BARBARELLA PSYCHEDELA

Jane Fonda takes a trip through outer and inner space.

We’ve shared plenty of promo material from the watershed 1968 cult landmark Barbarella. Why wouldn’t we? It’s one of the most visually beautiful sci-fi movies ever made. In order to be complete in our coverage we needed to include two of its very best promo posters—this pair painted by Kája Saudek for its run the former Czechslovakia, where it opened today in 1971. Saudek was a legend in the world of comics, so he was a natural choice to put together posters for a film that itself grew from a comic character created in 1962 by French illustrator Jean-Claude Forest. You’ve heard us say it before but we’ll say it again anyway—you don’t see movie posters like this anymore. After all, why pay a brilliant artist when you can underpay a graphic designer and rake off the savings for the shareholders? Profit seeking always eventually cannibalizes the industries it first nurtures.

There isn’t a person reading this website who doesn’t already know what Barbarella is, at least anecdotally. Jane Fonda stars as the titular character, a five-star double-rated astronavagatrix, who’s physically superior (duh), if perhaps overly credulous. The film’s far distant, fur-lined, unsubtly phallic future is brought to life with outrageous costumes, acid-drenched visual effects, small scale models, and fantastic sets sometimes built at huge scale. Fonda occupies the center of all this dazzle as a government agent charged with locating a missing scientist named Durand Durand before he teaches the inhabitants of the galaxy’s Tau Ceti region the workings of a weapon he invented—the positronic ray. The universe is at peace. At least, the center of it is. But the positronic ray and all it represents could spread “archaic insecurity, selfish competition, and war.”

The gag that runs through the movie is that, superior though Barbarella may be, she hasn’t experienced the more corporeal pleasures of life. In other words, she’s never had any dick. Some contrarians think—or at least pretend to think—that Barbarella being sexually inexperienced indicates anti-woman attitudes. But she isn’t sexually inexperienced. She’s hyperexperienced in a form of sex that is super-advanced—i.e. completely psychic. Other forms of sex are considered where she

comes from to be primitive, therefore worthless, if not even taboo. But not out in Tau Ceti. The physical pleasures out in the galactic boonies throw Barbarella for a loop, but the subtext isn’t about women or feminism, but merely the idea that the future must be sleek, clean, and controlled. Barbarella’s non-coital status, then subsequent embrace of sex in all its sticky joy is an anti-corporate, anti-repression, anti-assimilation message.

But as an enduring cult classic promoting unashamed attitudes about sex, Barbarella is ripe for revisionism and deliberate misrepresentation. Ultimately, it’s not a movie that holds up long to big-brained academic analysis because it’s no more than a contradictory fun-filled romp made by horny filmmaker Roger Vadim. There are unavoidable pro-feminist tropes, but also unavoidable anti-feminist clichés. It’s unavoidably steeped in the liberation ethos of the era, but also portrays the sort of non-diverse fantasy world fascists adore. Digging deep into Barbarella is like parsing the lyrics of a ’70s disco song. It was probably never meant to be anything but fun. It’s a voyage through deep space with a simple premise allowing Fonda to tease the audience with flashes of skin. That’s more than adequate.

We hear there’s a new version in development, but we don’t have hopes for anything good. Yes, we were wrong about Blade Runner‘s sequel, but that was the only time. The sexual insouciance of the late 1960s that gave us Barbarella is gone. Journalist Kim Newman insightfully remarked that the film was the product of a generation “that thought sex was, above all, fun.” So what can result from a generation for whom sex is dangerous, not only because of more disease than in the past but because of government enforced consequences? With the original Barbarella‘s glowing sex positivity dissipated only cynicism can remain. But we’ll give the filmmakers credit for guts. It’s a bold move to remake a movie that helped define the term cult classic.

It was a good thing for its readers Hush-Hush didn't know the meaning of the term.


No, we’re not going to get into teen-age rapist story that dominates this cover of Hush-Hush published back in January 1965. Though based on a real occurrence, the article is titillation disguised as crime reporting, written during an era when many men thought of rape in one of three ways: vandalization of personal property if the victim was his wife or girlfriend; an attack on the family castle if she was a relative; and she asked for it, which was reserved for most other women. We stress “many men,” not all. From what we gather the majority properly saw it as a heinous attack on the woman. Of course, the vicious nature of it didn’t stop it from being widely used as a cinematic and literary device, but that’s another discussion, one we’ve already had and doubtless will again.

