York City by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Though Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s best known book today, it was not a success upon publication, and at the time of his death in 1940, Fitzgerald was mostly forgotten as a writer and considered himself to be a failure.

1968—Martin Luther King Buried

American clergyman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is buried five days after being shot dead on a Memphis, Tennessee motel balcony. April 7th had been declared a national day of mourning by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and King’s funeral on the 9th is attended by thousands of supporters, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

1953—Jomo Kenyatta Convicted

In Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta is sentenced to seven years in prison by the nation’s British rulers for being a member of the Mau Mau Society, an anti-colonial movement. Kenyatta would a decade later become independent Kenya’s first prime minister, and still later its first president.

1974—Hank Aaron Becomes Home Run King

Major League Baseball player Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run, surpassing Babe Ruth’s 39-year-old record. The record-breaking homer is hit off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and with that swing Aaron puts an exclamation mark on a twenty-four year journey that had begun with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro League, and would end with his selection to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame.

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BRAZIL UNDERGROUND

Edições de Ouro and Editora Tecnoprint published U.S. crime novels for the Brazilian market, with excellent reworked cover art to appeal to local sensibilities. We have a small collection worth seeing.

FLUENT IN VIOLENCE

Walter Popp cover art for Richard Powell's 1954 crime novel Say It with Bullets.

IN HOT WATER

There have been some serious injuries on pulp covers. This one is probably the most severe—at least in our imagination. It was painted for Stanley Morton's 1952 novel Yankee Trader.

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