Vintage Pulp

February 1 2026

TEMPEST ON A MOUNTAINTOP

Living in solitude away from other people sounds nice—until you need them around.

It hits like a thunderbolt? We’d say it lands like a slushball. The cabin-and-wilderness thriller Storm Fear stars Cornel Wilde as a robber who, wounded during a heist, flees with his two accomplices to an isolated mountain homestead occupied by a family of three. It’s basically The Desperate Hours with a snowstorm. If you’re wondering which came first, this or the classic Humphrey Bogart home invasion thriller, it’s Bogart by a few months. Both movies were based on novels published in 1954. Ideas come in waves, we guess.

The difference is that the robbers in The Desperate Hours are strangers, but in Storm Fear Wilde is homeowner Dan Duryea’s brother. We learn that Duryea’s wife Jean Wallace was once Wilde’s girlfriend and bore his child. We also learn that it was Wilde who actually bought the house, and see that Duryea is a haunted and struggling writer sunk in despair and on the cusp of abusiveness. It’s implied that Wilde might not be a crook if it weren’t for Duryea’s dependence.

Some websites say Wallace’s child is not Wilde’s, but it’s clearly indicated by a single sneaky line of dialogue—plus the poster says so. Very tangled, this web. To complicate matters more, Dennis Weaver plays a handyman sweet on Wallace. He wants her to leave Duryea and run away with him. And we thought living on a mountain got you away from the problems of the world. Well, not in vintage cinema. Melodramatic and spottily acted in parts, but effective in its second half, Storm Fear on the whole ends up an enjoyable b-movie. It premiered today in 1955.

Storm Fear, The Desperate Hours, Cornel Wilde, Jean Wallace, Dan Duryea, Lee Grant, Dennis Weaver, Clinton Seeley, Joseph Hayes, Steven Hill, poster art, cinema, movie review

Femmes Fatales

July 14 2025

SPACE CONSIDERATION

Hmm. I have to wonder—no parking what, exactly?

This 1954 promo image from Paramount Pictures features U.S. actress Mary Murphy. She appeared in some good movies, among them The Wild One and The Desperate Hours, and some dogs, such as Hell’s Island. Such is the norm in Hollywood. In the end, though, she accumulated about seventy credits in cinema and television, which is much better than the norm. Along the way she made one of the more amusing promo shots in history. At least, it’s amusing to us. Check here.

Paramount Pictures, The Wild One, Hell's Island, The Desperate Hours, Mary Murphy

Vintage Pulp

February 13 2022

WINTER HOURS

Desperate times, desperate measures.

Above: a Swedish poster for the hostage drama Skräckens timmar, better known as The Desperate Hours, starring Humphrey Bogart. This was adapted from the French poster, which has Roger Soubie art, but the movie opened in Sweden before it did in France, so credit this to Soubie though it isn’t attributed and somehow was released in public before his signed original. Such are the vagaries of vintage promo art. Skräckens timmar premiered in Sweden today in 1956.

Sweden, Skräckens timmar, The Desperate Hours, Humphrey Bogart, poster art, film noir, cinema

Vintage Pulp

March 16 2017

HOSTAGE HOUSE

Bogart counts down to zero hour.

This striking Roger Soubie promo poster for La maison des otages, aka The Desperate Hours, doesn’t leave much doubt about what happens to Humphrey Bogart, but even without the poster there wouldn’t be any doubt. Bogart stars, in his last villain role, as an ex-con who takes a family hostage in order to use their home as a hideout. During the Leave It To Beaver 1950s there was no way his character was going to go unpunished for pointing a gun at a kid. Even seeing it in the promo image below makes you cringe a little, doesn’t it? But the inevitable consequences of Bogart’s actions aren’t the point—how he struggles to maintain the constantly evolving hostage scenario is what generates the drama, and the imprisoned family aren’t his only problem. La maison des otages is a later noir, but a better one. It opened in France today in 1956.

France, La maison des otages, The Desperate Hours, Humphrey Bogart, Roger Soubie, poster art, cinema, film noir, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 12

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.

February 12

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 painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

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”.

February 10

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.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.