Elsewhere on the cover you get photographic proof that topless bathing suits really did exist during the 1960s. There are only a few photos of the things, but Hush-Hush adds to the library of visual confirmation. Now we need proof of the existence of David Dodge’s completely backless cache-sexe that made women look nude when viewed from the rear. He says they were worn on the French Riviera during the 1950s, but we have a feeling proof won’t be forthcoming anytime soon, absent a time machine and careful coordinates. Lastly, the cover’s bottom banner touts wife swapping. How popular was this practice? We can’t know. We suggest asking your grandma. But first compliment her cooking: “This casserole is delicious, gram-gram. Did you and paw-paw ever screw other married couples for kicks? Can I have more peas?”

The next article we want to call attention to is, “How Do Tahitian Beauties Drive Men Wild?” Vintage novels that waxed pornographic about the sexual attitudes of Pacific Islanders were almost an official sub-genre, so this story was a must-read for us. And for you too, which can do below. At least mostly. We couldn’t upload the entire thing. It’s too long, but there’s enough to give you the gist. And the gist is simply that Tahitians apparently had no taboos concerning sex, partners, and privacy. The story is framed around alleged trysts with various Hollywood stars, and how Hush-Hush avoided lawsuits from those stars is really a mystery. You’ll be entertained. We will say, though, that it’s rather unfortunate that the story is couched in insulting terms toward Tahitian women.

As a final note, Hush-Hush used a cheaper printing process and lower quality paper than other publications from the same rank. Those two aspects of the magazine worsened as time passed. By 1965, it was barely a step above the National Informers of the world in terms of technical values. Because of that our scans aren’t great. The cheap printing resulted in a scanner moiré pattern on most of the black and white content (though the color came out fine). It’s actually fixable in Photoshop or Gimp, so we hear, and we have both programs, but do we want to do all that work for cheap-ass Hush-Hush? We decided we didn’t. Therefore, what you see is what you get—twenty-plus scans below.
I usually wear floor length hoop skirts but for certain occasions this crimson mini is just the number.

Sometimes when classic literature was remarketed for mid-century audiences the pulp style makeovers were stretches. But in this case it works. Le amicizie pericolose is a 1964 Italian translation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 French epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses, aka Dangerous Liaisons. The story features one of history’s greatest femmes fatales—Marquise de Merteuil, whose pride and sexual vanity is the seed of an unspeakable tragedy. There’s also an homme fatale—the serial seducer Vicomte de Valmont, whose dick eventually gets him in a crack so tight he can’t escape. 

The book has been filmed six times, and cinephiles argue which version is the best. While Glenn Close as the Marquise in 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons was astounding, and Annette Bening’s turn as the character in 1989’s Valmont was also good, we recommend checking out Roger Vadim’s 1959 adaptation, which was set in modern day Paris. Actually, even the 1999 Gen-X version Cruel Intentions is pretty good, which just goes to show how rich the source material is. There are also Korean and Chinese versions from 2003 and 2012 respectively.

The amazing femme fatale in red mini-dress and spike heels on the Grandi Edizioni Internazionali edition above—who of course looks nothing like the hoop skirted and white-powdered Marquise de Merteuil described by Laclos—was painted by the abundantly talented Bendetto Caroselli. Repackaging classics in this way (such as we’ve shown you before here and here) is usually a form of false advertising, but in this case we suspect many readers came away satisfied.

Getting down to the fine details.

Two issues of Adam to share—one from Australia and one from the U.S.—proved too much work for one day, so we posted Aussie Adam yesterday, and today we’re on to the American Adam. These magazines have no relationship to each other apart from coincidentally sharing a name. U.S. Adam relies on photo covers rather than painted art, shows a dedication to cheesecake photography that far outstrips its Australian cousin, and also has less fiction. However, what fiction it does offer extends beyond Aussie Adam’s adventure and crime focus, such as the short piece from counterculture icon Harlan Ellison called, “The Late Great Arnie Draper.” We’ve scanned and shared the entirety of that below if you’re in a reading mood.

