OK, let's jump into the pulpmobile and head back to the world of 1976: they were having a #heatwave too!
The shirt of seduction: Casos Reales! 1976.
That is a very well-behaved bat.
Vampirella: Bloodstalk, by Ron Goulart. Sphere Books, 1976.
The healing of Brother Brian. Rolling Stone, November 1976.
What do we want? AGGRO!
How do we want it? IN A KID'S COMIC!!
Action, 18 September 1976.
You had me at Full-Size Messerschmitts...
Radio Models & Electronics, October 1976.
When the pupil is ready, the master will appear...
The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists, by Arthur Byron Cover. Warner Books, 1976.
"And from France... Stinky Toys!"
Punk at the 100 Club, Oxford St London in 1976.
It's only a matter of time...
The MAD Star Trek musical. MAD magazine, October 1976.
Rod, Jane and Freddy. Or was it Matthew? Was he before Roger? Or after original Bungle left? #SoManyQuestions... (1976)
The Finest In Roller Skates (1976). All in neon and suede.
Donald F Glut and the Extended Frankenstein Universe (1976)
And so it begins...
Night Of The Crabs, by Guy N Smith. NEL, 1976.
Star Trek: portfolio of the crew (1976) by Frank Kelly Freas.
Frank Frazetta's reimagined Flash Gordon from 1976.
Kids today* have too much screentime!** Something MUST be done etc.
(*1976)
(**monochrome)
How does Conan toast a panini? He puts it under the griller!
The Savage Sword of Conan. Issue 14, Sept 1976. Cover by Earl Norem.
Meryl Streep and John Cazale in Measure For Measure by William Shakespeare. Delacorte Theatre 1976, Central Park #NewYork.
"What are you two boys up to?"
The Electric Company Magazine: Mystery Issue, October 1976.
The Queen, sending her first email in 1976.
The Phantom* menace! RC Modeler December 1976.
(*press F4 to continue)
ABBA was everywhere in 1976...
The e-scooter of 1976: the Solo Electra.
They look more like The Goodies...
The Kids, by Tony Parsons. NEL, 1976
Nothing to see here Twitter, move along now...
Derai, by E C Tubb. Arrow, 1976.
"Twins, Basil. Twins!"
False Colours, by Georgette Heyer. Signet Regency Romance, 1976.
All This And World War II, the 1976 movie that mixed WW2 footage with Beatles cover versions by the Bee Gees, Bryan Ferry, Elton John, Keith Moon, Status Quo, Jeff Lynne, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart and Peter Gabriel:
L'Inferno - released in 1911 - was the first blockbuster movie and a pioneer of special effects. So today in pulp we go to Hell, to witness the birth of Italian cinema... #heatwave
L'Inferno was directed by Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe De Liguoro and took three years to make. It's the oldest full length film still in existence and the first Italian feature film.
L'inferno is based loosely on Dante's Divine Comedy: a tour of Hell guided by the spirit of the poet Virgil. The characters fly from scene to scene as they pass deeper into the abyss.
Happy birthday TRON! Released in America 40 years ago today it's a tech-noir classic that pushed the boundaries of early CGI as well as using more traditional animation and post-production skills.
Get your light cycle ready...
"TRON" is a debugging command in some versions of BASIC and stands for TRaceON. It sounds cool and geeky.
Good job the movie didn't use its complementary command: "TROFF"
TRON was released in 1982, four years after Disney's earlier film The Black Hole had established the studio's emerging interest in sci-fi. However TRON had been in development since 1976 and was initially pitched as a traditional animated motion picture.
Today in pulp: the searing, evocative power of a well crafted opening sentence!
For this thread I will draw my examples from the greatest writer* in the English language: the Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe.
(*based on synonym use)
On death:
"Bellenger was dead when they found him. That Bellenger was dead was probably the understatement of the year. Bellenger was horribly, violently dead!"
On introducing characters:
"The alien was a strange looking beast. Even by the broad standards of the Galactic recognition code it was definitely non-U. [...] The alien's name was Khgnjsdag, which didn't really matter except to the alien."
You know what you need today? The epic saga of Hawk the Slayer!
Enter mortal, if you dare...
In 1979 writer Terry Marcel and musician Harry Robertson (of Hammer horror and Lord Rockingham's XI fame) were working on adapting a Ray Cooney play when they got chatting about Fritz Lieber and fantasy novels.
Marcel had an idea for a fighting fantasy spaghetti western, and he and Robertson soon worked this up into a script. Chips Productions would fund it and ITC agreed to be the distributor. The budget? Only £600,000. Hardly a fistful...
Time for a pulp countdown now, so here's my top 10 future inventions we were promised by Popular Mechanics magazine that we're still waiting for!
At #10: motorised unicycles! This was a very popular Edwardian idea inspired by the penny farthing bicycle. Although a few prototypes were made we never really fell in love with driving one big wheel. Also: not great in the rain.
At #9: personal radar. Now this is actually a pretty neat idea and a number of cars now use radar or lidar as an anti-collision aid. However we're still waiting for it to be built into a hat.
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