Modern Pulp

June 11 2024

BEACH BODIES

People get topless, bottomless, legless, headless—anything goes.

This fun Italian poster, which is uncredited, was created for the monster movie Spiaggia di sangue, which was originally filmed in the U.S. and released as Blood Beach in 1980, before reaching Italy today in 1981. We riffed on it many years ago because it’s nothing more than a left coast remix of Jaws on a frayed shoestring budget, not really deserving of a proper review, in our opinion. The producers were even sued by the Jaws franchise for using a catchphrase—Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water you can’t get to it—just a little too similar to that for the previous year’s Jaws 2—Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. We said last time that you never really see the monster. Actually, you do, briefly, at the end, in all its papier mâché glory. Total. Letdown. Don’t visit Blood Beach. Instead, look at the lobby cards below and call it a day.

Italy, Titanus, Spaggia di sangue, Blood Beach, Jaws, Jaws 2, David Huffman, Mariana Hill, John Saxon, poster art, cinema, horror

Vintage Pulp

April 13 2022

THE ANALOG MATRIX

You moved like they do. I've never seen anyone move that fast.

Usually when we share a foreign poster for a film it’s because the foreign version is markedly better. The original poster for Bruce Lee’s Hong Kong-produced martial arts thriller Tang shan da xiong is actually pretty nice, but the Matrix-like motion capture attempt on this Italian version is just too cool to ignore. In Italy the film was titled Il furore della Cina colpisce ancora, or “China’s fury strikes again,” and the art is by Averado Ciriello. It’s an inspired effort, which he almost equals on version two, at bottom. There are also two Japanese posters at this link, and it’s here that we mention that the movie was titled in English The Big Boss and Fists (not Fist) of Fury.

Bruce Lee movies are not to be watched for their acting or complex plots, and the dialogue in this one is laugh-out-loud bad. The film is a morality play about Lee, an expert fighter, having promised his wise old uncle never to fight again because “violence is never the answer.” Of course he’s immediately dropped into a pit of evil when his new job in an ice factory turns out to be a front for drug smuggling. His intervention in the racket comes exactly too late to help his cousin, who’s murdered by the villains, but when he finally fights, it’s with lightning quickness and almost mystical ability, as he lethally wades through hoards of baddies and cripples the smuggling enterprise single-handedly, or double-fistedly. Maybe violence is the answer after all.

But it isn’t quite that easy. These traffickers didn’t reach the top of the heap for nothing. Their continued commitment to violence demands that Lee either walk away or willingly descend into the same cycle. As always there’s a final showdown with a crafty old karate master who pushes Lee to his limits. His moral progression from purity through temptation, corruption, shame, revenge, and consequences is cheesy but it’s also very entertaining, and one thing is clear. He never needed digital help to dazzle the eye. He’d demonstrate his gifts in three more movies, then be gone, at the age of thirty-two, with his final film—his biggest hit Enter the Dragon—released posthumously. Tang shan da xiong premiered in Hong Kong in 1971 and reached Italy today in 1973.

Italy, Hong Kong, Titanus, Tang shan da xiong, The Big Boss, Fists of Fury, Bruce Lee, Maria Yi, James Tien, Averado Ciriello, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

January 3 2017

A BALLESTER QUINTET

Anselmo Ballester helped set the artistic standard in the competitive world of Italian movie illustrators.

Anselmo Ballester is yet another virtuoso poster artist from Italy, where cinema promos were taken perhaps more seriously as art pieces than anyplace in the world. We’ve documented many of these Italian geniuses, including Mafé, Luigi Martinati, Sandro Symeoni, Mario de Berardinis, and others. Ballester, born in 1897, predated nearly all of his colleagues (only Martinati was born earlier) and enjoyed a fifty year career working for studios such as Cosmopolis, Titanus, Twentieth Century Fox, and RKO Radio Pictures. He also worked in commercial and political advertising. For the titles of the above works just check the keywords below. They’re in top-to-bottom order in Italian and English.

Italy, Cosmopolis, Titanus, Twentieth Century Fox, RKO Radio Pictures, Trinidad, Affair in Trinidad, Femmine del mare, Rough Tough and Ready, Destinazione Budapest, Assignment Paris, A 30 milioni di Km dalla Terra, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Il diritto di uccidere, In a Lonely Place, Anselmo Ballester, poster art, cinema

Vintage Pulp

December 22 2008

GRIP OF FEAR

Holding on for dear life.

La Ciociara aka Two Women is another film that isn’t pulp or noir, but whose poster art is everything pulp aficionados love. It would fit perfectly on the cover of a Carter Brown book. If you’re a film lover you know director Vittorio de Sica made The Bicycle Thief, which makes this WWII drama based on a novel by Alberto Moravia well worth a screening. Sophia Loren and Jean-Paul Belmondo starred, and it opened today in Italy in 1960.

Italy, Titanus, La Ciociara, The Bicycle Thief, Two Women, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Moravia, Carter Brown, Sophia Loren, poster art, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 13

1970—Angela Davis Arrested

After two months of evading police and federal authorities, Angela Davis is arrested in New York City by the FBI. She had been sought in connection with a kidnapping and murder because one of the guns used in the crime had been bought under her name. But after a trial a jury agreed that owning the weapon did not automatically make her complicit in the crimes.

October 12

1978—Sid Vicious Arrested for Murder

Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious is arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen is found in their room at New York City’s Chelsea Hotel. Vicious and Spungen had a famously stormy relationship, but Vicious proclaims he is innocent. He is released on bail and dies of a heroin overdose before a trial takes place.

October 12

1979—Adams Publishes First Hitchhiker's Book

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in a series, is published by Douglas Adams. The novels follow on the heels of the tremendously successful British television series of the same name.

October 11

1976—China Coup Thwarted

The new head of the Chinese Communist Party, Hua Goufeng, snuffs out a coup led by Chairman Mao’s widow Jiang Qing and three other party members. They become known as the Gang of Four, and are tried, found guilty of treason, and receive death sentences that are later commuted to lengthy prison terms.

October 11

1987—Loch Ness Expedition Ends

A sonar exploration of Scotland’s Loch Ness, called Operation Deepscan, ends after a week without finding evidence that the legendary Loch Ness Monster exists. While the flotilla of boats had picked up three sonar contacts indicating something large in the waters, these are considered to be detections of salmon schools or possibly seals.

October 10

1971—London Bridge Goes Up

After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in the resort town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

October 10

1975—Burton and Taylor Marry Again

British actor Richard Burton and American screen star Elizabeth Taylor secretly remarry sixteen months after their divorce, then jet away to a second honeymoon in Chobe Game Park in Botswana.