Femmes Fatales

August 17 2024

MACHINE GUN JEAN

Seberg indulges in a bit of overkill.

The shot you see here shows U.S. actress Jean Seberg and was made as a promo for her appropriately named 1971 French thriller Kill!, which was retitled for its U.S. run as Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! We’re not joking. There’s a commentary there, but we’re sure you can figure it out without our help. We gather the film is set in Spain, Tunisia, and Afghanistan, and deals with vigilante killings of drug and porn traffickers, which are investigated by an Interpol agent. Well, we love the idea. We’ll see if we can track it down.

Spain, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Kill!, Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!, Jean Seberg

Intl. Notebook

July 31 2024

DAWN OF TIME

These were the days of her life.

It’s been several years since we last shared an issue of the Spanish celebrity publication Colleción Idolos del Cine, but we still have a few sitting around. These magazines, which were miniature in size and only thirty-pages on average, were always devoted to a single star. The above example dates from 1958 and features U.S. actress Dawn Adams, who by that point had featured in such films as The Robe and House of Intrigue. She had also starred on television in such shows as Sherlock Holmes and The Third Man. The next year, 1959, would be big for her. She’d appear in eight films, including the hit Brigitte Bardot vehicle Voulez-vous danser avec moi? Inside Idolos, readers see Adams’ travels around Europe, meet her husband Don Vittorio Emanuele Massimo the Prince of Roccasecca, and learn about her upcoming films. Not bad for the palatable price of three pesetas. We have fourteen scans below. The previous Idolos we’ve posted, with Maria Schell and Pier Angeli, are here and here.

Spain, Colleción Idolos del Cine, The RobeHouse of Intrigue, Sherlock Holmes, The Third Man, Voulez-vous danser avec moi?, Come Dance with Me, Dawn Adams, Bruce Cabot, Don Vittorio Emanuele Massimo, cinema

Vintage Pulp

March 23 2024

JOAN THE CLUB

A cover collection to help Bofill your day.

Below: a small set from Spanish artist Joan BeltraÌn Bofill, who signed his work as “Noiquet,” here working for a pair of Rotterdam based publishers illustrating novels by Edward Multon, who was an alter ego of Dutch author Herman Nicolaas van der Voort. These are from 1967 and 1968.

Spain, Netherlands, Rotterdam, Joan BeltraÌn Bofill, Noiquet, Edward Multon, Herman Nicolaas van der Voort, cover art, cover collection, literature

Intl. Notebook

December 9 2023

A HOUSE AND A HOME

We've procured for ourselves a piece of Spain.

A quick note for Pulp Intl. visitors: we may post a bit less in the upcoming couple of weeks because we’re moving, and that will keep us pretty busy. We’ll be aiming for a seamless transition but anything can happen. If we really run out of time we’ll take an intermission, as we do periodically, but for now we’re planning to stay active. If we take a break it’ll be for only four or five days.

We’re moving because, after ages living in several interesting parts of the world, we’ve finally bought a house, and though we hate to exchange our easy mobility for anything resembling roots, as well as losing our current flat, you can’t run around from place to place renting forever, right? We’re moving just a quick drive south to a lovely town that’s architecturally protected, and has one of the last stretches of unruined

countryside and beach in southern mainland Spain. The house is right in the center of town above a couple of quaint shops and dates mainly back to 1870s. We say mainly because, like many old houses in Spain, it was expanded in sections. The earliest parts are older than the 1870s, but we’d have to dig through the local property registry to find the exact dates of previous works.

In any case, it’s one of newer structures in a town that has a castle and buildings from the 15th century. Our favorite part: in what will be one of the two offices (below), there’s a bizarrely steep stairway leading to a trapdoor that opens onto the second floor. But we’re going to keep the door closed and use the stairs as a bookcase. Not bad, right? The pulp will be majestic there. The open shelving you see at left will have custom doors in the vintage style of the rest of the house, and will hold our magazines (right now they’re holding two Champagne glasses we used to toast our purchase). All in all, we’re feeling pretty good about the place, and hopefully we’ll be happy there.

Spain

Vintage Pulp

October 19 2023

LA DONNA SUMMER

Gemser adds a few degrees to the equatorial heat.

Yup, Laura Gemser again. It’s just one of those things. La donna della calda terra premiered in Italy two days after Emanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali, so you get to enjoy her twice this week. Above are two posters for the former film, which was originally made in Spanish and released as La mujer de la tierra caliente, then retitled in English as Emanuelle – A Woman from a Hot Country, and, more succinctly, Fury. By this point Gemser’s Emanuelle series had pitted her against everything from slavers to cannibals, but here she headlines something close to a straight drama, as she meets Stuart Whitman while both are hitchhiking the hot backroads of Venezuela. As they sit together in a horse trailer being towed across the country, they tell each other their tragic histories.

