Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Pulp Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 22, 2017

Star Michael Caine, director Mike Hodges and producer Michael Klinger worked together on 1971’s Get Carter, a film which was met with at least some critical befuddlement at the time of its original release, and which faltered at the United States box office (it did much better in its native UK), but which went on to achieve a pretty considerable cult status. That status hadn’t yet developed by 1972, when the aforementioned trio reunited to make Pulp, a film which, unlike Get Carter, hasn’t ever really come under critical reassessment the way the three’s first collaboration has. Pulp is in many ways the diametric opposite of Get Carter, despite both films featuring a plot that is at least somewhat tethered to the world of organized crime. If Get Carter was an entry determined to bring English filmmaking the same kind of hard boiled crime film that had long been a staple of American cinema, a genre which had perhaps not received its due in the United Kingdom due to that nation’s inherent reserve (and maybe even politeness), Pulp is just a big goofy shaggy dog story that posits Caine as pulp fiction writer Mickey King, who churns out salacious paperbacks by the bucket full under a variety of patently hilarious pseudonyms (S. Odomy, Les Behan, et al.). King is something of a wastrel, as he himself admits in some of the film’s ubiquitous (and often pretty cheeky) voiceover, where he confesses he just up and left his wife and children several years previously in order to pursue his dream of being an author. The film begins with an amusing vignette documenting a “typing service” (if you don’t know what that is, Google is your friend) which is transcribing King’s latest dictation of a supposed masterwork, and Hodges’ often playful screenplay delights in the sights and sounds of a roomful of uptight and evidently very amorously inclined older women listening intently to King’s recitation of various unmentionable acts. When King shows up to pick up his completed manuscript, he’s ushered into the offices of the service’s manager, who is obviously very gay and urges King to privately reach out and touch him (so to speak), even if he also states that King’s work is not appropriate for this particular business. Already the film is engaging in a cheeky sensibility, one which simply continues once King gets hired to ghostwrite the autobiography of a mystery man who has some kind of nefarious past.

This new Blu-ray release from Arrow has a number of interesting interviews included as supplements (see the listing below), and one of them is by cinematographer Ousama Rawi, who talks about how “careful” Hodges was in his directorial approach, spending considerable time on framings and lighting and other technical aspects of the shoot. That may actually come as something of a surprise to casual viewers of Pulp, since the film seems to just kind of cartwheel madly through various vignettes as it documents Mickey’s “adventures”. The film is full of almost silent movie era style gags, including an early sequence that shows taxi cabs colliding with each other, only to have their passenger doors shorn off by a passing delivery truck. A quick cutaway a moment or two later shows one of these cabs driving around Rome with its door missing, in a kind of throaway joke that this film delights in providing.

Mickey goes to the offices of his publisher, Marcovic (Leopoldo Trieste), in another scene that has just downright silly incidents that have little to nothing to do with the overall plot (Marcovic suffers from bladder control problems). It’s here that Mickey is introduced to crusty elder Ben Dinuccio (Lionel Stander), who is offering Mickey and Marcovic a “killer” deal (so to speak) involving the publication of a memoir by someone notable, though Dinuccio keeps his client’s actual identity under wraps. Mickey, not exactly one to turn down a large paycheck, agrees to the conditions of this deal, which involve him traveling to Malta and being contacted by a representative of the person for whom Mickey will ultimately be working. That leads to another patently silly vignette on a tour bus, where Mickey’s voiceover is suddenly replaced by a variety of other passengers’, as they read various items. It’s just a patently weird artifice that Hodges somehow manages to pull off, despite its inherent illogic.

One of the other passengers on the bus is a guy named Miller (Al Lettieri), who just so happens to be reading one of Mickey’s books (My Gun is Long), and whom Mickey assumes must be his contact. A kind of contentious exchange between the two ends up with Miller berating some of Mickey’s writing for relying too much on convenient coincidences, which some might see as Hodges gently poking fun at his own screenplay’s contrivance in this particular scene. When everyone is ensconced in their hotel for the evening, another “coincidence” intrudes when it turns out Miller has mistakenly been given Mickey’s room. When Miller turns up knifed to death in his bathtub later that evening, Mickey assumes that the “hit” was in fact intended for him (Mickey).

