Tag Archives: Horwitz Publications

Pulp Friday: Weird stories & terrifying tales

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

Weird storiesA belated happy 2017 to Pulp Curry readers. I have had a very busy start to the year, with my PhD studies and various writing projects, hence the first post of the year has taken me a while to get around to.

The first Pulp Friday of 2017 is a stunning collection of horror themed 1960s pulp titles by Horwitz Publications. These are a mixture of titles I own and books from other collectors.

While horror tales were a staple of American and British pulp fiction in the 1950s and 1960s, they failed to achieve similar popularity in Australia. Australia’s censorship regime – both at the state and federal levels – were far stricter and, as a result, our publishers were much more timid. According to Canberra based scholar, James Doig, horror never had the commercial appear amongst Australian pulp buyers of other genres, such as crime and romance.

That’s not to say there was a total absence of local horror pulp. Influenced by the US magazine Weird Tales, Currowong published a series of horror titles in the 1940s. And Cleveland and Horwitz published some novelettes and pocket books in the 1950s and 1960s.

The earliest Horwitz effort in the 1960s appears to be Weird Stories, published in 1961, part of an anthology series edited by Charles Higham, which was most likely a response to the very successful Pan Book of Horror Stories series that began to appear under the editorship of Herbert Van Thal in 1959.… Read more

→ 1 Comment

Posted in 1970s American crime films, Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Horror, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Pulp Friday: American Pulp – How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

American-Pulp-Princeton-University-Press-2014-681x1024

I’ve always been fascinated by how relatively insignificant objects you’ve lost in the course of moving around in life can later come to hold important meaning. An example for me is a black and white photograph of my father on holiday in Queensland’s Surfers Paradise in the early 1960s. It was destroyed when my friend’s shed, in which I stored all my possessions while travelling overseas, burnt down. I find it hard to recall what else was lost, but I remember that photo. Dad is sitting in a chair on the beach, wearing dark sunglasses and reading a paperback by the prolific Australian pulp writer Carter Brown.

Two things gave me cause to think about this picture recently. The first was the hype around the Anzac Day centenary commemorations – I’ll explain that connection later. The second was reading US academic Paula Rabinowitz’s beautifully written, highly original work, American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street.

Most people view pulp as either exploitative lowbrow culture or highly collectable retro artefact. Yet pulp has a secret history which Rabinowitz’s book uncovers. Her central thesis is that cheap, mass-produced pulp novels not only provided entertainment and cheap titillating thrills, but also brought modernism to the American people, democratising reading and, in the process, furthering culture and social enlightenment.… Read more

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Carter Brown, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pulp Friday: The World of Suzie Wong

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

The World of Suzi Wong is perhaps best known as a 1960 movie starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. But before – and after – it was a movie, it was a book by English writer, Richard Mason.

The story concerns an American architect and aspiring artist Robert Lomax, who relocates to Hong Kong for a year to see if he can make a living as a painter. With a limited budget he takes a cheap in an infamous section of the Hong Kong waterfront, where he meets and eventually falls in love with a local prostitute who goes by the name, Suzie Wong

This week’s Pulp Friday offering is a series of paperback covers from the various editions of The World of Suzi Wong. All the covers focus more or less on the chao song clad figure of Suzi Wong, but the illustration for the version published in Australia by Horwitz, is the most suggestive. As if the image was not enough, the cover blurb adds: “Passionate torment against a background of vice on the Hong Kong waterfront”.

Enjoy the long weekend.… Read more

→ 1 Comment

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

Tagged , , , ,

Pulp Friday: Contrabandits – Shark Bait

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Contrabandits

This week’s Pulp Friday offering is the 1968 paperback tie in to the then popular Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV series, Contrabandits.

While Crawford Productions understandably gets most of the credit for kick starting Australia’s modern television industry in the mid-sixties with the long running police drama show, Homicide, it was not the only local organisation producing gritty crime TV.

Around the same time changes were also afoot at the ABC. New staff were bought on board and a department of television drama was created that produced a number of one-off and on-gong TV series. Among these was Contrabandits, the first episode of which screened on September 22 1967.

Contrabandits focused on the activities of Customs Special Branch, an elite law enforcement squad tasked with intercepting contraband in Sydney. The four mainstays of the squad were Chief Inspector Ted Hallan (played by British actor Denis Quilley), office girl Mardi Shiel (Janet Kingsbury) a university graduate, determined to succeed in a male dominated area, Bob Piper (John Bonney), a young wise cracking spiv, and tough guy, Jim Shurley (Ben Grabiel).

CBTwenty-nine episodes of Contradbandits were made. All of them are listed on the on-line archive of the former magazine, TV Eye. Themes included tackling drug runners and smugglers of various kinds, raiding opium dens in Kings Cross and dealing with illegal immigrants.… Read more

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Australian television history, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Pulp Friday: The Tip

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Ray Slattery“A scorching novel of horse-racing and desperate men and exciting women and big gambler Johnny Broadway’s bid to parlay the killing of all time.”

Ray Slattery must rank as one of the most prolific of the in-house hacks employed by Australian pulp publisher Horwitz Publications in the sixties and early seventies.

He is also one about which the least is known. Despite his incredible output, very little information is available about him. Austlit credits him with 118 titles, including our featured book today, The Tip, published in 1965, but has no further biographic information about him.

His books cover all of Horwitz’s staple obsessions, including bikers, bondage, sleaze and sex books, war stories, surgeons and what I have seen referred to as “Nazi romance novels”, books with titles such as Camp of Terror (1963) and Women of Warsaw (1964), Buchenwald Hell (1967), Prisoner of Dachau (1967), Valley of Slaves (1967), to name but a few.

In addition to writing under his own name, he worked under at least six pseudonyms, including Roger Hunt, Frank O’Hara, Terry West, James Bent, Frank F Gunn and John Slater (the name he used for most of his sleaze and Nazi-themed pulp, of which he wrote 84).

There’s a little bit more information on Slattery here, as well as a full bibliography.… Read more

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

Tagged , , ,