Pontypool's Secret PULP Origins! (Pulp Fiction Part 4)

I intended to address fans of the tantalizingly written novel, but if you've just seen the movie, that works, too.  Most of us were rendered speechless in 2008 with the release of the movie Pontypool, set in the town of the same name in Canada, wherein a zombie-like virus envelopes a county, spreading through the bacterium of words. However, unbeknownst to some, a novel preceded the movie.

The movie Pontypool took one chapter late in the novel and centered around it and the limited connection with the towns surrounding that were falling rapidly into chaos.  Even more unbeknownst to move fans,( and to me until a friend bestowed upon me the short story written by H.P. Lovecraft's cohort Henry Kuttner in 1943) Mr. Tony Burgess, author of Pontypool, most likely did not have divine inspiration when he came up with his tale of semantic terror.

Enter Mr. Henry Kuttner, pulp terrorist. He deserves a post all his own, so I will not go into detail about him now. However, his story is another story.

Nothing But Gingerbread Left.

In the story, a professor and one of his grad students are having a discussion while the professor's teenage son sits in the background muttering a silly schoolyard sing-song rhyme that gets stuck in their heads.  At the forefront of their minds is the war in Europe and the spread of Hitler's propaganda.  Both scholars, who are German-as-a-second-language speakers, devise a scheme wherein they will use the pattern, rhythm, and particularities of the German language to write a nonsensical verse, say it for a group of German prisoners of war, and analyze the results.

Results, to whit, that are the undoubted origins of Mr. Burgess' Pontypool novel.

The link below provides a skip over to the short story in whole. There are some annoying errors in format, but these are easily ignored, for the most part.  The story is very short, 15 or 20 minute read for us logophiles, 5 or 10 for everyone else. If you have to ask why it takes some of us longer, then praise the lord that you are not damned to read blissful words and phrases three or four times, then call up a friend and read them aloud for as long as the friend will tolerate it.

               Henry Kuttner's Nothing But Gingerbread Left (1943)

Opinions? Comparisons? Curses?

They Call Me Mellow Giallo (AKA PULP FICTION Part 3!)

We all live in a giallo submarine, giallo submarine, gi--oh...hey! I didn't see you there.

Yep, it's that time again! PULP FICTION time!

So, what's this giallo stuff I'm talking about? Glad you asked! Now, I'm not here to give a dissertation on the meaning and reason of giallo literature and movies. I know most of you are smarter than you look. I'm not going to compare and contrast one director with another. I just want some of the hundreds of people a week who read my post on Marble Hornets to get a taste of something different. And as you know, I've been writing here and there on pulp fiction.

While we were over here in America dreaming of the jungles with Tarzan and Britain was fighting communism with Bulldog Drummond, Italy was producing its own pulp fiction (though a lot of it consisted of translation into Italian of English-language mystery and crime novels) on fairly cheap stock with yellow (giallo) covers.  And just the same way that the chicken follows the egg, the giallo book gave birth to the giallo movie.

I will interject that to Italians, giallo means something different than it does to Americans. We would not, for instance, look at film and consider Psycho anything but a high-quality masterpiece of American cinema. So I won't go there. I'll talk about giallo movies from this neck of the woods.

So, if you're an American, what does an Italian giallo have in store for you?

 Dario Argento's Opera 1987

Damsals, sans braziers. They may scream, they may plead for help in badly dubbed and overdubbed English and it may seem to take them HOURS to die, but they will do it clothed in flimsy lingerie, plunging necklines, or startlingl and unsettling slashes of light.

Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much 1963

Music, sometimes known as noise.  Of course we all know that Italy is proud of its opera. And music in a giallo is essential. So most giallo films will scorch your ears off with the sounds of opera, classical, heavy metal, or in the case of Bird With the Crystal Plumage, what-the-heck-is-that-racket.  And there are times when the music plays such an important part that it takes on an actual role in the film. Check out Dario Argento's Opera for some brilliant use of ear-splitting metal when you least expect it (well, until after the first kill).

The killer. You probably won't see him, but his scenes are extended.  The murder scenes are the longest scenes in the giallo film.  They usually get no more graphic than a gallon of 1970s scarlet paint splashed across a wall, a back, or a bed sheet, but they're long. And who is this killer? Only time will tell. All you'll know is that he is one of the men (or could it be a strong woman?) who may be sweet on the starlet or trying to solve the murders.  Did I mention that there is always a string of them? Murders, I mean.

Umberto Lenzi's Paranoia 1968

Paranoia.  And as we all know, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

Black gloves.  They're everywhere. Holding knives.  Reaching into coat pockets.  Snapping photographs. Pulling back curtains.  Who do they belong to? Why does everyone seem to be wearing them? Are they in this year?

Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage 1970



So, do these qualify as pulp, aside from the fact that the books were printed on cheap paper? Let's see what we have.  Crime? Check. A mystery? Check. Exploitation? Check!  Epic battles? Well, yes, in the form of the time-consuming murder scenes. Check! Exotic locales? Well, Check if you consider that you're American and have not likely been to the wilds of Italy where many take place. Heroic adventures? Check! Except the heroes and heroines may not see it as such. A bit more sleezy than we're used to, but pulp nonetheless.

Put all these things in a pot and mix them up and what spills out is a giallo, for better or worse. Mind you, these are not action movies or cop adventures.  That's a different story for a different time.  For now, if you're interested, and want to expand your pulp experience, take a look at some of these listed here and let me know how you like 'em.

Massimo Dallamano's What Have You Done to Solange? 1972 

Pulp Heroes EXPLAINED!...John Carter, you're not so naughty now

The pulp magazines discussed previously (click here) were responsible for the sci-fi genre. Horror sci-fi, like H. P. Lovecraft, and planetary travel sci-fi, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, drew fans out of the serie noire (French crime) and the western pulps.  For novices, Edgar Rice Burroughs not only wrote something other than Tarzan,  he wrote something BETTER than Tarzan!

