Guldregn 1988
(Showers of Gold) Denmark
Four Danish kids find a cookie jar filled with cash while playing in the woods. They decide to keep the money, at least until a reward is offered. But the crooks want "their" money back and will do whatever necessary to accomplish this.
https://letterboxd.com/film/shower-of-gold/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093127/
The Santos Sisters Comic Book By Greg and Fake
One day while combing the beach in their hometown of Las Brisas, the Santos Sisters discover a pair of beautiful medallions. What happens next changes their lives, forever. ...
Starring George Hamilton, Lana Turner, Ralph Bellamy, Jan-Michael Vincent, Kevin McCarthy. Co-created by Harold Robbins (who penned the first episode) this expensive series was cancelled mid-season due to low ratings.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063954/
https://boards.soapoperanetwork.com/topic/58393-the-survivors-abc-1969/
An article about the behind the scenes strife of The Survivors.
Lana Turner knew only too well that she was the model for the lurid 1962 novel Where Love Has Gone, and stopped talking to its author, Harold Robbins (The Carpetbaggers). But by two years ago, she had made peace and signed to star in Robbins' The Survivors, an ABC television series about the jet set he concocted for the forth coming season. That, it turns out, may be grounds to break off relations permanently with Robbins — and just possibly is the worst decision of Lana's 45-movie, seven-husband career. The Survivors has so far proved to be the most overpriced and troubled TV series ever. In the ten months since shooting began, the show has run through three producers.
Also down the chute went one director, the costume designer, the executive story editor — and the original Robbins story line itself.
Says Lana, one of the few charter members of the company left on the set last week: "If we were to film what really has happened behind the cameras, no one would believe it."
The narrative is, so to speak, pure Robbins. He conceived The Survivors for a couple of reasons. Though he has sold more than 40 million books, Robbins has long lusted for a larger audience: he figures that "even if the show is a failure, more people will view it in one night than all the people who have ever read or seen The Carpetbaggers." Secondly, he has always felt that two-hour movie adaptations of his novels were too truncated and that 100 hours were really needed.
Sophisticated Saga.
So Robbins went to the production brass of ABC, and spieled out a scenario. There is this banking family, he winged — Morgan or Rothschild types, with the second generation vying among themselves for command after the death of the patriarch. The saga would unfold in novel form, not with self-contained weekly story segments but chapter by chapter. The Survivors would also be more sophisticated than conventional television — "A story," as Robbins put it, "of today's morals.
If people go to bed together, they'll go to bed together on the show. We are not bowing down to TV in any way."
ABC was sold, with nary a script or a pilot, and commissioned Universal to produce it. Robbins would get a percentage of any profits, plus $10,000 a show. Furthermore, he says, he was guaranteed a full 26 weeks the first year instead of the customary 15 or 17, and payment for a second season of 26 shows "whether it bombs or not." For that unprecedented, sweet contract, Robbins gave ABC only a nine-page "treatment," conferred a few times with Universal, and then took off for his Riviera home.
Journeymen Hollywood scriptwriters would hack out the weekly chapters from the Robbins outline and flesh out such supporting characters as Louis Armond St. Verre, described in the scenario only as "the debauched scion of an old French family whose main claim to fame is that he has made love to 3,000 women and has had gonorrhea 26 times.
The first producer, William Frye, was allocated the highest series budget in the history of TV—nearly $8,000,000 for the 1969-70 season. That bought not only Lana but also George Hamilton, who seemingly has given up his escort service for serious acting ("Commitment," he proclaimed last week, "is 90% of life"). Some $200,000 was spent on the set—four times the TV average —and another $100,000 on wardrobes, $50,000 of it for Lana. But that didn't stop her from quarreling with Producer Frye over the jewelry provided. Frye couldn't be bothered, he said, and got a slap across the face. He slapped back —on both cheeks—and she told the producer he was through.
Thus, after two months of shooting (most of it on location on the Riviera) and $1,000,000 of expenses, Universal still had to get its first usable episode.
After another producer passed briefly through the chaos, old TV Hand Walter Doniger (Maverick) was called in and wrote a 40-page, single-spaced critique of what was wrong with Robbins' nine-page outline and the scripts to date. He became the third producer.
Harmonious Sex Life.
In Doniger's view, a fight over a banking empire run by a family patriarch (Ralph Bellamy) would not keep TV viewers tuned in for very long. So he decided instead "to deal not with the abstracts of wealth but rather with the emotional problems of rich people. Our stories will be about human beings faced with all kinds of swirling emotional forces, told against an enormous backdrop, but with the same kind of problems as you and I." Translation: kink it up.
