Femmes Fatales

March 23 2020

WISH GRANTED

If heaven were like this it would get crowded mighty fast.

We don’t believe in angels, but if we did this is pretty much what we’d want them to look like. This photo shows heavenly adult film actress Shauna Grant, who, like several other ’70s and ’80s adult film actresses, we’ve featured before. One reason we do it is because we see a line that extends from pulp all the way into porn via the former’s focus on sex. Though authors were not generally able to write explicitly about it at the time, sexual gratification was the prime motivator for many pulp characters. You also see it where pulp intersects film noir, but serious legal risk prevented filmmakers of the ’40s and ’50s from exploring the themes deeply. The pulp influenced literature of the ’50s, and the films of the ’60s pushed the envelope more, but were still constrained by censors.

Around the time Grant was making her debut in porn in 1982, directors en masse were beginning to rework pulp and film classics into thrillers with sex centrally placed. 1981’s Body Heat and The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1982’s I, the Jury and Cat People, 1984’s Against All Odds, and 1987’s No Way Out, are just a few examples. The trend continued through 1990’s The Grifters, 1994’s The Getaway, and beyond, with all these films making clear what was only hinted in source material dating back to the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s—guys will go to almost any length for sex. For real world proof of that, scroll down to yesterday’s Barcelona orgy story.

But usually it isn’t just sex that gets fictional males in trouble—it’s amazing sex. If it were just vanilla sex they wouldn’t lie, cheat, steal, and murder. No, it’s sex that blew their fuses. So that thread weaves neatly into porn, because porn was designed to implant concepts of sex that average people had never experienced—even if the experiences shown were not reality, but something more like performance art. Grant was one of the art’s most popular practitioners. And she fits with our ideas about pulp for another reason too—she’s freighted with pulp-like tragedy due to dying early via suicide today in 1984, two days after shooting herself in the head. We have a couple of other Grant items that might interest you, here and here.

Shauna Grant, nudity, deaths, suicide, nudity, xxx

Sex Files

October 27 2016

ADULT ORIENTED

American sex stars make a big splash in Japan.

As promised earlier this month, below we have more adult film posters from Japan for U.S. based productions. We’re pretty proud of these because you simply won’t find them anywhere else, or if so certainly not in the quality you see here. And we have at least a hundred more.

Neon Nights, 1981, with Veronica Hart.

Fiona on Fire, 1978, with Amber Hunt.

Sex Asylum 4, 1993, with Christy Canyon.

Little Orphan Dusty, 1978, with Rhonda Jo Petty.

Co-Ed Fever, 1980, with Annette Haven.

Barbara Broadcast, 1977, with Annette Haven and Harry Reems.

Insatiable II, aka Insatiable Part 2, 1984, with Marilyn Chambers.

Breaking It, 1984, with Traci Lords.

High School Memories, 1980, with Annette Haven.

On White Satin, 1980, with unknown poster star. We were able to visually identify all the main performers in this film and none of them seem to be the person shown here. This is not unusual for a Japanese poster. Their makers occasionally used the most photogenic person rather than the top-billed performer, but in any case we don’t know who this is.

All American Girls in Heat II, 1983, with Shauna Grant.

Veronica Hart, Amber Hunt, Christy Canyon, Rhonda Jo Petty, Annette Haven, Harry Reems, Marilyn Chambers, Traci Lords, Shauna Grant, poster art, cinema, xxx

Hollywoodland

April 4 2012

GRANT’S TOMB

The porn industry welcomed her with open arms. Two years later she was dead.

Above is a cover of Variety magazine published today in 1984 reporting the death of porn starlet Shauna Grant the previous month. Born Colleen Applegate in Minnesota, she became a top-earning adult film performer over her two-year career in Los Angeles, but was also a heavy cocaine user and was ambivalent at best about her work. In fact, despite her popularity with the paying public she sometimes had difficulty acquiring roles because directors were well aware that she had no zest for what she did and they believed it showed in her performances. But her lack of enthusiasm wasn’t just for her work—it was for her entire life, which was fueled by cash and parties, but also filled with hangers-on, bad men, and dodgy friends.

At some point she contracted herpes, and though many accounts assume it came from her career, it’s just as likely she got the disease from her many outside-the-industry acquaintances, considering the incredibly high infection rates among the general public. In any case, with a drug habit and an STD, as well as an abortion and a broken relationship weighing on her, not to mention a career that she was ashamed of, Grant shot herself in the head with a .22 rifle on 23 March, and appeared posthumously on the Variety cover above. We chose the photo below because she seems so isolated in it, even lonely. A while back we shared an amazing Japanese poster with her, which you can see here, and we’ll get back to more promo material from her later.

Los Angeles, Variety, Shauna Grant, Colleen Applegate, suicide, xxx

Modern Pulp

February 17 2010

GLITTER PALACE

She'll Grant your deepest wishes.

Japanese promo poster for the American porno flick Glitter, with an image of star Shauna Grant, 1983. Grant was considered one of the most beautiful adult actresses of her time, so we’ve provided some evidence below. One of porn’s most infamous cautionary tales, she committed suicide by shooting herself in the head with a rifle a year after this film was released.

Japan, Glitter, Shauna Grant, suicide, poster art, cinema, xxx

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

November 6

1935—Parker Brothers Buys Monopoly

The board game company Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie, who had designed the game (originally called The Landlord’s Game) to demonstrate the economic ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as a remedy for them. Parker Brothers quickly turns Monopoly into the biggest selling board game in America.

November 6

1991—Gene Tierney Passes Away

American actress Gene Tierney, one of the great beauties in Hollywood history and star of the seminal film noir Laura, dies in Houston, Texas of emphysema. Tierney had begun smoking while young as a way to help lower her high voice, and was hooked on cigarettes the rest of her life.

November 5

1937—Hitler Reveals His Plans for Lebensraum

Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting with Nazi officials and states his intention to acquire “lebensraum,” or living space for Germany. An old German concept that dated from 1901, Hitler had written of it in Mein Kampf, and now possessed the power to implement it. Basically the idea, as Hitler saw it, was for the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations to the east, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate those lands with a Germanic upper class.

November 5

1991—Fred MacMurray Dies

American actor Fred MacMurray dies of pneumonia related to leukemia. While most remember him as a television actor, earlier in his career he starred in 1944’s Double Indemnity, one of the greatest films noir ever made.

November 4

1955—Cy Young Dies

American baseball player Cy Young, who had amassed 511 wins pitching for five different teams from 1890 to 1911, dies at the age of 88. Today Major League Baseball’s yearly award given to the best pitcher of each season is named after Young.

November 4

1970—Feral Child Found in Los Angeles

A thirteen year-old child who had been kept locked in a room for her entire life is found in the Los Angeles house of her parents. The child, named Genie, could only speak twenty words and was not able even to walk normally because she had spent her life strapped to a potty chair during the day and bound in a sleeping bag at night. Genie ended up in a series of foster homes and was given language training but after years of effort by various benefactors never reached a point where she could interact normally in society.