Vintage Pulp

April 11 2015

MISSION: UNPIMPABLE

He may be her pimp, but he certainly isn’t her boss.

In Italian a “magnaccio” is a pimp, and Il magnaccio deals with a pimp nicknamed the Little Prince who is loved by his live-in prostie, but whose affection he either ignores or violently rebuffs. When she disappears the Prince replaces her, but she’s never far from his mind, and this being giallo we know disappearances don’t last. And indeed she turns up again, seemingly by chance, and the dysfunctional lovers get a chance to resolve unfinished business—assuming they don’t kill each other first. The movie stars Franco Citti, Riccardo Salvino, Elina de Witt, and Silvana Venturelli, who we last saw in the Radley Metzger mind trip Esotika Erotika Psicotika.

There’s confusion online about whether Il magnaccio premiered in 1967 or 1969. IMDB says ’69, but a lot of Italian sites say ’67. We say it was 1969. We went outside the film universe, located the soundtrack album, and found that it was released today in 1969. The promo poster above, which is what we really wanted to talk about, was painted by Giovanni di Stefano. He obviously is not the Italian con artist Giovanni di Stefano (though he would fit nicely on Pulp Intl.) nor, even more obviously, the fifteenth century sculptor Giovanni di Stefano. This particular Giovanni di Stefano—who according to all evidence has one of the most common names to be found in Italy—is yet another very good illustrator whose original work goes for exorbitant amounts of money today. We plan to show you more of his output later.

Italy, Arvo Film, Il magnaccio, Giovanni di Stefano, Franco Citti, Riccardo Salvino, Elina de Witt, Silvana Venturelli, giallo, poster art, cinema

Vintage Pulp

September 29 2014

ESOTIK DANCE

It's exotic, erotic, and psychotic—but is it good?

When Radley Metzger’s softcore movie The Lickerish Quartet was released overseas, its Italian distributors rightly decided that was a stupidish title for a movie and changed it to Esotika Erotika Psicotika. Unfortunately, Esotika Erotika Psicotika sounds glossier and more sophisticated than what you ultimately receive here. What you get is a rich, jaded couple and their surly son who watch 16-millimeter porno loops in their castle for thrills. One night they go out and encounter a motorcycle stunt rider who resembles a woman in one of the loops. They invite her back for what they hope will be a night of debauchery, but which turns out to be less conventional fuck than extended mindfuck. It quickly becomes apparent why the movie opened with a Luigi Pirandello quote pondering the nature of reality, as time and space soon become malleable, leading toward an ending that questions the truth of everything that came before.

The movie received good reviews when released, but we suspect much of that owes to its novelty and Metzger’s previous successes with Camille 2000 and The Dirty Girls. In other words, it hasn’t aged well. It’s like that summer you wore an orange shirt and your friends lauded you for experimenting with your wardrobe, but later you saw a photo of that night and realized you looked like a traffic cone with shoes. Like that shirt, this movie was a bold experiment that made sense at the time but seems a bit silly now. On the plus side, it’s shot on location at Balsorano Castle in L’Aquila, Italy, so at least the audience was able to indulge its fantasies of running away to Abruzzo. Esotika Erotika Psicotika, with Silvana Venturelli, Erika Remberg, and others, premiered in Italy today in 1972.

Italy, L’Aquila, The Lickerish Quartet, Esotika Erotika Psicotika, Camille 2000, The Dirty Girls, Radley Metzger, Silvana Venturelli, Erika Remberg, Luigi Pirandello, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

December 1

1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott

In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.

November 30

1936—Crystal Palace Gutted by Fire

In London, the landmark structure Crystal Palace, a 900,000 square foot glass and steel exhibition hall erected in 1851, is destroyed by fire. The Palace had been moved once and fallen into disrepair, and at the time of the fire was not in use. Two water towers survived the blaze, but these were later demolished, leaving no remnants of the original structure.

November 29

1963—Warren Commission Formed

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However the long report that is finally issued does little to settle questions about the assassination, and today surveys show that only a small minority of Americans agree with the Commission’s conclusions.

November 28

1942—Nightclub Fire Kills Hundreds

In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the fashionable Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people. Patrons were unable to escape when the fire began because the exits immediately became blocked with panicked people, and other possible exits were welded shut or boarded up. The fire led to a reform of fire codes and safety standards across the country, and the club’s owner, Barney Welansky, who had boasted of his ties to the Mafia and to Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin, was eventually found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.