Out went eight different story outlines, three finished scripts and five more in the works. In the original, for example, Lana and her husband (Kevin McCarthy) hymned their harmonious sex life with lines like "It's only good with you." Now it's bad, bad, bad, and in fact their 19-year-old son turns out to have been sired by a Greek named Krakos, who was at the time a poverty-stricken tourist guide but has since become richer than Onassis. Naturally, the son has some S.D.S.-type campus friends. Also hastily written in is a South American revolutionary conservatively patterned not after Guevara or Castro but Simon Bolivar.
Despite all the frantic script doctoring and transplants, Universal claims that shooting is about on schedule. Lana and the old sweater-girl figure are holding up pretty well for her years (49). She is getting along swimmingly with Producer du jour Doniger, who himself professes to be having "desperate fun" with the cast and show. "It is like having a cocktail party on the wing of an airplane." Lana does make her daily 5:45 a.m. calls, and has difficulty only in getting a fix on her unraveling character. "There have been so many story versions that I am still trying to figure out what kind of woman I am," she complains. Last week, for instance, Lana had to shoot the sixth chapter, though the third chapter still lacks a final script.
Treat or a Treatment.
One of the principals of the cast—who signed on in hopes that the show "might convey the real emptiness of our life and become an American L'Avventura"—now fears that it is degenerating into high-priced prime-time soap opera. Producer Doniger vehemently disputes the charge, though he just as determinedly denies that his last show was soap. It was Peyton Place.
That series, at least, made ABC a lot of money, and the real cliffhanging question in The Survivors melodrama is whether Robbins has given the network a treat or a treatment. With his two-year guarantee, he has less to lose than the network if the show doesn't survive the second season. No matter what happens, Robbins will continue to be as rich as Krakos.
————————————————————————————————————-
‘The Survivors' doesn't survive
Replacement show to star holdover Hamilton; ABC -TV's clearance problem discussed
The Survivors, billed in advance as "the most ambitious program" in ABC -TV's 1969 -70 schedule -a billing generally translated to mean the most expensive as well -has had it. ABC announced last week that the program (Mondays, 9 -10 p.m. EST) would not go beyond its Jan. 12 appearance. It will be succeeded by a new program starring George Hamilton - the last surviving key performer in Survivors-in the Thursday 10 -11 p.m. time period for which Survivors had been destined in mid-season shake -up plans disclosed a few weeks ago.
The new program, described as an action -dramatic series played against the background of the American embassy in Paris, is called Paris 7000 and will start Jan. 22. It will be produced by Universal Television, producer of Survivors, and the executive producer will be Richard Caffey, currently working on the departing show in the same capacity.
Survivors, based on a story idea by author Harold Robbins and reportedly budgeted at $250,000 an episode, has been plagued at every turn. It has had trouble in production, trouble in reviews, big trouble in the ratings. Trouble on the set, widely reported as stemming from personality clashes with star Lana Turner, led to three changes in producers. Critics for the most part gave the program low marks. In the latest National Nielsens (Nov. 17 -23) it was 85th in a field of 87 programs and the lowest -rated entertainment program of the lot.
A few weeks ago, in a salvage effort, ABC planned to shift the program to Thursday nights at midseason and drop both Miss Turner and co-star Kevin McCarthy, retaining only co-star Hamilton. Now it's to be a whole new program.
ABC lost a bundle along the way, including having to pay Universal to end the 26 week contract and agreeing to buy 4 2hr TV movies from that studio.
https://invisiblecreature.com/
https://invisiblecreature.com/projects/thebiggeststory
Dennis Jones
https://thedennisjones.org/
https://au.pinterest.com/moosec1/dennis-jones-art-biblical/
In 1970, Dave and Toni Arthur recorded Hearken to the Witches Rune, an occult-themed LP of traditional British folk songs. Fifty years on, the album has gained cult status. But the record’s gestation and legacy is just as extraordinary as the music itself: a story that stretches from the basement rituals of tabloid-baiting “King of the Witches” Alex Sanders to children’s TV favourites Play School and Play Away. Dave and Toni reminisce with Bob Fischer
The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962)
Dr. Orlof, a former prison doctor, abducts beautiful women from nightclubs to use their skin to repair his daughter's fire-scarred face.
Dr. Orloff's Monster (1964)
A mad scientist creates a hideous monster to carry out his murderous plans...
The Diabolical Dr. Z (1966)
A woman seeks to avenge her father's death using a local dancer, with long poisonous fingernails, to do her bidding.
The Orgies of Dr. Orloff (1967)
A doctor invites his relatives to his castle, all the while planning to murder them when they arrive.
The Invisible Man's Love Life (1970)
Young doctor Garondet is summoned by renowned Professor Orloff. At Orloff's castle, Garondet discovers that the mad scientist has created an invisible yet murderous apeman.
The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff (1973)
Amid the craggy, dusty hills of southern France, a woman screams in the night. Gorgeous Melissa Comfort, a wealthy heiress confined to a wheelchair since birth, cries out in her nightmares, terrified of a dream that comes night after night. In this night terror, she's 10-years-old. Running from a man who may or may not be her father.
