PULP (1972)

Cast

Plot

Who could have seen this coming? Mike ‘Get' Hodges and Michael ‘Carter' Caine follow up their masterpiece (which redefined the British Gangster flick genre) with a heady mix of sunshine, farce and clownish Mafioso. Set on an idyllic Mediterranean island, ‘Pulp' follows the story of Micky King, a writer of pulp Chandleresque novels, who tags along with the retired star of a thousand gangster B-movies, Preston Gilbert (played by Mickey Rooney). The seeming lightness of tone (a multitude of sight gags, a screwy voiceover) is tempered by Hodge's trademark violence, which gives an unpleasantness to the goings on. Slated on its release as being ‘rubbish', ‘Pulp' is perhaps a lot more accessible to an audience more used to a quirkier kind of twisted humour than it was at the time.