Pulp (1972)

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Murder! Mystery! Michael Cain! Mickey Rooney! Lizabeth Scott, for goodness sake! How could this not be good.I'll tell you how.This tale of a pulp writer who gets involved in real murder features an unfocused story, a diffident Caine and a low budget that leads to the sort of artificial voice inserts and poor lighting you would expect from a TV movie of the era.To some extent, you could argue that it's not so much inept as it is representative of the early 70s, where directors like Robert Altman tossed out a lot of the cinematic gloss of earlier eras in favor of a messier, more "realistic" style. But the movie fails even in that regard compared to something like Altman's more watchable The Long Goodbye, which came out the following year.The beginning isn't terrible, offering a little humor, but as the movie wanders into its absurd story, it gets harder and harder to sit through. About two-thirds of the way through I gave up and read how it ended on wikipedia.I wouldn't recommend this for fans of pulp detective novels, but if you like that 1970s pseudo-naturalistic style you might find this more tolerable than I did.

Michael Caine plays Mickey King--a guy who writes crap novels under a variety of pseudonyms. The titles of these books and his pen names are very funny--but also belie the fact that it is all sleazy crap. Out of the blue, Mickey gets an odd visit. Ben Dinuccio (Lionel Stander) has come to hire Mickey as a ghost writer for some famous man--but who that man is he will not say. All he's told is to go on some bus tour in Europe and wait for someone to contact him. Most of the trip is pretty boring for Mickey until someone he THINKS is his contact winds up dead. However, like a bad dime novel, the body disappears and everyone behaves as if nothing happened.Soon the man he's supposed to meet is revealed--Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney). Preston is apparently a rather famous but bad actor who has a lot of mobster friends--so many that he ended up getting deported. Now on an island in Europe, Preston holds court in front of a bunch of sycophants. These people don't seem to mind that Preston is a boorish, very crude jerk. Caine is sick of the guy after a while and tells him off--though right after this, an assassin kills Preston and tries to kill Mickey. Why? Who wants to kill Mickey and why? In many ways, "Pulp" flows like a bad old novel. Mickey narrates as if it's some sort of Mickey Spillane story and the story elements also, at times, seem right out of one of these stories. The problem is that when it's not, the story drags and drags. For a while I could enjoy it but it just kept going on and on and never seemed to pick up any steam. I wanted a big payoff but the best thing I got was seeing Mickey Rooney curse and act like a jerk. Overall, a misfire that started with an interesting idea but never developed into anything.

Sir Michael Caine is writer of sleazy pulp novels, he's recruited by a quirky, reclusive ex-actor (Mickey Rooney) to help him write his biography at his house in Malta. 'Pulp' is produced by the '3 Michaels Caine/Klinger Hodges. It's an exceptionally well made and quirky film, which with it's humorous voice-over by Caine not only reflects the on screen action but it also reflects and references film noir. Lioner Stander appears as one of Rooney's hoods, a post Godfather Al Letteri appears as a go-between whom Caine encounters on a Bus trip and who meets a sticky end in a bath tub. Between Caine/Hodges it's a wonderful collaboration it's a shame that they did not produce other gems such as this.

This is an engaging fun indeed as a Noir movie which's too colorful this time. It looked like a noir's lover wanted to make another one yet as a big mockery at : The noir film, the American cinema, the pulp's writers, so himself. And in the same time he glorified the genre, its immortality, and the greatness of the writer.Yes, the general pulp is grounded on very weak plot, crowded with too many coincidences, and filled up with the most unusual types of people. But all of that isn't for making one hell of a drama or else. It's mostly a crazy variety to enjoy, however not all brainless. The thing to love is that this sweet (Pulp) confesses all of that and more.Look at the movie's way of making fun of the genre's writers. (Mike Hodges) put one of them as the lead of their very dark journey, and how (Hodges) made him say something in narration and do the other : (Mickey King/Caine) is telling us how he kicks the American star's hot secretary out of his bed while the image tells us the opposite, or how he faints after seeing the blood on his leg yet the narration tells us nothing about that...etc. (Hodges) mocks also at Hollywood : the publisher says that it's a fallen empire (remember that we're in a non-Hollywood independent movie and in the year of 1972), (Humphrey Bogart) the icon of the great noir movies & the living star of the pulp novels at the 1940s becomes one of the corrupted evil guys (whom he fought in the old days) and after being (Mickey) once he's now the man to impede the lead and to prevent the announcement of the hidden truths.The writer/director (Hodges) confirms here that the pulp literature or the trivial kind of novels which had been made just to entertain could contain some deep or important facts; it could be inspired by a real experience, and it could be the substitute style to say what became so difficult to declare or too bitter to face the world by, as its writer/ discoverer had been hindered to scream it openly and honestly. Look also at the bus's scene with the passengers' interior narrations like we all live our own film noir which expresses confined pulps in every one of us.Moreover, the movie presented its lead, the writer, as the less irregular, most intelligent, most sedulous character who wants to uncover the truth and expose everyone. See him on a wheeled chair (represents his incapacity of making the right thing) writing imaginary victory on his powerful enemy (the rapist prince) and how he "sheds his blue blood.." till the last line of the movie : "I'll get you busters.. Yet", while the actual criminals were merrily free, having the best times in hunting the wild boars successfully. So what a defeated suppressed knight the writer could be sometimes even if his only salvation, or his truthful deductions, became ultimately just cheap pulp ! I liked that collection of strange characters : the wife's futile detective, a communist mayor with one arm, a book publisher who has a weak bladder, a cold killer who hides his homosexuality and fakes his death, an American movie star who played a gangster many times till he became a true one ! All of them are the enjoyable reason why to read such a novel like (Mickey) told the killer at the bus. So the movie presents them frivolously as a sincere pulp would do, just like that moment when the panels made unintentionally the (F) word; it's all for the sake of absurd formation ! You'll find sarcasm also about the human civilization itself. Sense the irony when (Mickey) visits the old temple of the sexy images then discovers later that the secret behind all the cruel murders is a crime of collective rape of a little girl ! So how hundreds of years turned the human's point of view about sex from sanctification into vileness ! One of the deepest and greatest things this movie has; is its music. Among all of that fast pace and bright cinematography (George Martin)'s creation was verily the sad element; as effective elegy for the truth whether which had been sequestered by mighty busters, or the hidden truth about the pulp literature's lost or deformed value. And eventually it was a sorrowful expression about some noble militant side in the main character even if he seemed that materialistic indifferent.I have always looked at the pulp work as a clear example of life's mixed up events that look sometimes like a perfect unreasonable comedy; such as this. So I didn't wonder when a character mentioned Lewis Carroll's (Alice in Wonderland); it could be an old version of those funny nightmares and a testimony of its author about his own society's ugly extreme contradictions. (Pulp) is another good old pulp yet in a form of a movie. It utilizes intensively its elements to mock at all of those wonderlands and their peoples not for having a nice time only but also to assure that you may find at it a voice of beaten artiest, or strangulated facts.