Vintage Pulp

December 14 2022

BOLOGNESE RECIPE

Avelli treats moviegoers to a double helping of his art.

We recently shared a poster painted by Italian artist Tino Avelli and wanted to revisit his work. He was prolific, painting great promos for such well known films as The Man with the Golden Gun and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. We also recently saw a tarot deck he painted going for $3,000 at an auction site. We predict… we won’t be buying that.

Above you see two Avelli efforts for the 1975 film La bolognese. Usually we have an English title for you, but this one was never shown in the U.S. The Italian title refers to any person from the city of Bologna. We’ve seen the movie, and it’s a comedy, so we won’t get into it. Plus, it’s not funny anyway. It’s the type of thing where star Franca Gonella rides her bike with the wind blowing her skirt up and everyone she passes ends up in a ditch from staring too hard at her white panties. Big laughs.

Not that we’re above anything gratuitous, whether nudity, violence, or whatever. Vintage genre fiction is all about adding heaping helpings of fan service to most every narrative, therefore we are too. To prove it we’ve uploaded a nice shot of Gonella below—without her white panties. And you’d been thinking, “Hmm… not a lot of nudity on Pulp intl. lately.” Solved. We should add that Gonella made some crime and horror movies, so maybe she’ll return in the future.

Italy, Bologna, La bolognese, The Man with the Golden Gun, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Franca Gonella, Tino Avelli, poster art, cinema, nudity

Vintage Pulp

November 12 2022

A KISS BEFORE KILLING

Sometimes it's better if you don't go all the way.

Above is another case where the foreign promo material for a film surpasses the domestic version, something that happened increasingly as U.S. studios gave up on painted art, while foreign distributors kept on with the traditional ways. These two Italian promos were made for Quando baci una sconosciuta, which was produced in the U.S. as Once You Kiss a Stranger. The film stars the lovely Carol Lynley, so the odds of ending up with a nice domestic poster were high, but Warner Brothers flubbed it. Have a look at their effort below and we think you’ll agree it’s almost disgracefully bad. Meanwhile the Italian promos were painted by Tino Avelli, someone whose we’ve highlighted before, and while these don’t rise to the level as some of most magnificent posters from Italy, they’re still pretty nice.

Once You Kiss a Stranger is a reworking of Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel Strangers on a Train, but with a woman in one of the leads. These days many would complain that this is evil “gender swapping,” but dramatic plotlines are finite in number, therefore freshening up old material in this way has always been attractive to Hollywood. They’re doing it a bit more of late because today there are fewer new ideas than ever, and because ticket buyers—by which we mean the diverse people under age thirty who actually fuel profits—like it and put down good money to see it.

Lynley plays a deranged woman who intends to exchange murders with a golf pro played by Paul Burke. Lynley is about to be permanently committed to a mental institution, while Burke always finishes second in his tournaments to Phil Carey. Lynley offers to solve that problem by killing Carey, and expects Burke to kill her psychiatrist in exchange. Just as in the novel, as well as Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 cinematic adaptation, the key to making this plot device work is the protagonist

not believing what he’s being told. Once You Kiss a Stranger makes that part more realistic than either Highsmith or Hitchcock by simply having Burke agree to anything that gets the tanned and toned Lynley into bed. This is where casting a woman pays dividends. The entire entrapment is now in shorthand because everyone in the cinema understands the visceral need to get inside Lynley. Hell, for her we’d promise to rope the moon. We’d swear an oath while covered in goat’s blood. We’d swim a lake of fire.

Point is, you can understand Burke’s attitude being, “Uh huh… I hear you… murder… understood… can you take off your panties real slow?” However, Burke being led by his dick into trouble is the only improvement Once You Kiss a Stranger manages over what came before. The rest is a pale imitation of two scintillating sources, and done on a level dialogue-wise that Mystery Science Theater 3000 would epically mock. We can’t recommend it, but speaking only for ourselves, we’ll watch anything with Lynley. Full stop. Once You Kiss a Stranger, with her, Burke, Carey, and the lovely Martha Hyer aged forty-five and looking fantastic, premiered today in 1969.

Italy, Quando baci una sconosciuta, Once You Kiss a Stranger, Strangers on a Train, Carol Lynley, Paul Burke, Martha Hyer, Philip Carey, Peter Lind Hayes, Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Hitchcock, Tino Avelli, poster art, literature, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

September 24 2014

RIGHT NUMBER

Sommer isn’t over quite yet.

In June we shared a Japanese poster for Elke Sommer’s 1966 comedy Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number and talked about the movie a bit. Today we have two even better Italian promos for the same film. In Italy it was succinctly retitled Un bikini per Didi, and the art is by yet another Italian talent, this time Tino Avelli, who we haven’t featured before. We’ll have more from him later.

Italy, Tino Avelli, Un bikini per Didi, Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number, Elke Sommer, Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller, poster art, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 2

1919—Wilson Suffers Stroke

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed. He is confined to bed for weeks, but eventually resumes his duties, though his participation is little more than perfunctory. Wilson remains disabled throughout the remainder of his term in office, and the rest of his life.

October 2

1968—Massacre in Mexico

Ten days before the opening of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, a peaceful student demonstration ends in the Tlatelolco Massacre. 200 to 300 students are gunned down, and to this day there is no consensus about how or why the shooting began.

October 1

1910—Los Angeles Times Bombed

A massive dynamite bomb destroys the Los Angeles Times building in downtown Los Angeles, California, killing 21 people. Police arrest James B. McNamara and his brother John J. McNamara. Though the brothers are represented by the era’s most famous lawyer, Clarence Darrow, of Scopes Monkey Trial fame, they eventually plead guilty. James is convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. His brother John is convicted of a separate bombing of the Llewellyn Iron Works and also sent to prison.

October 1

1975—Ali Defeats Frazier in Manila

In the Philippines, an epic heavyweight boxing match known as the Thrilla in Manila takes place between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. It is the third, final and most brutal match between the two, and Ali wins by TKO in the fourteenth round.

September 30

1955—James Dean Dies in Auto Accident

American actor James Dean, who appeared in the films Giant, East of Eden, and the iconic Rebel without a Cause, dies in an auto accident at age 24 when his Porsche 550 Spyder is hit head-on by a larger Ford coupe. The driver of the Ford had been trying to make a left turn across the rural highway U.S. Route 466 and never saw Dean’s small sports car approaching.

September 30

1962—Chavez Founds UFW

Mexican-American farm worker César Chávez founds the United Farm Workers in California. His strikes, marches and boycotts eventually result in improved working conditions for manual farm laborers, and today his birthday is celebrated as a holiday in eight U.S. states.

September 29

1916—Rockefeller Breaks the Billion Barrier

American industrialist John D. Rockefeller becomes America’s first billionaire. His Standard Oil Company had gained near total control of the U.S. petroleum market until being broken up by anti-trust legislators in 1911. Afterward, Rockefeller used his fortune mainly for philanthropy, and had a major effect on medicine, education, and scientific research.