We’ve made fun of the bizarre plots of Gemser’s movies, but this attempt at unsensationalistic drama is conceptually flat and the screenplay is terrible. Our favorite line: “Don’t pay too much attention to women. We have days in which we see everything distorted.” We’d retort that men have entire lifetimes in which they see everything distorted, which is why the world is fucked. *checking credits* Yeah, the screenplay was written by men. Well, they dropped the ball here, not just because of bad writing, but because—and we never thought we’d say this—Gemser’s movies need rampant weirdness to be watchable. So give up being normal and enbrace the bizarre. Bring on the slavers and cannibals. They were sorely missed. After premiering in Spain in July 1978, La donna della calda terra opened in Italy today the same year.

Spain, Italy, Venezuela, La donna della calda terra, Emanuelle - A Woman from a Hot Country, Fury, Laura Gemser, Stuart Whitman, Gabriele Tinti, Paola Senatore, Pilar Velazquez, Amel Amor, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, nudity, movie review

Vintage Pulp

May 31 2023

BELOVED AND LOST

Okay, first of all he never listened to me. That's where the blame for this really starts.

Above: an unusual cover for Hank Janson’s novel Beloved Traitor, published by the British imprint Roberts and Vinter in 1960, with a lettering style the company used to good effect on other novels. The cover painting is by the Spanish artist Joaquin Chacopino Fabré, sometimes known as merely Chaco. We have two more good examples of his work here, and we’ll see if we can dig up more later.

England, Spain, Roberts & Vinter, Hank Jansson, Stephen Daniel Frances, Joaquin Chacopino Fabré, Chaco, cover art, literature

Intl. Notebook

March 22 2023

HOUSE HUNTERS INTERNATIONAL

The foreign property thing is not as easy as they make it look on television.

We’ve been a little light with postings of late, but it isn’t our fault. We’ve been trying to buy a house, and naturally some of the free time we give to Pulp Intl. has been consumed by that activity. We made an offer—and had that offer accepted—on a lovely old pile of stone and tile built in 1840. Later the sellers backed out of the deal because— Well, we don’t know why. It seems as if they wanted us to assume all the risk, while assuming none themselves, and therefore refused to sign a contract committing them to the sale even though we were giving them a hefty deposit. They wanted us to give them a deposit that we had no chance to recoup if they backed out. And we thought—are these fucking people high?

However, pulp and house hunting occasionally meet, and it happened again yesterday when we came across a shelf of old paperbacks in a home we toured. The place hadn’t been occupied by humans since the 1970s, and at the moment is home to a lot of spiders and a litter of kittens. We’re looking for a house requiring a bit less rehabilitation, but it was an interesting place. We weren’t able to snag any of the books there (like we did that other time we ran across some in an old house), which is too bad, because there were a few vintage Spanish crime novels and some Agatha Christie. Anyway, once we get this house thing done we’ll devote more time to reading, scanning, and such, but for the moment, please bear with us.

Spain

Intl. Notebook

March 12 2023

PULP OPTICS

Wherever you look, there it is.

We’re back. We said we’d keep an eye out for pulp during our trip to Donostia-San Sebastián, and we did see some, though we couldn’t buy it—it was all under glass in a museum. The Tabakalera (above), a cultural space mainly focused on modern art, was staging an exhibit titled, “Evil Eye – The Parallel History of Optics and Ballistics.” A small part of the exhibition was a selection of Editorial Valenciana’s Luchadores del Espacio, a series of two-hundred and thirty-four sci-fi novels published from 1953 to 1963.

We snuck a few shots of the novels, which you can see below. Overall, though, what was on offer were photos, short films, political literature, and physical artifacts dealing with war and conflict. Since the participants were all artists, journalists, and witnesses from outside the U.S., everything naturally focused on wars that the U.S. started or sponsored—those ones they don’t teach in school. The pulp fit because of its suggestion that human conflict would continue even into outer space.

We also said we’d try to pick up some French pulp, and that side trip happened too. We managed to score several 1970s copies of Ciné-Revue that we’ll share a bit later, and those will feature some favorite stars. Though the collecting was fun, we’re glad to be back. The birthday party was a success, as always, and now we’re down south where the weather is gorgeous and hopes are always high. We’ll resume our regular postings tomorrow.

Spain, France, Donostia-San Sebastian, Editorial Valenciana, George H. White, José Luis Macías, cover art, literature, sci-fi

Vintage Pulp

February 22 2023

HUNG UP ON A WOMAN

Yes! Another fight over me successfully started. My work here is done.

