Pulp | |
---|---|
Directed by | Mike Hodges |
Written by | Mike Hodges |
Produced by | Michael Klinger |
Starring | Michael Caine Mickey Rooney Lionel Stander Lizabeth Scott Nadia Cassini |
Cinematography | Ousama Rawi |
Edited by | John Glen |
Music by | George Martin |
Production company | Three Michaels Film Productions |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release dates |
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Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Pulp is a 1972 British comedy thriller film, directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine as Mickey King, a writer of cheap paperback detective novels. [1] The film features the final screen appearance of Lizabeth Scott.
Pulp, originally titled Memoirs of a Ghost Writer, was almost entirely shot on the island of Malta. [2] Facilities were provided by the then Malta Film Facilities and Intermed Sound Studio, later known as Britannia Film Sound Studios.
British writer Mickey King lives in Malta churning out violent, sexually charged pulp fiction novels under an array of lewd pen names such as "S. Odomy".
King is approached to ghostwrite the autobiography of a mystery celebrity. Intrigued by the offer, King agrees and is told to go on a package tour, during which time he will make contact with a representative for the celebrity. King meets an American man named Miller, who identifies himself as an college professor. King assumes Miller is the mysterious contact, but then discoves Miller dead in his bathtub after a hotel room mix-up.
The next day, Miller's body has mysteriously vanished and the real representative, a young woman named Liz, makes contact. King is taken to meet his subject: Preston Gilbert, a retired Hollywood star living in exile. Gilbert is known for portraying gangsters in movies and for his off-screen associations with real life mobsters. Revealing that he has been given a terminal cancer diagnosis, the pompous, vain Gilbert wants King to document his life story before he dies.
Gilbert and King attend a party. Among the attendees is Princess Betty Cippola, the wife of a politician who seems to have a connection with Gilbert. After Gilbert has staged a practical joke and the party is underway, Miller returns disguised as a Catholic priest. Sensing danger, King flees as Miller opens fire, killing Gilbert. Party guests assume it's another of Gilbert's pranks and applaud as Gilbert dies.
As Gilbert's funeral is held, King pieces together the mystery. He discovers that Gilbert was connected to the death of a young woman many years earlier and that other powerful people, including Prince Cippola, were also involved. As King visits the young woman's grave, Miller appears once more and begins shooting. King is wounded, but eventually kills Miller by running him down with a truck. As he recovers from his injuries, King realises that Cippola tried to keep the scandal secret by killing Gilbert and him. He is warned to keep quiet about what he knows or he will face murder charges for Miller's death.
Dressed to Kill is a 1980 American erotic psychological thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma, and starring Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson and Nancy Allen. It depicts the events leading up to the brutal murder of a New York City housewife (Dickinson) before following a prostitute (Allen) who witnesses the crime, and her attempts to solve it with the help of the victim's son. It contains several direct references to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho.
Sir Michael Caine is an English retired actor. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films over a career that spanned eight decades and is considered a British cultural icon. He has received numerous awards including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. As of 2017, the films in which Caine has appeared have grossed over $7.8 billion worldwide. Caine is one of only five male actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting in five different decades. In 2000, he received a BAFTA Fellowship and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
A whodunit is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus. The reader or viewer is provided with the clues to the case, from which the identity of the perpetrator may be deduced before the story provides the revelation itself at its climax. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric, amateur, or semi-professional detective.
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Frank Morrison Spillane, better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American crime novelist, called the "king of pulp fiction". His stories often feature his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. Spillane was also an occasional actor, once even playing Hammer himself in the 1965 film The Girl Hunters.
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Jason King is a British television series starring Peter Wyngarde as the eponymous character. It was produced by ITC Entertainment and had a single season of 26 one-hour episodes that aired from 1971 to 1972. It was shown internationally as well, and has been released on DVD in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Germany.
The Romantic Englishwoman is a 1975 British film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Michael Caine, Glenda Jackson, and Helmut Berger. It marks the feature-length screen debut for Kate Nelligan. The screenplay was written by Tom Stoppard and Thomas Wiseman, based on the novel by the same title by Thomas Wiseman.
Lizabeth Virginia Scott was an American actress, singer and model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency, known for her "smoky voice" and being "the most beautiful face of film noir during the 1940s and 1950s". After understudying the role of Sabina in the original Broadway and Boston stage productions of The Skin of Our Teeth, she emerged in such films as The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Dead Reckoning (1947), Desert Fury (1947), and Too Late for Tears (1949). Of her 22 films, she was the leading lady in all but three. In addition to stage and radio, she appeared on television from the late 1940s to early 1970s.
Dead Reckoning is a 1947 American film noir directed by John Cromwell and starring Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, and William Prince. It was written by Steve Fisher and Oliver H.P. Garrett, based on a story by Gerald Drayson Adams and Sidney Biddell, adapted by Allen Rivkin. Its plot follows a war hero, Warren Murdock (Bogart) who begins investigating the death of his friend and fellow soldier, Johnny Drake (Prince). The investigation leads Murdock to his friend's mistress, a mysterious woman whose husband Drake was accused of murdering.
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Nick Carter is an Italian comic strip created in 1972 as a semi-animated cartoon, for Gulp!, one of the most popular Italian TV shows of that decade. The creators were Guido De Maria, as director and writer, and Franco Bonvicini ("Bonvi"), as co-writer and artist. The first run comprised 11 stories, later reissued, as print comic strips for Il Corriere dei Ragazzi, and then in numerous other magazines and books.
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Pulp is the last completed novel by Los Angeles poet and writer Charles Bukowski. It was published in 1994, shortly before Bukowski's death. He began writing it in 1991 and encountered several problems during its creation. He fell ill during the spring of 1993, only three-quarters of the way through Pulp.
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