Vintage Pulp

June 27 2023

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

Live fast, die young, and leave a terribly damaged corpse thanks to James Bond.

As with Shaft a few days ago, we can’t add much new to the longtime assessments of 1973’s Live and Let Die. We wouldn’t discuss the film at all except that the posters were the work of illustration wizard Robert McGinnis. However, in light of our Shaft examination, there’s an angle we can take: Live and Let Die was the first Bond movie to be clearly influenced by the diversification of Hollywood, becoming the first to include numerous black cast members in speaking roles. Since most participants in a Bond movie are there to get killed, including, often, all but one of the women he sleeps with, the rules didn’t change even with the diversified cast. This leads to head villain Yaphet Kotto suffering perhaps the most brutal death in the franchise, and hottie Gloria Hendry departs for the hereafter too, which is criminal, in our view. But their participation was a landmark and gives Live and Let Die, even today, a different feel and look than the usual Bond fare.

On other fronts, Live and Let Die seems like the movie in which Bond stuntwork kicked into high gear, beginning a push that would soon extend beyond the bounds of earthly physics. The speedboat chase produced a then-world record aerial leap of 110 feet. On the acting front, newcomer Roger Moore displayed even at the outset of his Bond journey some of the cheeseball tendencies that would eventually take over his later portrayals, but it works fine. He was probably one of the best looking actors in the world in 1973, and while he doesn’t have a chiseled physique, he’s still everything and a free refill. We consider Live and Let Die to be one of two good Moore outings as Bond, along with The Man with the Golden Gun. It’s certainly worth a watch, even if you’ve already seen it. And if you want to have a really fun night, watch it back-to-back with Shaft.

Live and Let Die, Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, Jayne Seymour, Geoffrey Holder, Gloria Hendry, Robert McGinnis, James Bond, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

December 19 2020

110 PERCENT

Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto give their all and then some in hard luck crime thriller.

Across 110th Street premiered today in 1972, which makes it one of the early arrivals in the blaxploitation wave that was sweeping American b-cinema. With its ample budget and its well established headliner in Anthony Quinn, you could make the case that it isn’t fully part of the genre, but we think it fits, even if it’s atypical. Outlier or not, you’ll see several faces in this that would soon become well known in blaxploitation, and you’ll also see Burt Young, later of Rocky and Chinatown.

Plotwise, the movie centers on odd couple cops—old school racist Quinn and college educated reformist Yaphet Kotto—thrown together à la In the Heat of the Night to solve an NYC murder/robbery. As familiar as this oil vs. water dynamic may be, the movie still comes together in exciting fashion thanks to the way it tracks the robbers’ storylines. They’re a trio of amateurs who ripped off the Mafia for $300,000 and now are being hunted by both crooks and cops. Quinn and Kotto must find these thieves before the Mafia turns Harlem into a war zone.

When the film was released it was criticized for its violence and bitter racial subtext, but upsetting the herd is one of the things it tries to achieve. And while it may not appeal to people’s better angels, it’s quite interesting, with the grit of Wally Ferris’s otherwise radically altered source novel left intact, and the central metaphor embodied in the title—that of which lines will be crossed and what the consequences will be—deftly observed. Across 110th Street is rough stuff, but well worth a watch.

New York City, Harlem, Across 110th Street, Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Franciosa, Antonio Fargas, Paul Benjamin, Richard Ward, Wally Ferris, Burt Young, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

June 26 2018

RUNAWAY TRUCK

Get in his way and he'll roll right over you.

