Shadows on the wall of a person with a whip & a woman in bed

Solved!

I am trying to identify several film & TV stills in a movie book (published in the US in 1965) with unlabeled pictures from various movies, serials, and a few TV programs. I managed to identify most of the stills, but a handful have eluded me.

First is a photo probably from a 1940s-50s western showing the shadows on a wall of a woman sitting up in bed and being menaced by someone with a bullwhip.

 

 

 

 

13 thoughts on “Shadows on the wall of a person with a whip & a woman in bed”

    1. I take it your Firewall at work is looking at the website as a whole and not the specific photo to which my link goes.

      The book is called “Sadism in the Movies” by George de Coulteray, published by the Medical Press in 1965. It was an English translation of his 1964 French book “Le sadisme au cine´ma,” which according to the text on the dust jacket was “banned in the country in which it was written.” The book is long out of print, but copies may still be found in used book shops or on eBay.

      The first 188 pages of the book are mostly text, but this is followed by a gallery of “documentary verification” consisting 254 pages of publicity stills from various films depicting scenes of violence. The preface to the gallery says that the American edition doubles the number of pictures by adding to those from the original edition. The photos are grouped into categories such as “Beating,” “Slaps,” and “Whips.” (There are an additional 9 pages of stills scattered throughout the text section.) There is only one photo per page, so each still is fairly large. This is good because the quality of the printing is only on par with what you’d find in a newspaper and the photos are all in black and white. For unknown reasons, some of the stills were printed reversed. The pictures depict violence to both men and women and despite the title, a few of the stills are actually from TV shows. Unfortunately there is no index, none of the photos are identified on the pages on which they appear, and the pages in the gallery are not even numbered.

      Most of the pictures are very tame by today’s standards with the exception of a few topless scenes from underground films.

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  5. Ok so here is what I’m thinking so far, let me know if you disagree. I’m thinking it’s an Italian or french B Movie from 1945-1958. It doesn’t look like an art/underground film. Do you see any merit in contacting a book seller or even Steve Hult (guy who translated a first edition) to see if there is a different version with a more complete glossary/bibliography ?

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    1. I’m glad you finally managed to view the photo.

      Last year I obtained, via eBay, a copy of the French edition of the book and it helped me identify about 30 pictures. Unlike the English edition, the French one is printed on glossy paper with brighter, higher quality photos. Furthermore, each picture is carefully labeled. Unfortunately, the American edition omitted quite a few stills, added dozens more and then dispensed with ALL photo labeling.

      The still could be from a foreign film, I was thinking possibly Mexico. If you examine the picture on the wall closely, it appears to display Frederic Remington paintings of the old American west and the other items on the wall suggest to me 19th Cent. Mexico. So I believe if the film is not Mexican, it is still a western set in Mexico or former Mexican territory.

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  6. Im still looking into it and this is kind of a silly guess but I have to watch it again maybe “The Black Whip” 1956 American B Western/noirish.

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  7. This image appears on pg. 104 of “Erotica for the Millions” by Busendorff and Henningsen and is identified as being from “Viva Villa” (1934).

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