Category Archives: Beat culture

Pulp on the big screen

Posted on August 21, 2022 by Andrew Nette| 8 Comments

This month sees the 50th anniversary of the Mike Hodges film, Pulp.

I feel like Pulp, which I reviewed on this site here back in 2016, does not get a lot of love from people, but I am a fan of its bizarre, at times almost campy noir vibe. Most of all, I like the fact that it is an ode to the era of mass produced literature and to a time when pulp, in all its forms, could still be dangerous.

The lead character is a sleazy expat British expat pulp writer called Mickey King, played by Michael Caine, a nod to the prolific writer Earl Stanley Gardner. King’s dialogue drips with sleazy pulp cadence and the film is full of images of pulp in its many forms.

Ever since watching this film, I have been on the look-out for signs of pulp in the movies. As a 50th anniversary tribute to the Hodges film, below are the screenshots of what I have managed to find so far. I am sure there are many others and I would love readers to alert me to ones I have missed or to help me identify the ones below that I have not been able to identify.

Sella Davis (1937)
I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Lady In the Lake (1946)
The Killer Who Stalked New York (1950)
The Blue Gardenia (1953)
The Bad and the Beautiful (1953)
The Hundred Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960)
The Hundred Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960)
The League of Gentlemen (1960)
The League of Gentlemen (1960)
The Evil Eye (1963)
The Naked Kiss (1964)
Hud (1964)
Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965)
Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965)
Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965)

Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965)
A Quiet Place in the Country (1968)
French edition of Woolrich’s Waltz into Darkness in Stolen Kisses (1968)
The Lost Continent (1968)
Orgasmo (1969)
Hi Mom (1970)
Brotherhood of Satan (1971)
Get Carter (1971)
Get Carter (1971)
Paper Moon (1973)
Identikit (1974)
Farewell My Lovely (1975)
Rosie Dixon – Night Nurse (1978)
Hammett (1982)
Plains, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
Killers Kiss (1998)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Johnny Gaddaar (2007)
… Read more

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Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, 1990s American crime films, Beat culture, British crime cinema, British pulp fiction, Crime fiction, Crime film, Film Noir, Horror, Men's Adventure Magazines, Michael Caine, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers, Westerns

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Upcoming talk: The motorcycle – rebel in pop culture

Posted on April 4, 2021 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

A heads up to Pulp Curry readers, that on Thursday April 22 EST, I’ll be giving a talk to coincide with the exhibition currently being hosted by the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, The Motorcycle: Design, Art, Desire. The talk is entitled, ‘The Motorcycle: Rebel in Pop Culture’.

Throughout the decades, motorbikes have been portrayed as a symbol of freedom and rebellion in fiction, music and on the screen. I’ll be taking you on a journey through the different representations of the motorcycle in youth and popular culture history, mainly in the United States, Australia and Great Britain. I’ll be examining what has given the motorbike its cool reputation as well as discussing how it has also functioned as a lightning rod for post war concerns around various youth subcultures. The talk will focus on film, but I’ll also look at the representation of the motorbike in music and pulp fiction.

The talk, which will take place on Zoom, will start at 7pm EST, is free & your time zone permitting open to anyone anywhere to attend. All you have to do is book at this link. I hope you can attend.

… Read more

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Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Australian crime film, Beat culture, Book cover design, British pulp fiction, Crime film, Dystopian cinema, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980, Horwitz Publications, Men's Adventure Magazines, Neo Noir, New English Library, Ozsploitation, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Rollerball, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Shake Him Till He Rattles

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Shake Him Till He rattles 2Drifting between a very cool girl and a very warm one… A funky nighttime love story, so vivid you can taste it, hear it, feel it…

Today’s Pulp Friday is a story of sexual jealously, drug use, lost opportunities and jazz, set in the San Francisco suburb of North Beach, ground zero of the West Coast beat scene in the early sixties.

Fawcett Gold Medal first published Shake Him Till He Rattles in 1963. The story centres on a horn-playing beatnik called Cabiness, the target of some very unwelcome attention on the part of a junkie vice cop, Carver. Not only does Carver have it in for jazz musicians, he believes Cabiness is a major player in the North Beach drug scene and wants to turn him into his snitch.

Cabiness is not a major criminal. He’s not a major anything, really. His only aim in life is to “smoke a little pot and blow my horn”, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Jean, who is getting tired of the scene. She hassles him about wasting his talent. To which he replies: “Music is just music until you start trying to sell it; then it changes in a lot of ways. A lot of things change. You end up with a product….… Read more

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Posted in Beat culture, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Announcing Beat Girls, Love Tribes and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 – 1980

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

Happening At san Remo Pyramid Books 1967Regular Pulp Curry readers will be aware of my deep interest in pulp fiction. What you won’t know, is I’ve been working for a while now on a pulp fiction related book with another Melbourne writer called Iain McIntyre.

I’m thrilled to announce this book, currently titled Beat Girls, Love Tribes and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 – 1980, will be published by Verse Chorus Press in October 2015.

The book will be the definitive look at youth and counter cultural pulp fiction from Australia, the United States and the UK. It will feature contributions from over twenty writers and includes reviews, feature articles and author interviews. These will cover all aspects of youth and counter cultural related pulp fiction, starting with juvenile delinquency and gang pulp in the fifties, Beats and bohemians in the early sixties, to hippies, bikers, musicians, Mods, punks, and everything in between.

The book will also feature a large selection of covers from the books concerned.

Some of the pulp writers we cover you might know. But there’ll be a lot more you probably haven’t heard of. One thing we can guarantee is that the words “guilty pleasure” will not be mentioned once to describe their work.

This is a book about mainstream society’s obsession with the notion of out of control youth, and the pulp fiction that capitalised on the fascination, fears and desires associated with it.… Read more

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Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Beat culture, Horwitz Publications, Monarch Books, New English Library, Pan Books, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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The Beat(en) Generation: What Inside LIewyn Davis says about how we live now

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Inside-Llewyn-DavisYou don’t have to be doing hard yards in some area of the creative arts to empathise with the lead character in the Coen brothers’ latest offering, Inside LIewyn Davis – but it doesn’t hurt. Like the brilliant 1991 film, Barton Fink, Davis is a Kafkaesque take on the financial, emotional and existential struggle to create, however you want to define it.

It is also the latest in a wave of recent films to showcase the enduring cultural power exercised by the generation of post-Second World War writers who came to prominence in the late fifties, known collectively as the Beats.

That Davis is major homage to the Beats is signposted in the film’s opening scene, with Llewyn doing his solo guitar act at the Gaslight Café, a famous real life coffee house located in Greenwich Village, New York, the epicentre of Beat culture in the late fifties and early sixties. The Gaslight was known as ‘a basket establishment’. Entertainers would pass around a basket at the end of their set hoping to be paid. Performers who appeared there at some stage included what was to be a who-is-who of the American folk scene.

You can read the rest of this article over at the Overland magazine website.

 … Read more

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Posted in Beat culture, Non-crime reviews

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