The striking cover model here goes by the name Lorrie Lewis, and inside you get burlesque dancer Sophie Rieu, who performed for years at the nightclub Le Sexy in Paris, legendary jazzman Charles Mingus, and many celebs such as Jane Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Sharon Tate, and the Rolling Stones. There’s also a feature on the Dean Martin movie Murderer’s Row, with Ann-Margret doing a little dancing, and blonde stunner Camilla Sparv demonstrating how to properly rock a striped crop-top. We managed to put up more than forty scans, which makes this an ideal timewaster for a Monday. Enjoy.

Carmilla’s in the mist.

When we shared a poster for Roger Vadim’s Il sangue e la rosa way back in 2009 we didn’t talk about the movie. But since we found this beautiful alternate promo to show you, we thought we’d watch the film again to refresh our memories.

It’s an ethereal gothic drama about a woman caught in a love triangle who is subsequently possessed by a vampire after an accidental explosion opens the monster’s centuries buried tomb. It feels like a supernatural version of Emily Brontë, but the source material was actually from Sheridan le Fanu, whose vampire story Carmilla predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by more than twenty years.

Long on lustful gazes, lingering fog, and lilting harp music, short on chills and thrills, Il sangue e la rosa is more of a Vadim art piece than a conventional film, but it has some charms, personified by Elsa Martinelli and Annette Vadim, aka Annette Stroyberg. It premiered in Italy today in 1961. See the other poster here.

Passant le temps à Saint-Tropez.

An idyllic scene on the French Riviera is revealed in these three photos, as Danish actress Mirette Stroyberg and her sister Annette Vadim—who was married to director Roger Vadim and had starred in his film Les liaisons dangereuses, aka Dangerous Liaisons—walk on Pampelonne Beach one afternoon in 1959. Remember—the good life is as near as the next sunny day. 

Confidential goes full throttle on the high seas.

On this Confidential from February 1965 the publishers give their cut-and-paste artists a month off and grace the cover with a simple portrait of Brigitte Bardot and her famed pout. Inside the editors air out her love life in a way that today would be called slut shaming—pretty much stock-in-trade for Confidential. The suggestion is she won’t come to the U.S. to act because she’s busy Morockin’ around the clock with Moroccan-born producer Bob Zaguri. Elsewhere in the issue you get Romy Schneider, Jean Harlow, Alain Delon, Peter O’Toole, love behind the Iron Curtain, and an outraged report on pharmaceutical companies marking up medicines 200%, 500%, even 7,000%. Yes, medicines cost too much in the U.S. even back then. But don’t take our word for it. Take Confidential’s—their story ends by declaring that drug companies have Americans by the balls and the only way to avoid the drug price racket is to not get sick.

 
But moving on, as we mentioned last week, we wanted to look at tabloid attitudes toward  gay culture, and this issue has two articles along those lines. The first involves gay cruises off the Florida coast, an activity Confidential informs readers was devised as a way to avoid Dade County vice cops. Once the boats were in international waters therewas no law, local or federal, which could be applied against shipboard activities. We’ll come back to that in a sec. The other story involves what Confidential describes as the middlesex—i.e. people who lack strong masculine or feminine characteristics. The story is concerned with this only as a social issue and makes no mention of physically intersex persons who genetically are neither male nor female.
 
For Confidential the issue is simple—men are no longer macho enough and women are no longer (submissively) alluring enough. Of course, gay men are the ultimate villains here, and to make the topic emotional for readers Confidential paints a picture of an America devoid of Jayne Mansfields and Lana Turners. The article’s author Harold Cimoli sums it up this way: “As female busts and hips grow ever narrower even Playboy may have trouble keeping its broad-watchers supplied with bosomy playmates.” And there’s also this tidbit: “Designers of both types of clothing are poaching unforgivably on the styles of each other. The main hope must be the evolution of an entirely new style of ensemble for these new phenomena and a new branch of the industry to supply it.” Were they really this comically worried about visual identification issues? Of course they were—what could be more disturbing to guardians of a prevailing social structure than people managing to wriggle out of their pre-assigned boxes?
 
The story on gay cruises is a bit more typical of mid-century tabloids—it’s just a takedown piece. Gay men are blithely described as “lavender lads,” “minces,” and other words we wouldn’t dare dirty our website with. The effusiveness of the magazine’s hateful and sneerful terminology suggestsjust how certain Confidential editors were that homosexuality was completely beyond the pale. And yet, nearly every issue harped on the subject, either directly or indirectly. For instance, here we get full reportage on a maritime cabaret show featuring drag queens, followed by detailed descriptions of music, dancing, and gambling. You’d almost think the writer Gaye Bird—nice, right?—was actually there.
 