We’ve never seen a fight over a woman that the woman influenced in any way except being seen as an object of ownership by testosterone filled guys, but for this piece of art for Roger Duchesne’s Faut les avoir bien accrochées we’re going with femme fatale-induced violence because of her lifted glass and smile. There’s a signature: “Marculeta,” which left us with some sleuthing to do. We think the illustrator is probably Alfredo Marculeta, a Basque artist, primarily known for comic book work, active in Spain and France during the 1950s and 1960s. Don’t quote us on it.

The title Faut les avoir bien accrochées has an amusing translation: “must have them well hung.” Ahem. Actually, though, we think the phrase is a colloquialism meaning to have one’s heart set on, or to have a strong heart. Don’t quote us on that either. We’d prefer if the title actually did mean being well hung. Then the femme fatale’s smile would be perfect: “Don’t bother fighting over me, boys. I must have them well hung.” This came from Éditions le Trotteur and was published in 1953.

France, Spain, Éditions le Trotteur, Roger Duchesne, Alfredo Marculeta, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

January 29 2023

WELL ROUNDED

What! A big bubble? Well, yours looks like five pounds of potatoes in a ten pound sack!

It seems like Florida novels are a distinct genre of popular fiction, and most of the books, regardless of the year of their setting, lament how the state is being drawn and quartered in pursuit of easy money. But those complaints are usually just a superficial method of establishing the lead characters’ local cred. Theodore Pratt, in his novel The Big Bubble, takes readers deep inside early 1920s south Florida real estate speculation in the person of a builder named Adam Paine (based on real life architect Addison Mizner), who wants to bring the aesthetic of old world Spain to Palm Beach—against the wishes of longtime residents.

Paine builds numerous properties, but his big baby is the Flamingo Club, a massive hotel complex done in Spanish and Moorish style. He even takes a trip to Spain to buy beautiful artifacts for his masterpiece. This was the most interesting part for us, riding along as he wandered Andalusia (where we live), buying treasures for his ostentatious palace. He buys paintings, tapestries, sculptures, an ornate fireplace, an entire staircase, basically anything that isn’t nailed down, even stripping monasteries of their revered artifacts. His wife Eve is horrified, but Paine tells her he’s doing the monks a favor because they’d otherwise go broke.

You may not know this, but Spain is pretty bad at preserving its ancient architecture. That’s another reason The Big Bubble resonated for us—because Spain is very Floridian in that it’s being buried under an avalanche of cheap, ugly developments. We love south Florida’s Spanish revival feel. What’s metastasized in Spain is a glass and concrete aesthetic that offers no beauty and weathers like it’s made of styrofoam. The properties are basically glass box tax dodges. The point is, reading The Big Bubble felt familiar in terms of its critique of real estate booms, but simultaneously we saw Paine as a visionary. He made us wish Spanish builders had a tenth of his good taste.

Since the book is set during the 1920s (and its title is so descriptive) you know Florida’s property bubble will burst. Paine already has problems to deal with before the crash. Pratt resolves everything in interesting fashion. He was a major novelist who wrote more than thirty books, with five adapted to film, so we went into The Big Bubble expecting good work, and that’s what we got. And apparently it’s part of a Palm Beach trilogy (though he set fourteen novels in Florida total). We’ll keep an eye out for those other two Palm Beach books (The Flame Tree and The Barefoot Mailman). In the meantime, we recommend The Big Bubble. Originally published in 1951, this Popular Library edition is from 1952 with uncredited art.

Spain, Florida, Palm Beach, Popular Library, Theodore Pratt, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 8

1918—Sgt. York Becomes a Hero

During World War I, in the Argonne Forest in France, America Corporal Alvin C. York leads an attack on a German machine gun nest that kills 25 and captures 132. He is a corporal during the event, but is promoted to sergeant as a result. He also earns Medal of Honor from the U.S., the Croix de Guerre from the French Republic, and the Croce di Guerra from Italy and Montenegro. Stateside, he is celebrated as a hero, and Hollywood even makes a movie entitled Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.

October 8

1956—Larsen Pitches Perfect Game

The New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitches a perfect game in the World Series against hated rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is the only perfect game in World Series history, as well as the only no-hitter.

October 7

1959—Dark Side of Moon Revealed

The Soviet space probe Luna 3 transmits the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The photos generate great interest, and scientists are surprised to see mountainous terrain, very different from the near side, and only two seas, which the Soviets name Mare Moscovrae (Sea of Moscow) and Mare Desiderii (Sea of Desire).

October 6

1966—LSD Declared Illegal in U.S.

LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.

October 5

1945—Hollywood Black Friday

A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.