Vintage Pulp

July 21 2026

007 + 777

What does that add up to? Surprisingly little.

So many low budget Italian spy movies. Will we ever run out? No—but we might vow to stop watching them, since they’re so bad. The spy adventure Agente Segreto 777 – Invito a uccidere, which premiered in Italy today in 1966, is a sequel to the 1965 movie Agente segreto 777 – Operazione Mistero. We gave that film extremely short shrift when we wrote about it eight years ago because it was such a bore. But good poster art always suckers us. These masterpieces were painted by yet another Italian virtuoso—Edmondo De Amicis (not the writer of the same name)—and his excellent work convinced us to set aside our many reservations and screen Invito a uccidere.

In this installment of the 777 series, Tiziano Cortini is drummed out of the spy service for health reasons, so he decides to make some fast lira by selling off a valuable secret formula he knows of that exists in three pieces—all are needed for the science to function, and he needs to assemble them before selling them. He soon finds himself hunted by shadowy operatives who want the formula, courted by his ex-employers who’ve seen the error of their ways, and hounded by cops who don’t like the fact that bodies have started piling up.

There’s really nothing to this movie. It’s another throwaway Bond-inspired thriller, but lacking adequate budget, deft scripting, good onscreen performances, and actorly charisma. We know what some of you are thinking: There were spy movies before Bond. Yes, but the influence here is clear, from the structure to the quips to the easy sex. Interestingly, Cortini has a co-screenwriting credit. He must have been like, “Okay, I’ll do a sequel to Operazione Mistero but I’ll write my part this time. That last script was total gash.” Breaking news—he’s no better than who he replaced. Here’s an example:

“Hey, where did you learn to fly, pal?

“Used to date an airline hostess.”

Because hostesses fly planes? Even as a quip it’s weak. Tongue-in-cheek isn’t always smart or good. Cortini, who looks like an overworked high school chemistry teacher, doesn’t have the spark to carry this film. We wonder if he wrote the scene where his character plays checkers with glasses of brandy. Every piece you jump, you have to drink. But is it really winning when you pass out? More importantly, is it winning when you watch this movie? The answer is, resoundingly, no. But here’s the good news: Agente Segreto 777 – Invito a uccidere isn’t bad enough to stop us watching old Italian spy movies. Which means we’ll be complaining about another one in this space soon.

Italy, Agente Segreto 777 - Invito a uccidere, A Ticket to Die, Tiziano Cortini, Hélène Chanel, Claudie Lange, Umberto Raho, Umi Raaho, Halina Zalewska, Edmondo De Amicis, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

July 20 2026

CRIMSON AND TROUBLE

In vintage fiction there's no hair color that leads to more danger.

We know what you’re thinking. Blondes! But in our reading of vintage fiction it’s the redheads that more often lead down the danger path. This is of course unquantifiable in the end, but that’s our take. This cover with a dangerous looking redhead was painted by Benedetto Caroselli for Maurice Limat’s 1964 novel Il posto della violenza, published by Edizioni Periodici Italiani for its macabre series I Capolavori della Serie KKK Classici dell’Orrore.

We’ve shared a few EPI covers. What makes this one a bit cooler than average is that the rear has an ad promoting a 1964 movie titled Le ore nude. We took special notice of it right away because that’s the film’s star Rossana Podestà there in the corner, and we’ve featured her a few times, including recently. She and Caroselli will certainly return. Meanwhile, some of our favorite redheads already in the website are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Italy, Edizioni Periodici Italiani, Le ore nude, Maurice Limat, Benedetto Caroselli, Rossana Podesta, cover art, literature

Femmes Fatales

July 20 2026

AUTOMATICS FOR THE PEOPLE

In her experience it's best to be over-prepared.

Above: a promo image of U.S. star Tamara Dobson from her 1973 action flick Cleopatra Jones. We’ve touched upon the film and its sequel Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold plenty, so you can click the keywords below to see what we have. We’ll just say the movies are pretty good for low budget action, but even if they were terrible, anything that introduced Dobson, plus gave Shelley Winters and Stella Stevens work, would be a worth their weight in gold.

Cleopatra Jones, Tamara Dobson, blaxploitation

Vintage Pulp

July 19 2026

FOUR OF A KIND

These queens can't be topped.

Kudos to French artist Jean Mascii for his bang-up work on this promo poster for Les ogresses, a movie we became curious about mainly because of its title. Ogresses? Could that mean the same as the English word “ogress,” as in a female ogre? How interesting to us former fantasy gamers (it was our primary weekend activity before we discovered to our shock that girls liked us). The ogresses here seem to be Raquel Welch, Capucine, Monica Vitti, and Claudia Cardinale. We’re talking mandatory viewing.

Les ogresses was originally made in Italy as Le fate. Another interesting title. The French, as we suspected, translates literally, while the Italian translates as “the fairies.” So there’s magic at work? But the movie was titled in English The Queens. Less magical, more authoritative, but we suppose the titles all work for a movie consisting of these four beautiful stars.

They each headline a vignette: Vitti plays a hitchhiking sexual tease, Cardinale a volatile scam artist, Welch a smoldering temptress, and Capucine an icy countess. They have in common the capacity to bewitch and confuse men.