The movie Truck Turner was originally written to star Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, or Ernest Borgnine, but none of them were available. American International Pictures exec Larry Gordon reportedly said, “Well, we can’t get any of them so now it’s a black picture.” Marvin, Mitchum, and Borgnine were lucky they dodged this Truck. Isaac Hayes was signed up and he plays an L.A. bounty hunter who chases down a pimp named Gator only to end up pitted against a powerful madame named Dorinda. The movie is poorly put together, which you wouldn’t guess from looking at its scores on sites like IMDB, where raters give it a 7.0. But we suspect those ratings derive from copious action and an amusingly bad script, particularly co-star Nichelle Nichols’ tour de force segment in which, as Dorinda, she parades her whores before a group of pimps and describes their assets in a colorful monologue that’s possibly the funniest moment from any blaxploitation movie. Here it is:

“Gentlemen, this is my family. These all prime cut bitches. $238,000 worth of dynamite. It’s Fort Knox in panties. Candy did seventeen thousand last year. Velvet, Miss Sophisticate, did twenty. Used to be a Paris model. Jess and Annette each did twenty-two five. Show ’em your wares, bitch. [bitch licks lips, strikes a pose] See what you can get if you’re good? That’s Turnpike. She did twenty-six five. She’s called Turnpike ’cause you gotta pay to get on and pay to get off. China, come here, baby. China did twenty-nine. Sweet piece a Oriental meat. Mmm, mmm, mmm. This is Frenchy. Gator used to call her Boeing 747. Show ’em why, bitch. [bitch shimmies] She did twenty-seven five. And that’s sweet Annette. Show ’em that smile, you sweet thing. She did thirty thou last year. And where’s my baby? That’s Taffy. This bitch grossed thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars working part time. Shit, her clients think she’s too good to fuck. They call her Colonel Sanders because she’s [bitch licks fingers] finger lickin’ good.”

So that’s pretty funny, in a horrible, un-2018 kind of way. The outtakes must have been uproarious. Nichols knocks this bit out of the park like a hanging curveball because she can act (in fact, watching how she makes those words sparkle is a clinic on the wide gap between screenwriting and an actor’s interpretation). Yaphet Kotto as the pimp Harvard Blue makes his role work because he can act too. But nobody else can. Luckily, as action eventually overtakes dialogue matters improve considerably, with the last third of the movie developing enough momentum to sustain viewer interest. There’s one other asset too—Hayes’ groovy soundtrack. But you don’t have to watch the movie to enjoy that, or Nichols’ monologue, which you can watch at this YouTube link while it lasts. It starts about forty seconds in. Otherwise, we recommend giving Truck Turner a pass unless your sense of humor is—like ours—inclusive of semi-inept Hollywood obscurities. If that’s the case, roll on. Truck Turner premiered in the U.S. in 1974.

Los Angeles, American International Pictures, Truck Turner, Isaac Hayes, Nichelle Nichols, Yaphet Kotto, Larry Gordon, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, Ernest Borgnine, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

December 25 2017

FOSTER CARE

Grier tries to foil an assassination plot.

It’s Christmas day, and what is the main thing everyone does today? They go overboard. So in that vein we have more posts for you than you could have rightly expected, though we’ll admit we wrote them in advance and right now we’re nowhere near a computer. We’re starting the X-mas treats with this vintage poster for the Pam Grier blaxploitation flick Friday Foster, a film that opened in U.S. today in 1975. After successes with Coffy, Foxy Brown, et al, American International Pictures steered Pam a bit more mainstream with the PG rated Sheba, Baby and learned from that mistake. So they turned the heat back up, scheduled a Christmas release date, and gave Grier fans a movie with twice the action, twice the humor, and twice the tongue-in-cheek factor as usual, plus three steamy Grier nude scenes rather than the usual two.

Grier plays a photo-journalist who tries to get a sneaky paparazzi shot of a reclusive millionaire only to find herself photographing an assassination attempt-turned-bloodbath. While American International kicked things up a notch, the customary Grier grit is missing, as too many wisecracks and camp moments leave the film without any heft. It almost seems as if, with a full blown international star on its hands and costs rising, American International decided to cut corners in pre-production. Script-wise Friday Foster is too formulaic and self-conscious. Soundtrack-wise, instead of songs performed by a viable R&B artist, it has cheeseball wacka wacka interstitial music, with chick singers trilling, “Hey Friday, whatcha doin’ girl, hey, whatcha doin’ girl whatcha doin’.” Direction-wise, four-time Grier collaborator Jack Hill has been tossed in favor of Arthur Marks, who came up directing episodes of the television show Perry Mason.