The cruise is eventually reported to the boat rental agency in Miami, whose owner vows that he will never again allow his vessels to be used for such debauchery. The response from the organizer of the cruises was this: “There are approximately one-hundred thousand boats or ships of some sort or another. I think we’ll be able to find some way to balance supply and demand.” Ouch—zinged right in the Econ 101s. Doubtless Confidential expected the congressional switchboard to light up over this outrageous appropriation of boats meant for exclusively heterosexual usage, but whether it happened we can’t say—the story ends there. And Confidential readers were left to endure thirty days of disquiet until the next gay bashing issue came out. We won’t wait quite that long—we’ll explore this subject in another tabloid soon. More scans below.

It’s one thing to jilt a woman, and other thing entirely to jilt a woman who has a gun.

This is one of the cooler posters you’re likely to see. It’s a West German promo for Brigitte Bardot’s 1961 comedy La bride sur le cou, aka Please, Not Now! A production image from the movie was used on one of the Goodtime Weekly calendar pages we shared last July, which you may want to have a look at. Basically, La bride sur le cou is a screwball comedy about Bardot’s broken love life. It starts with an amusing sequence of her driving through Paris leaving chaos in her wake, and the rest of the movie continues in the same vein, with a gas explosion, a bobsled hijacking, a waiter who levitates, and more.

All of this starts when Bardot realizes her boyfriend is cheating. She follows him to a restaurant and hits him in the face with a cream pie bought especially for the purpose, and for this act earns the attention of a persistent suitor who spends the rest of the movie trying to get her in bed. But Bardot is interested only in exacting revenge against her ex, which she intends to achieve by shooting his new girlfriend. La bride sur le cou is completely silly, but it has great direction, comedy that works on both subtle and outrageous levels, and an overwhelming aura of good-natured fun. It’s also very sexy. Highly recommended. It premiered in West Germany today in 1961.

Whisper promises a nude Elizabeth Taylor. Does it deliver?

Elizabeth Taylor nude! Those sneaks at Whisper raised the hopes of millions of readers who bought this March 1965 issue, but inside revealed that the whited-out silhouette on the cover with Richard Burton is in reality a wooden statue of Taylor made to promote her role in The Sandpiper. It was to be unveiled at a party aboard the Queen Mary, but producer Joseph E. Levine connived a way for the sculpture to be stowed below decks so his star Carroll Baker wouldn’t be upstaged. In the end, nobody at the party saw the Taylor statue and Carroll Baker—once again wearing that amazing dress, by the way—ruled the day.

Elsewhere in the issue readers are treated to a story about French gadabout Roger Vadim, who had been involved with Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, and various other high profile women, but at the moment was with rising star Jane Fonda. Whisper outs Vadim on pretty much every bad act of his life and issues a dire warning to Fonda that she should get out of the relationship while she can. Fonda must not have listened, though, because she and Vadim were married for eight years and along the way made a classic movie called Barbarella and a daughter named Vanessa.

Whisper also tells the story of a girl cruelly sold into prostitution by her mother, shares the seedy career tribulations of a hard luck New Orleans stripper named Babs Darling, and exposes the vast flesh racket in Seoul, South Korea, where sex slaves from the “reeking slums” of the city were being purchased by American soldiers, some them “Negroes.” Best line: Themselves the descendents of slaves, they now own light-skinned slaves of their own. The next sentence should be, but isn’t—And white soldiers, many the descendents of slave owners, scoff: “Amateurs.”Scandal, irony, outrage, sex, death, crime, and plenty of casual racism—Whisper delivers it all. Nude Liz Taylor? Not so much. Scans below.

A great future in plastics.

Somehow, among many casual cinema fans, Barbarella is thought of as Jane Fonda’s starmaking role, if not her debut. It wasn’t. She had debuted eight years earlier and had already earned three Golden Globe nominations and a BAFTA nomination for her acting. The fact that she was so established makes her decision to play Barbarella all the more remarkable, though there’s little doubt the film’s director, her then-husband Roger Vadim, had some influence. This shot, a centerfold from Photoplay magazine, is from 1968, and below you see a shot that is aaaalmost identical, but, if you look closely, not quite.

Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the panting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web