In Vitti’s segment she drives men to madness with no awareness of her powers, leading to a comical conclusion. In contrast, Cardinale and Welch bewitch men intentionally and leave them wistful and bewildered. Capucine, who gets the longest segment, transforms under the influence of alcohol from aristocratic to overheated, jumps her hapless butler’s bones, but the next day seems to have no idea anything occurred. The baffled butler soon realizes booze is the catalyst of Capucine’s carnal drive. What does a kind but horny domestic employee do?

The segments are of varying entertainment value, but each is a good showcase for the actresses featured, save Welch’s, which is brief and scant of characterization. Vitti, in particular, shows her penchant for comedy, though the rapey humor, which was a staple of ’70s Italian comedies, will rankle some.

In the final analysis the movie suggests that women are bizarre, superior, magical creatures whose moods and desires men have little hope of ever truly comprehending. We’ll buy that, we guess, based on our experiences with PI-1 and PI-2. We’ll have to show them the movie and see what they think. For others, we think Les ogresses is worth a look, with properly tempered expectations.

France, Italy, Les ogresses, Le fate, The Queens, Monica Vitti, Capucine, Claudia Cardinale, Raquel Welch, Alberto Sordi, Jean Sorel, Maria Salerno, Jean Mascii, poster art, cinema, movie review

The Naked City

July 19 2026

END OF SHIFT

Whoever the killer was he was probably a lousy tipper too.

Above is another striking archival Los Angeles Police Department crime scene photo, plus its zoom, which was displayed at the Los Angeles Police Museum and borrowed by James Ellroy and Glynn Martin for their book LAPD ’53. You can see the photographer’s shoe at lower left. He’s climbed atop the bar to get an overhead angle of this deceased bartender or waitress, murdered in the Watts section of L.A. by means not discernible from the bloodless photo, nor known from its historical info. It happened today in 1953.

Los Angles, LAPD, James Ellroy, Glynn Martin, murder

Vintage Pulp

July 18 2026

DROWNING IN THE SEA OF LOVE

Last one up is a rotten swimmer who gets to be resuscitated on the beach while a crowd stands around and gawks.

There are numerous underwater covers on vintage paperbacks. 1962’s Kiss or Kill, with art by Ser Leone, has always been one of our favorites. Leone, sometimes referred to as Sergio Leone, is another new artist to our website, but painted many other covers for Kozy Books, which means we’ll probably run across him again.

Kiss or Kill isn’t what we expected. It’s a sexual coming of age story and sort of male Cinderella tale in which young John Abel McKnight, whose widowed father remarried several years back, is mistreated by his three stepbrothers and cruel stepmother. He’s going to receive an inheritance from his now-dead father at age twenty-one. His stepfamily would love to get rid of him so the money goes to them, but with many external eyes upon their fraught household situation it seems unachievable. It seems excessive too, considering the stepfamily gets half of the patriarch’s fortune to split between them. But the greedy heart wants what it wants, and the stephearts want all the cash.

The story follows John—or Jack, as he prefers to be called—to high school football stardom, his ambition to be a sculptor, the discoveries of the wonders of love, and the revelation that he had been born out of wedlock and has no real connection to his stepfamily at all. But their hate never goes away. They’ve already beaten him so badly he’s had to go through life facially disfigured. It isn’t hard to guess that violence, death, and vengeance are in the offing. We won’t tell you more, except to say Kiss or Kiss is about average for its genre. Do you have time for average? Then we recommend taking a pass.

Kozy Books, John B. Thompson, Ser Leone, Sergio Leone, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

July 17 2026

ABRA CADAVER

For his next trick he'll miraculously make a dead body appear.

Above: a cover for W. Somerset Maugham’s novel of the macabre The Magician, which was published so early in the acclaimed author’s career—in 1908—that it predated the age of mass market paperbacks. Maugham himself said decades later that the writing was atypical for him, as he’d evolved into more of a minimalist with adjectives and adverbs. We’ve read it, though, and it’s still Maugham—i.e good. It was pulpified for this 1957 Fawcett Cardinal edition by Clark Hulings, and a bang-up job it is.

Fawcett Publications, Cardinal Books, W. Somerset Maugham, Clark Hulings, cover art, literature

Femmes Fatales

July 17 2026

A LOTTE WOMAN

You could call her a blonde bombshell if she didn't come from one of the least warlike countries.

This beautiful image shows Danish actress Lotte Tarp, who from 1961 to 1998 accumulated more than forty acting credits, mostly on television, but also in well received motion pictures such as 1962’s Fem mand og Rosa, aka Five Men and Rosa, 1967’s The Jokers, and 1968’s Olsen-banden, aka The Olsen Gang. This shot came from the Swedish magazine FIB Aktuellt in 1965. Tarp made other nice shots, so she may return.

Denmark, Sweden, Fem mand og Rosa, Five Men and Rosa, The Jokers, Olsen-banden, The Olsen Gang, FIB Aktuellt, Lotte Tarp

Vintage Pulp

July 17 2026

CONGO BEATEN

The filmmakers needed to drum up a little extra investment cash.