The Sinister Doctor Orloff (1984)
The son of the infamous Dr. Orloff clashes with his father when he begins to stalk and dismember prostitutes to get parts to reanimate his dead mother.
Faceless (1988)
A detective investigating a missing model in Paris uncovers a plastic surgeon’s horrifying secret involving kidnapped women, blood, and organs.
—————————————————————-
http://www.007magazine.co.uk/archive/ohmss_graphic_novel.htm
http://www.strangesisters.com/index.htm
Fast forward three decades to Jaye Zimet's book with the appropriately appropriated title Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction 1949 - 1969. Published by Viking in 1999, this was the first book specifically focused on the two key decades for this genre's artwork. As soon as the book hit the shelves, I got calls... "have you seen it?!". Anyone who'd seen my room full of paperbacks (including a floor-to-ceiling velcro wall display with about 350 books attached) knew Zimet's book was a book for me.
I was thrilled to see someone had put forth the effort of compiling some great covers AND had found a publisher to foot the bill. Bravo! Zimet's book was thoughtfully and lovingly executed. It was done by a fan, a connoisseur... it's easy to tell. I added a couple of books to my want list and was happy to see dozens of top-notch covers showcased for the world. Still, I couldn't help but think of the books I had that were NOT included... literally hundreds of wild covers, many as good and certainly more outrageous than the ones Zimet included.
They pointed me out on the highway, and they said
'That man has a curious way of holding his head.'
They pointed me out on the beach; they said 'That man
Will never become as we are, try as he can.'
They pointed me out at the station, and the guard
Looked at me twice, thrice, thoughtfully & hard.
I took the same train that the others took,
To the same place. Were it not for that look
And those words, we were all of us the same.
I studied merely maps. I tried to name
The effects of motion on the travellers,
I watched the couple I could see, the curse
And blessings of that couple, their destination,
The deception practised on them at the station,
Their courage. When the train stopped and they knew
The end of their journey, I descended too.
When there is a critical appraisal of German cinema, it inevitably focuses on the Weimar period, with its Expressionism and Cabinets of Caligari and Metropolises, then the Nazi period films of Leni Riefenstahl and others, and finally the New German Cinema films of Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, and others and all their socially aware artsy films that often could barely draw an audience and were subsidized by the TV industry. Lost in this narrative is the German popular cinema of the 60's - the last truly popular movies made for mass entertainment before everyone stayed home watching television. The Wikipedia article on German Cinema just calls this era "cinema in crisis". What nonsense.
This was a cinema hardly in crisis. It was a boom time of genre films that appealed to large audiences, not only in Germany but throughout Europe. It was the era of European coproductions, and stars that rose through these popular works were soon coveted by movie producers across the continent as a way to earn some money through the German market. It's why Klaus Kinski appears in so many Italian westerns, Gert Frobe became Goldfinger, Joachim Fuchsberger and Heinz Drache appeared in Fu Manchu. The Edgar Wallace series of Krimi led to the Italian Giallo. The Karl May series of Westerns led to A Fistful of Dollars and the Spaghetti Westerns. This period of film is almost entirely neglected by critics, which means that this is where all the good stuff is. Of course, it couldn't last. As more and more people bought televisions, movies turned to the one thing they couldn't still see at home - nudity. But even that was short lived, as the rise of hardcore cinema chipped away at that market from the other side, leading to the collapse of German popular cinema and the rise of cinema as a niche interest, pretty much where it has lived ever since.
Francisco Solano López - Argentine comic artist
Young Witches
Erotic comic series by Ricardo Barreiro and Francisco Solano López.
Degrading daliances in dungeons. " A lavishly illustrated European import that goes behind the scenes of a nineteenth century London feminist witches' coven." -Face London, in the last third of the 19th century. After bringing death to her mother in childbirth, and shame and suicide to her father due to her illegitimacy, young Lilian Cunnington is shipped off ther her aunts near Conventry. As it turns out, Lilian's aunts are the leaders of a coven of witches, whose twisted rituals frequently involve their nubile charges in grotesque exhibitions.
Soon, Lilian, tapping into both her unsuspectedly powerful psychic abilities and her omnisexual potential, begins to uncover the darker secrets of the coven, and the resultant battle of wills ends in a climactic conflagration.
Illustrated by the interationally renowned South American cartoonist F. SOLANO LOPEZ (creator of such acclaimed graphic novels as Deep City and Ana), Young Witches is a tale of magic and power, of sex and sadism, of witches and mutants - a supernatural thriller that will scare you and arouse you at the same time. As a special bonus, this expanded version of Young Witches includes extra pages of sizzling, explicit sex action created especially for this edition
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/24/francisco-solano-lopez
Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi CBE RA was a Scottish artist, known for his sculpture and graphic works. He is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of pop art
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/paolozzi-eduardo/
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/eduardo-paolozzi
Posts
All Comments
