Category Archives: Men’s Adventure Magazines

Breakfast in the Ruins podcast: New English Library Bikermania

I suspect most of you have not heard of the Breakfast in the Ruins podcast. Taking its name from the title of a 1972 science fiction novel by Michael Moorcock, the podcast has a major focus on the work and influence of the British writer. But it also delves much further afield to take in related subcultural and niche books and films, particularly from the late 1960s and 1970s.

It is one of my favourite podcasts.

Anyway, I was very happy to be a guest on the latest episode, my second Breakfast in the Ruins appearance, talking about the sleazy, exploitative but sociologically savvy English publisher New English Library and their lengthy run of biker paperbacks.

In particular we focused on two books: Angels from Hell (1973), written by Mick Norma, a pseudonym for Laurence James, an NEL editor who would go onto have major paperback writing career; and The Devil’s Rider (1973) by Alex R Stuart, aka Scottish author Stuart Gordon.

In addition to these books, we also cover off on the occult, the history of bikers in pulp fiction and exploitation film, and the state of British society in the 1970s, among many other topics. These books have some fairly out there content, so the usual content warning applies.… Read more

Men’s Adventure Quarterly: Gang Girls issue

Regular readers will have read previous posts on this site in which I have publicised the work of Bob Deis on the roughly 160 men’s pulp magazines that blossomed on American newsstands in the 1950s and 1960s. Or what Deis refers to as men’s adventure magazines. These magazines combined brilliant, often over the top illustrations, with hard-hitting fiction and lurid ‘non-fiction’ exposes of various mid-century cultural obsessions.

For the last year or so, Deis has been working with Bill Cunningham on a quarterly publication called Men’s Adventure Quarterly. Issue 7, is now out and has the theme of ‘gang girls’. It covers some similar territory to that dealt with in the 2016 book I coedited, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950-1980.

Indeed, I contributed an introduction on the sensational world of midcentury delinquent gangs and its reflection in pulp culture. It’s a beautiful physical publication, full of original art from the magazines and wonderfully designed and laid out by Cunningham. I am also impressed by the evolution of this magazine into an increasingly serious work of pulp fan scholarship. If this looks like your thing I would really encourage you to pick up a copy via Amazon.

You can find it on Amazon Australia here, Amazon UK here, and Amazon America at this link.… Read more

Pulp on the big screen

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 Set-Up (1949)
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

Horwitz Publications, Pulp Fiction & the Rise of the Australian Paperback

I know that this site has not been getting quite as much attention from me as usual over the last year. This is largely because I have been so busy with various book projects. A quick update on these might be in order.

First up is my academic monograph, Horwitz Publications, Pulp Fiction & the Rise of the Australian Paperback. Out via the Anthem Press Studies in Australian Literature and Culture series in early July, it now has a cover and is available for pre-order. It is in hardcover, with a price that reflects the fact that it is being targeted at institutions and, in particular, libraries, in the first instance, but I have negotiated with Anthem for a much cheaper paperback version of the book will be released by Anthem next year.

Horwitz Publications, Pulp Fiction & the Rise of the Australian Paperback originated in a PhD I took at Sydney’s Macquarie University and turning it into a monograph has taken a considerable amount of my time over the last year. Regular readers will no doubt be familiar with Horwitz, as the publisher of many of the paperback covers that I post on this site. My study is the first book length examination of Australian pulp and one of the few detailed studies I am aware of a specific pulp publisher to appear anywhere.… Read more

Reading John Frankenheimer’s Seconds

Early in this excellent monograph on John Frankenheimer’s criminally underseen 1966 film, Seconds, by Jez Conolly and Emma Westwood, the authors ask the reader at what point they first viewed the movie and what they made of it. For me it was a random VHS store pickup on a slow Saturday night sometime in the late 1990s. I can remember being as confused as I was impressed by the sheer bizarreness of Seconds. I was particularly perplexed by the presence of Rock Hudson. What was this major American actor, best known for the series of romantic comedies he did with Doris Day, doing in a downbeat, existentially bleak fusion of science fiction, thriller and noir?Watching the film more recently, with the benefit of considerably more knowledge of film history and Hudson’s career, I was blown away by the brilliance of Seconds.  

Conolly and Westwood begin with the proposition that the film very much deserves a second life, a notion that is also central to its plot. Seconds concerns a bored, ennui riven middle class wage slave, who through an almost Faustian pact with a mysterious entity known only as the Company, is given a new body and face, and second chance at life. Escaping from everyday domestic responsibilities, particularly the possibilities for self-discovery and erotic adventure that this promised, would become a key topic of American film and literature from the mid-part of the 1960s onwards.… Read more