Old jungle movies are a bit of a weakness for us, though they’re usually pretty bad, and often resoundingly racist. But there are amazing moments in some, and if they’re shot in actual jungle you get to see filmmaking of that time at its most logistically difficult. The above poster was made for Drums of the Congo, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1942, according to the reliable AFI.com. It starred Ona Munson, Stuart Erwin, Don Terry, and Peggy Moran, the latter of whom is a favorite of ours thanks to her charming turn in 1940’s The Mummy’s Hand.

Plotwise, military officer Terry is sent to fictional Bangali in the Congo to find the source of a rare mineral fragment. He’s sent with Ona Munson, the discoverer of the shard, and on the boat encounters Moran, who’s looking for her missing explorer father. Gee, wonder if their two missions will turn out to be one and the same? They and others enter the African interior via a paddlewheel boat, then tribesman propelled canoes, along the way enduring intrigue, gunplay, hostile locals, and stock footage of dangerous animals. We could do more on the plot, but you get the drift.

We watched this for Moran, but also for Dorothy Dandridge, who has a bit part as a princess named Malimi. It isn’t a glorious role, sadly. And as far as the rest of the film goes, it’s basically unblushing b-level junk about carpetbaggers descending upon Africa and taking whatever they please by whatever means they wish. They get tied to stakes but escape that jam—unfortunately. At only an hour in length, and with Moran and Dandridge involved, we consider our time to have been well spent, but there’s no reason why you should. We can’t suggest that you watch the movie.

Congo, Drums of the Congo, Ona Munson, Stuart Erwin, Peggy Moran, Don Terry, Turhan Bey, Dorothy Dandridge, Jules Bledsoe, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

July 16 2026

A BREAK IN NEGOTIATIONS

What the—! When I told you I'd be consummating a messy merger in here tonight, that meant don't clean my office.

Frederic Wakeman’s advertising exposé The Hucksters is more literarily serious than the sleaze novel the uncredited cover art suggests. In fact, it was well reviewed when it originally appeared in 1945, spent months atop bestseller lists, was optioned into a 1947 movie of the same title starring supernovas Clark Gable, Deborah Kerr, Sydney Greenstreet, and Ava Gardner, and became the above Avon edition in 1952. Wakeman never achieved the same level of success with his following novels, but one blockbuster was all that was needed back then to be set for life. He got rich as hell off this book, then did what, in our opinion, a smart person does with money—lives in every interesting and stimulating place one desires, including, in his case, Mexico, Cuba, Bermuda, France, Spain, and twenty years in Greece. That’s getting it done in style.

Avon Publications, Frederic Wakeman, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

July 21

1925—Jury Decides the Teaching of Evolution Is a Crime

In the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, American schoolteacher John Scopes is found guilty of violating the Butler Act, which forbids the teaching of evolution in schools. The sensational trial pits two great legal minds—William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow—against each other. Ultimately, Scopes and Darrow are destined to lose because the case rests on whether Scopes had violated the Act, not whether evolution is fact.

July 21

1969—First Humans Reach the Moon

Neil Armstrong and Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. become the first humans to walk on the moon. The third member of the mission, command module Pilot Michael Collins, remains in orbit in Apollo 11. Conspiracy theorists have surged thanks to digital media and science illiteracy. A Gallup survey in 2009 showed that only about 6% of Americans thought the moon landing was faked; today, in some surveys, it’s more than 20%.

July 20

1944—Hitler Survives Third Assassination Attempt

Adolf Hitler escapes death after a bomb explodes at his headquarters in Rastenberg, East Prussia. A senior officer, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, is blamed for planting the device at a meeting between Hitler and other senior staff members. Hitler sustains minor burns and a concussion but manages to keep an appointment later in the day with Italian leader Benito Mussolini.

July 19

1966—Sinatra Marries Farrow

Superstar singer and actor Frank Sinatra marries 21-year-old actress Mia Farrow, who is 30 years younger than him. The marriage lasts two years.

July 18

1925—Mein Kampf Published

While serving time in prison for his role in a failed coup, Adolf Hitler dictaes and publishes volume 1 of his manifesto Mein Kampf (in English My Struggle or My Battle), the book that outlines his theories of racial purity, his belief in a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, and his plans to lead Germany to militarily acquire more land at the expense of Russia via eastward expansion.

NEXT IN LINE

The Red Seal edition of Harry Whittington's crime tale You'll Die Next! is one of our favorite vintage covers because of its comic book style. It was published in 1959 and the art is uncredited.

A CHANGE FOR THE WORSE

This beautiful cover for the 1951 horror novel The Werewolf of Paris is uncredited. That's a crime almost as bad as stalking and eating innocent people, as far as we're concerned. If this isn't the best werewolf paperback cover ever we'd like to see what's better. The book is pretty good too.

YOU DON’T KNOW JACK

An unknown artist borrowed actor Jack Palance's face for Viviane Cambon's 1959 novel L’assassin anonyme, from Éditions du Champs de Mars. If you're going to use a Hollywood face without permission (and it was certainly without permission), this is a good choice.