STIRRING IT UP

Rub-a-dub-dub, a girl and her tub…

By now you know we’re really into these promos for Japanese ama movies, so at top is a poster for Kuikomi ama: Midare-gai, aka Marked Ama: Stirred Up Shell. This is the first one we’ve seen that offers a good look at one of the ama’s most important tools. No, not that, silly. We mean her wooden tub, which floats on the water’s surface attached to its owner by a rope. Typically they’re a bit larger than the one pictured, and are used to hold whatever she finds. One source said they were used as buoys that she clung to in order to rest between dives, but we aren’t too sure on that. By chance we ran across some black and white ama photographs from the 1950s and we’ll put those up soon.

But getting back to the movie, basically you get Ryoko Watanabe headlining the standard plot of illicit sex in a small fishing village. Everything is pretty good natured until a new arrival upsets the delicate local equilibrium, triggering jealousy and revenge. As with other ama movies, this one is played for both laughs and drama, and ultimately the purpose is to show lots of skin. Since you’ll have a hard time tracking this down, we’ve provided some of Ryoko’s below in a cool series that runs from day to night. She made about a dozen films, but we don’t know if they’re available outside Japan. We hope to run across her again. Kuikomi ama: Midare-gai premiered in Japan today in 1982.

Update: As promised, those vintage ama photographs.

Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1971—Mariner Orbits Mars

The NASA space probe Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully when it begins circling Mars. Among the images it transmits back to Earth are photos of Olympus Mons, a volcano three times taller than Mount Everest and so wide at its base that, due to curvature of the planet, its peak would be below the horizon to a person standing on its outer slope.

1912—Missing Explorer Robert Scott Found

British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his men are found frozen to death on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where they had been pinned down and immobilized by bad weather, hunger and fatigue. Scott’s expedition, known as the Terra Nova expedition, had attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole only to be devastated upon finding that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them there by five weeks. Scott wrote in his diary: “The worst has happened. All the day dreams must go. Great God! This is an awful place.”

1933—Nessie Spotted for First Time

Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster while walking back from church along the shore of the Loch near the town of Foyers. Only one photo came out, but of all the images of the monster, this one is considered the most authentic.

1969—My Lai Massacre Revealed

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre, which had occurred in Vietnam more than a year-and-a-half earlier but been covered up by military officials. That day, U.S. soldiers killed between 350 and 500 unarmed civilians, including women, the elderly, and infants. The event devastated America’s image internationally and galvanized the U.S. anti-war effort. For Hersh’s efforts he received a Pulitzer Prize.

1918—The Great War Ends

Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside of Compiègne in France, ending The Great War, later to be called World War I. About ten million people died, and many millions more were wounded. The conflict officially stops at 11:00 a.m., and today the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is annually honored in some European nations with two minutes of silence.

1924—Dion O'Banion Gunned Down

Dion O’Banion, leader of Chicago’s North Side Gang is assassinated in his flower shop by members of rival Johnny Torrio’s gang, sparking the bloody five-year war between the North Side Gang and the Chicago Outfit that culminates in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

1940—Walt Disney Becomes Informer

Walt Disney begins serving as an informer for the Los Angeles office of the FBI, with instructions to report on Hollywood subversives. He eventually testifies before HUAC, where he fingers several people as Communist agitators. He also accuses the Screen Actors Guild of being a Communist front.

A collection of red paperback covers from Dutch publisher De Vrije Pers.
Uncredited art for Hans Lugar's Line-Up! for Scion American publishing.
Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

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

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web