Now it’s important to understand that all of this craziness unfolds before the “main” story even gets underway, something that adds to Pulp’s often chaotic ambience. Mickey does ultimately meet his real contact, a beautiful young woman named Liz Adams (Nadia Cassini), who in turn finally reveals that Mickey has been hired to ghostwrite for erstwhile actor Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), who also has reported ties to organized crime. Preston is a self involved, self important poseur (Rooney plays it to the hilt, and I’m frankly surprised he didn’t garner an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor), and he’s surrounded by a bunch of supposedly fawning acolytes including Princess Betty Cippola (Lizabeth Scott, in an obviously pointed piece of quasi-noir casting). The Princess' husband is a local politico running for office in a plot point that becomes germane to what's actually going on with regard to Preston.

In a way it almost doesn’t matter what happens next, since the film’s narrative is so deliberately disjunctive. Suffice it to say that things are not exactly as they seem, and that Mickey ends up having to become something of a detective himself to sort things out. Except — he doesn’t, really, in just another of Pulp’s peculiarities. The film is stuffed full of delicious sight gags and features some wonderfully outré performances, but it’s a fairly discombobulating viewing experience from a number of angles.

Pulp Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pulp is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The insert booklet included with this release contains the following information on the transfer:

Pulp has been exclusively restored for this release by Arrow Films. The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with mono audio.

The original 35mm interpositive was scanned in 2K resolution on a Lasergraphics Director Scanner at EFilm, Burbank. Picture grading was completed on a DaVinci Resolve. Picture restoration was performed using PFClean software. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches and other instances of film wear were reapired or removed thorugh a combination of digital restoration tools and techniques. Image stability was also improved.

Director of Photography Ousama Rawi supervised the colour grading for this new restoration. The specific visual design for Pulp was carefully created in shooting and lighting. This look has been faithfully reproduced for this presentation.

All original material were made available for this restoration by MGM.

The mono soundtrack was created by MGM.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this verbiage is the second paragraph, one which might be tooled to keep people from thinking the kind of surprisingly dowdy, brownish look of much of this film was some kind of grading error. Rawi actually talks about the prevalence of browns, beiges, ochres and other tones in this same general spectrum that keep the film from really popping the way you might think something filmed on Malta would, or maybe even "should". The presentation is quite grainy looking most of the time, something that can keep midrange or wide shots from offering a ton of detail (see screenshot 6). While this heavy grainfield resolves naturally, it does tend to occasionally splotch a bit, and there are a couple of scenes in steamy environments where things are understandably hazy looking. The restoration has delivered a nearly damage free presentation, though eagle eyed viewers may still catch some tiny flecks and scratches here and there.

Pulp Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Pulp features a problem free and serviceable LPCM 2.0 mono track, one which has no problem supporting dialogue, voiceover (which is quite abundant), and a rather charming score by none other than George Martin (if that name doesn't ring any bells, I refer you to my Produced by George Martin Blu-ray review). There are no issues with distortion, dropouts or other damage.

Pulp Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Director Mike Hodges (1080p; 17:36)


• Interview with Director of Photography Ousama Rawi (1080p; 9:15)


• Interview with Editor John Glen (1080p; 4:59)


• Interview with Tony Klinger, Son of Producer Michael Klinger (1080p; 6:07)


• Galleries (1080p) offers four galleries that are separated for no reason that I could easily discern.

  Gallery 1 (1080p; 8:20)

  Gallery 2 (1080p; 8:20)

  Gallery 3 (1080p; 8:20)

  Gallery 4 (1080p; 8:10)

• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:04) offers Lionel Stander accosting the audience. This is in Academy Ratio (more or less) and appears to have information cut off of both sides, as evidenced by some missing text credits.

As usual, the insert booklet Arrow has provided contains good writing and some archival stills.

Pulp Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Pulp has at least a couple of glaring lapses in logic, and it ultimately ends up being a pretty convoluted shaggy dog story, but it's quirky beyond belief and offers some really fun and at least occasionally funny performances. Arrow has assembled a nice package with strong technical merits and some appealing supplements. Recommended.