The pulps were a litanous serial collection of serious serial killers and sensational sexual driven stories that fuel injected the readers labido with lovingly lurid tales of helpless female whileslaves who were sold and kept in bondage for sexual pleasure until they were as worn out as an old punching bag in Hansen's Gym. The dark city streets at night, strewn with used condoms and empty syringes were home to dark cave like alleys with neon lights glowing dimly casting deep shadows in recessed hidden doorways where dope addicts resembling Elisha Cook, Jr. would shiver and shake uncontrollably as they scavenged the streets at night looking to crash a crowbar into a victims cranium, only to steal enough cash and jewelry to get that next fix jammin' into one last good vein...the one not green or collapsed.
These homicidal sex crazed drug addicted tales were locked inside the pages of crime magazines in collections called pulp fiction that came complete with a dazzling presentation of cover art of enough sexual depravity and decadent debauchery to make a whip filled weekend at the Marquis de Sades seem more like a weekend at Bernies! The Police Gazette and Argosy magazine were the high priests of perversion taking their rightful place in the pulp pulpit and the fornication of crime and sex spawned countless others who followed in their shadowy footsteps. These magazines in turn fostered sinister comic book characters, dark superheroes (Batman is the best example of Pulp Spawn!) Books about detectives and clients with murky motives were translated to celluloid on the silver screen and Sam Spade became the King Of Film Noir. The term "pulp" comes from the fact that they were printed on the cheapest paper product available at the time so they could arouse the reader for only a dime. The paper was nothing more than pulpwood scraps with about 120 plus pages of crime stories with graphics which when Argosy first published in 1896, were pretty tame. As the popularity of pulps grew and as the Victorian age receded from memory and the Roaring Flapper Twenties of the Lost Generation gained a full head of 23 skidoo steam...the pulp graphics also increased in intensity and masturbatory sexuality...
The evolution of this revolution in pop culture literature has it's antecedent in the old wild west dime novels. and what they called "penny dreadfuls" of the 1800's. Even before Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour blazed a literary swath across literatures high plains, the dime novels had murderous and somewhat exaggerated accounts of the lives of wild west rock stars such as Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Doc Holliday. Fiction in most cases never met truth in the telling of the tales. These dime novels eventually morphed into pulp fiction police magazines and yet again as comic books featuring The Phantom Detective, the Shadow and of course, Doc Savage all the godfathers of todays super heroes such as Batman, Superman, The Fantastic Four and many others.
The first dime novel series was published in 1860 called "The Indian Wife of the White Hunter" yet, it was a reprint of a serial published earlier in Ladies Home Companion that greeted readers in 1839! The Wild West sun began to set in the late 1880's but the dime novel survived in popularity into the 20th Century. By the way according to statistics, The Indian Wife sold more than 65,000 copies within the first two months of publication and first dime novel with graphics was also The Indian Wife. The first editions had no graphics but the series continued and by the 30th issue a wood block print was added...and the race was on. (This tome of frontier tales continued for over 300 segments establishing the genre to emerge from it's womb, and the Indian Wife ended her journey through the literary morass in 1929!)
The wild west dime novel stared adding color to covers as early as 1896 and the price began to drop from a dime to a nickle so it was affordable for kids which in turn led eventually to the fork in the road...Pulp Fiction for adults and comics for the kids. Modern day pulp fiction is alive and well brought to life by the film so named "Pulp Fiction" with John Travolta and also the wonderful Frank Miller comics and of course the film, "Sin City" Even films like Sin City and Chinatown with Jack Nicolson owe their pulp roots to the dime novel and police pulp magazines, but they also owe a nod of the fedora to Sam Spade and other film noir anti-heroes who belly up at the Film Noir Bar. Just as in the pulp magazines..it's all about mood and setting but in film it's also about low lighting, low angles, dirty angels in the wee small hours of a Tom Waits murderous night of drinking piano's and getting short changed under a street lamp with the coal jet black evening ablaze with bullets of passion fired in anger and danger. It's Sam Spade coming alive and three dimensional as Mike Hammer puts the hammer down through the words on the pages of a pulp fiction novel. It's Double Indemity time, time open the mail and pay the price as the Postman only rings twice. The falcon flies over Malta as the Fat Man waddles from the Blue Parrot bar to Ricks Cafe Americain just in time for Elisha Cook, Jr. to fire a warning shot over Ray Millands head as he races to the phone...leafing through the yellow pages to find how to dial M for murder while wearing Joan Crawfords straight jacket while the sunsets over the boulevard and a dead monkey and a writer float in a mansion pool of blood, but William ain't beholden to no one and is holden on for dear life while a desperate abnormal Desmond waits for her normal Norma close up and to give her fingerprints to the police and not her handprints for posterity to Graumans. The Princess is cumming with Bob as a nonchalant Milland arranges a strangulation of triangulation proportions involving a letter of the alphabet I bet....it's better that way Ray...do it...but don't forget, the whole key to this particular murder is hidden on the stairs and not the stars. It involves a dubious character, a letter with planted prints, a pair of nylon hose and as an accomplise after the fact, Alexander Graham Bell, for whom the phone rings? It rings for thee after you say grace who then races to Monaco to meet her prince before she expends the entire alphabet foolishly. The film noir shadows fall tall on the floor and the wall...garishly elongated...contrast magnified in black and white as color will not do when suspense is due. Add a hypodermic needle filled with sleaze, and greed and film noir festers like a cancerous noir sore. Money, sex, adultery! Choose one from column A or jump into bed with all three...what the hell a romp with a foursome for foreplay, but don't forget to take a gun or a gat as it is called in Noirese and blast away. The Sex is Free...the bullets cost a nickle each but well worth it for the big payoff of an insurance policy of cripple who falls off a train or a man with a telescopic lens looking across to his heinous neighbor from his rear window while someone else with someone else plays charades while suffering from vertigo. The noir angles of noir angels is shot from the groin up to give a sense of surrealism in black and white with near 21 mm vision but not quite 50. Somewhere in between lies the shot, along with the plot...not plodding along but at a rampant rate and speed to the finishline of mystery solved by some amateur sleuth who is slicker than we thought against a villian who is sicker than we thought. Soon the police take the faded star away in the backseat of a police car...no red carpet..no bouquets..just handcuffs, three hots and a cot. Laura goes to heaven, someone keeps dialing the wrong number, and the line is always busy when you try to dial M for murder...but the line is always busy so you may as well put the falcon on the shelf and along with your other friend Jake head on down to the Film Noir Bar near the opium den alley in Chinatown. Charles Bukowski is Waiting with Tom..both have a gun hidden...and damned if those pianos are drinkin while Lauren Bacall sings a song after her big sleep...and then the lights go dim...and it's last call for alcohol..at the Film Noir Bar...and the dark night...the coal jet black night light flickers...it's time to reload as the film fades to black...at the Film Noir Bar where you can buy a cheap pack of cigarettes for the drug addicted white slave locked upstairs in her room..reading her latest copy of "The Police Gazette!"