And now Disney is going to kiddify it! Horrified yet? You should be.

Pulp magazines were written to appeal to a more adult crowd than the comics of the same time period.  They were exploitative, bloody, scary, and full of steam! They depicted hard men, damsels in distress, and twisted criminals. Ever wonder what that family in The Thin Man was hiding behind their big fancy house and secret closet doors? Read the book! Same goes for A Princess of Mars. You'll be even more confused after watching Disney's John Carter, I'd wager.

Why?

I'll tell you!

John Carter is mysteriously immortal.  He has no idea how old he is.  One night after a strange ordeal in a cave, he finds himself pulled to the planet Mars where clothes are considered ugly and unnecessary.  Good thing he arrived there naked as the day he was born! The hulking, 15 feet tall green Martians that Burroughs describes? Disney has made into skinny, Avatar-esque creatures that wouldn't frighten the flea off a Thark's behind! And what of the beautiful Dejah Thoris, the red Martian princess that John Carter falls immediately in love with? Burroughs? Naked as a jay bird.  Disney? Wearing some silly costume only Earth girls would find appealing.

(Not to mention the description of one of the green Martian leaders could be describing Jabba the Hut, and the titles of some of the ranking Martians are suspiciously a predecessor to Jedi.)

The John Carter of Mars books, beginning with A Princess of Mars, are chock full of nakedness, gory battles, more distress than a damsel can shake a stick at, and epic adventure that could not possibly translate to Disney PG-13 (assuming it isn't going to be PG, I've been too scared to check).

When John Carter was first seen around 1918, I'm sure the nakedness of not only the bizarre green Martians, but more particularly of the hero and heroine and everyone in between, was rather shocking to a puritan America.  It is also one of the most strikingly different aspects of life on Mars.  Of course, they weren't depicted as such on the covers of the pulp magazines, but once you crack open the cover, there they were, displayed in all Edgar Rice Burroughs' beauteous descriptives.

There you are.  How can you tell that John Carter is a pulp hero? Exploitation. Damsel. Epic battles. Exotic locales. Heroic adventures. Check, check, check, check, and check.

We can expect none of the exploitation from the movie, I am certain. So, hop onto your Kindle and download A Princess of Mars for FREE, and see what all this pulp heroism is about!

Keep your eyes peeled for more PULP HEROES...EXPLAINED!

Pulp Fiction Unpacked! Part 1

And I don’t mean the movie Pulp Fiction. If you need someone to explain that to you, then you may be of too sensitive a constitution to get into the deep end of the pulp pool!


I mean the genre that created genres, defined men, and gave evil a face.

Emerging from the frivolous dime novels of the last half of the 18th century, pulp magazines opened the wide world to the average Joe.

History
There assuredly are factors that contribute to the popularity of the pulp magazines in their hay day that go beyond the inexpensive cover price. For one thing, in the years following the civil war, elementary and secondary school enrollment for African Americans increased dramatically. By 1880, around 35% of black youth were registered in school, compared with 10% in 1870. Even into the 1920s the school enrollment rate was at its highest for all races of children in America. Government attention was also focused on education, with the first annual report of the Office of Education in 1869. The report focused on informing congress yearly the condition and progress of American education. During the 1940s, an increase in higher education began to push others to continue at least through high school when the trend had been a completion of education in the 8th grade.

So it’s easy to see that the whole attitude of the country toward literacy and education of all people had taken a swift kick in the pants.

In 1870, 20% of Americans age 14 and over were illiterate. By 1920, the number had dropped to 6%. And with this new voracious appetite for knowledge came what I’d like to think was dissatisfaction with their mundane existence. After all, dissatisfaction is from whence comes the best invention.

The pulp business

The new educated masses had jobs which meant they wanted things. They were tied down to what they now realized were boring existences. Enter the story writer. Of course, no one could afford a $12 paperback in those times, so crafty publishers took the cheapest bits of paper leftovers, paid writers barely enough to keep themselves in typewriter ink, and the pulp magazine was born.

The new bourgeois of literacy, with ten cents to spare, converged on the magazine racks with a vengeance. Big bosomed damsels, square-jawed gangsters, grinning heroes, mammoth-sized tigers, and haberdashered aliens. Inside those colorful covers were three or four tickets to other worlds.

Whatever your taste, the pulp publishers would pay someone peanuts to write to you. There were military adventures, sexy trysts, mysticism from the dark continent. And thanks to the pulp era, the science fiction and hard-boiled detective genres facilitated the births of generations of geeks!

H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and the Weird Tales magazine brought unknowable creatures to life. Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, and L. Ron Hubbard ushered in an era of exploration beyond our Earthly shores. While back in deepest Africa, Tarzan was being adopted by apes.

And if you think that Trekkies invented the fan convention, think again! Long before mere humans were learning proper Klingon, pulp fans in the 1960s were organizing conventions.

The end?

World War II brought not only fear of real world terrors, but rationings of everything, including paper. Thus began the demise of the pulp genre. But was it the end?

From the murky depths of the Internet, a rise in the popularity of pulp has been seen. Despite the encroaching terror of the viral video, the Kryptonite of Tila Tequila, and the staggering atrocities of bulletin boards, real heroes reemerge in the form of Dashiell Hammett on ebook, and reprinting of 1930s magazines so that all may acquire the knowledge that Doc Savage was the first man to have a Fortress of Solitude!

Has pulp fiction seen it’s end?

I think not, Drummond. I believe that we shall meet again!

...end of part one.  Tune in next time for Pulp Heroes...EXPLAINED!