Friday Foster was Grier’s last go-round with American International, and a good thing, because somebody forgot she became popular playing a streetwise, ass-kicking, So-Cal soul sister. Her turn as a middle-class photo-journalist might have worked, but not with the support she needed chopped from under her. American International wanted to mainstream her, except it had no idea how to do it. But Grier’s still Grier, and even stuck in what feels like a washed out version of her better films, she remains as watchable as any star of her era. After another couple of years the work would come in spurts, a small part here, a television show there, an occasional lead role, yet bit by bit, appearance by appearance, Grier would stitch together a career spanning four decades and counting. Friday Foster is isn’t the best entry on her résumé, but even midding Grier is worthwhile Grier.

Friday Foster, Pam Grier, Eartha Kitt, Yaphet Kotto, Thalmus Rasulala, Rosalind Miles, Paul Benjamin, George Akimoto, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation, movie review

Vintage Pulp

January 27 2017

THE WORKING CLASS

Just being able to survive feels like success.

Tonight the Noir City Film Festival is screening the urban drama Blue Collar, possibly the best film on the ten-day slate. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and the underrated but indispensable Yaphet Kotto star, but this is Pryor’s show, his star turn. A trio of Detroit auto workers are driven by financial desperation to rob their own union hall. They end up netting three-hundred dollars. Trouble is the union, seeking insurance money, claims it was twenty thousand. The organized crime guy who backed the job isn’t interested in stories about a three hundred dollar take—he’s owed ten percent and that’s two grand. But there’s hope—the robbery also netted a notebook filled with information on illegal loans, and if Pryor and company can sell it maybe they can come out on top after all. But just how likely do you suppose that is?

Blue Collar is a brilliant work of art. Cinematic maverick Paul Schrader directed it, operating in a gritty milieu that would become his trademark. But the pressurized lives of the working class heroes are truly brought to life by the cast. Keitel studied under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, as well as at the HB Studio, while Kotto is a guy who studied at the Actors Mobile Theater Studio and made his professional acting debut in Othello, but Pryor the stand-up comic outacted them both, using self-contained fury, razor sharp humor, and just the right amount of improvisation. The man was a once-in-lifetime talent. His comedy was fused with desperation and pain, but Hollywood tried to harness the funny Pryor and jettison the rest. It was like removing his heart. He truly shone only in serious films, where he would break high tension with moments of humanizing comedy. Blue Collar was the best of the lot.

By today’s movie standards a couple of thousand dollars hardly seems like much to fret over. Audiences are used to crime films dealing with millions. But the small amounts here make the movie feel real. A 2016 study showed that half of adult Americans would not be able to come up with $400 in an emergency—they would have to sell something, borrow money, or not pay. Back in 1978, when Blue Collar was

made, real wages in the U.S. were higher than they are now, so the movie depicts travails among working class people who were better off than working class people are today. Let that sink in. We think this is a perfect movie to show in San Francisco in 2017, a city overrun by tech workers contentedly pushing longtime residents out. The movie won’t change anything in the city. But it will be remembered by the ticketholders at the screening.

Detroit, Blue Collar, HB Studio, Actors Mobile Theater Studio, Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto, Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, Paul Schrader, poster art, cinema, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

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.

October 4

1957—Sputnik Circles Earth

The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.

October 4

1970—Janis Joplin Overdoses

American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.

October 3

1908—Pravda Founded

The newspaper Pravda is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles living in Vienna. The name means “truth” and the paper serves as an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.

October 3

1957—Ferlinghetti Wins Obscenity Case

An obscenity trial brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the counterculture City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reaches its conclusion when Judge Clayton Horn rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl is not obscene.

October 3

1995—Simpson Acquitted

After a long trial watched by millions of people worldwide, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson subsequently loses a civil suit and is ordered to pay millions in damages.

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.