Category Archives: Horwitz Publications

Pulp Friday: The Flower People

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The Flower people“Super-zap them all with love. That’s the Hippie slogan. And they mean you.”

The cover of this week’s Pulp Friday speaks for itself, The Flower People by James Holledge.

I mean, like, wow man, that is one far out cover.

The Flower People was published in 1967 by Scripts Publications, the outfit set up by Horwitz Publications in the late sixties to release its racier titles. Thanks to Melbourne pulp collector Brian Coffey for alerting me to this wonderful title and allowing me to copy it.

Holledge featured recently on this site as the author of Kings Cross Black Magic and Teenage Jungle. A former clerk who became part of the stable of in-house writers brought together by Horwitz in the early sixties, his specialty was salacious journalistic tracks parading as sociological expose.

He’s in fine form in The Flower People, billed as an “inside expose” of hippy culture, delving into everything from free love, their profligate use of contraception, rejection of “square society”, drug use and radical politics.

“Super-zap them all with love. That’s the Hippie slogan. And they mean you.” Readers must no doubt have found the idea hippies coming to get them, in their suburban homes, to turn them on, alarming and alluring, especially if the hippy concerned looked the one on the cover of this tome.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Kings Cross Black Magic

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Kings Cross Black MagicToday’s Pulp Friday is a great example of exploitative pulp dressed up as quasi-serious sociological inquiry, Kings Cross Black Magic by the wonderfully named, Attila Zohar.

It’s also one of the more unusual pieces of pulp fiction produced in the sixties and seventies in response to the real and imagined goings on in Sydney’s notorious vice strip, Kings Cross.

I just love the cover of this book. The minimal furnishings, the title font, the female model, who I presume is supposed to look ‘Satanic’ but comes across more as a sort of sullen drag queen. It speaks of things that just shouldn’t be talked about in polite company, which, in turn, only makes me more curious.

Kings Cross Black Magic was released by Horwitz publications in 1965. According to the University of Ortago’s wonderful pulp fiction website, Attila Zohar was a pseudonym for James Holledge. Holledge was a former clerk who became part of the stable of in-house writers brought together by Horwitz in the early sixties. He wrote approximately 45 books between 1961 and 1970, most of them salacious journalistic tracks parading as sociological expose.

His titles included Australia’s Wicked Women (1963), Crimes Which Shocked Australia (1963) and Women Who Sell Sex (1964) and What Makes a Call Girl (1964).… Read more

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Posted in Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp Friday, Rosaleen Norton, True crime, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Sinquake

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

sinquake

“Mike Brand’s most sinister adversary – Cyn Boudin, high priestess with a lust for power.” 

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a wonderful piece of forgotten Australian pulp, Sinquake by Gene Janes.

Sinquake was produced by little known local pulp publisher and distributor, Calvert Publishing  After Horwitz Publications and Cleveland, Calvert may well have been one of Australia’s largest publisher of paper backs in the fifties and sixties. Calvert published the Carl Dekker ‘On the Spot’ mystery series, as well as a large number of Westerns, war and romance novels.

There’s no publication date for Sinquake but it was probably released some time in the early to mid-sixties, before the introduction of decimal currency in 1966. The cover was supplied to me courtesy of local pulp collector, Graeme Flanagan.

Sinquake features Mike Brand, an Australian trouble-shooter for the British secret service. I’ll let the back cover blurb explain the rest.

“The Soviet was using the enormous appeal of BLACK MAGIC, with its terrifying rites and orgies, together with the sensual and seductive beauty of “SIN” – Mademoiselle Cynbarra Boudin, the high priestess of the Cult’s British circle, to ensnare top political and diplomatic figures into compromising situations.

With recent scandals as a blue-print, the political stability of the Free World is threatened by moral chaos.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: witches, warlocks and drums of the dark gods

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

“A Horrifying excursion into a world ruled by the prince of darkness”

We don’t do Halloween in Australia, but it’s as good an opportunity as any to post some of the terrific occult pulp paperbacks covers I’ve collected over the last few months.

The supernatural and occult were major pre-occupations of popular culture in the sixties and the first half seventies. I am not exactly sure why, but some observers have linked it to regular outbreaks of witch mania that historically coincided with periods of major social change and dislocation.

Occultists, witches, Satanists, ruled much of the cinema screen. As was often the case, relatively highbrow offerings, Roman Polanski’s 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976), coexisted along side more sensationalist exploitation fare. Devil’s Rain (1975), Brotherhood of Satan (1971), The Witches (1966) and Race with the Devil (1975), are just some of the many, many examples.

And where cinema went, pulp fiction followed. Old stories were spiced up, new ones penned in rapid succession.

Rest in Agony concerns what transpires when a husband and wife discover a little black book that reveals their dear deceased Uncle Amby lived a secret double life as a Satanist. Not surprising when some of his mates included Vandal James “Satan’s playmate” and Amora Cartwirght “Goddess of dark waters”.… Read more

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Posted in Ben Wheatley, Horwitz Publications, Monarch Books, New English Library, Pan Books, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Model School

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

“The King’s Cross vice world taught her the other side of the profession.”

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a wonderful example of local pulp fiction from the early sixties, Model School by Christine James, released by Horwitz Publications in 1965.

The early sixties were a turning point for the Australia’s pulp paperback industry, when publishers stopped relying purely on reprints of overseas material and stories set offshore, and started releasing locally set stories by Australian writers.

The setting for much of this work was Sydney’s Kings Cross, which during the sixties, seventies and eighties was Australia best-known center of drug use and prostitution.

Prostitutes, beatniks, con men, drug dealers, bent cops, organized crime lords, innocent tourists and American servicemen on leave all rubbed shoulders in  ‘the Cross’ as it is referred to locally. To this, local pulp authors added Chinese Triad gangs enslaving white women, witches and warlocks and a host of other less believable characters.

Like so many of the Australian pulp I feature on my site, I have not been able to find anything out about the author, Christine James, if, indeed this was her or his real name.

Model School is a fairly typical example of the Kings Cross pulp of the early to mid-sixties.

“The phoney model racket.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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