FILM · 1972 · UK
Pulp
44 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (44)
- #001
In his autobiography, Michael Caine writes that Lizabeth Scott was very insecure because, as she told him, this was her first film in fifteen years.
- #002
After the film was shown on television in 1977, Spike Milligan wrote a letter to producer Michael Klinger. Milligan was considering writing to animal cruelty organisations until he was assured that the boar-hunting scene had not caused the animals any real harm.
- #003
Writer-director Mike Hodges always wanted Mickey Rooney for the role of Preston Gilbert, but for a time he also considered Elisha Cook Jr. for the part until Rooney made his decision about the film.
- #004
This was Lizabeth Scott's (Betty Cippola) last cinema film.
- #005
The orange ship carrying Preston's limousine is the Minor Eagle, a ferry long used around Malta. It was originally a WW2 RN minesweeper and was sunk as an artificial reef in 2006.
- #006
Mickey King's aliases (his birth name is Chester Thomas King) are Guy Strange, Gary Rough, Dan Wild, Susan Eager, Paul S. Cumming, S. Odomy, Dr. Or Gunn and Les Bian.
- #007
The band Pulp, led by Jarvis Cocker, took its name from this film. First formed in 1978 when Cocker was fifteen, the group became famous in the 1990s as a Britpop band with songs such as "Common People" and "Disco 2000".
- #008
The production company Three Michaels refers to Caine, Hodges and Klinger, who all share the name Michael and had worked together on Get Carter (1971).
- #009
The entire secretarial staff who type up Mickey's novels are Italian, including the Italian sex symbol Cristina Gaioni.
- #010
Fans of The Godfather Part II (1974) can hear the speaking voice of Al Pacino's famously silent bodyguard (especially prominent in the Cuba sequence), who does not say a single word but is important enough to have his own ominous musical accompaniment.
- #011
Communism is an important subject in the film; the actor Lionel Stander was blacklisted throughout the 1950s after being accused of being a communist.
- #012
The legendary novelist J. G. Ballard wrote a letter to writer-director Mike Hodges telling him how much he loved the film, singling out the performance of Giulio Donnini as the typing pool manager (who tries to seduce Michael Caine).
- #013
Mrs. Stompanato is clearly a nod to the notorious abusive gangster Johnny Stompanato, who had a relationship with Lana Turner and was eventually stabbed to death by her daughter.
- #014
Director Mike Hodges had previously directed Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971), another crime film that was extremely serious and not a comedy.
- #015
Lionel Stander curses "Jesus Wept!", although this is actually a Bible verse, the shortest verse in the Bible, John 11:35.
- #016
This is the first of two wild neo-noir homages starring Michael Caine; the next was Peeper (1975).
- #017
The owner of the typing pool compares Mickey to the real-life writer Frank Harris, who not only wrote adventure-filled things like Ernest Hemingway but also lived them.
- #018
The following year, in The Godfather Part II (1974), Leopoldo Trieste played another character who struggles to unlock a door.
- #019
This is the only time Al Lettieri played a homosexual character, an unusual role for an actor mostly seen as dangerous villains. He reads very well here, and his favorite writer is Ross Macdonald, one of the great pulp authors.
- #020
This was Nadia Cassini's first American feature film.
- #021
In an interview made for the 2017 DVD release, Mike Hodges claimed he had to shoot in Malta because the Mafia expected payment for all films shot in Italy.
- #022
Mickey Rooney's brown sedan was a 1953 Chrysler Windsor.
- #023
Mike Hodges was inspired by a Fascist running for office, something that had not happened since Hitler. That is why the protagonist, Partisan, is a communist, a party that was much sympathized with, even glorified, in Hollywood films of the 1960s and 1970s.
- #024
Two actors would later become especially known for The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974): Al Lettieri, in the role of Miller, and Amerigo Tot, who played Al Pacino's bodyguard in Cuba.
- #025
Both this film and Get Carter (1971), the first of two crime collaborations between director Mike Hodges and actor Michael Caine, contain a main plot/mystery involving the exploitation and/or mistreatment or harming of an underage girl.
- #026
Lizabeth Scott fits this film, having been part of the heyday of Film Noir, which was mostly derived from pulp novels and follows the same structure as this film.
- #027
It had been seven years since Lizabeth Scott last appeared on television, in the series The Third Man (1959), which was also a pulp story (based on the famous British Film Noir). And it had been fifteen years since she appeared on the big screen in the Elvis Presley musical Loving You (1957).
- #028
Michael Caine played the father of Mike Myers's character in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and in this film Caine appears to have invented what would later become the Austin Powers hairstyle.
- #029
Mickey's publisher was known to prepare book covers without the authors recognizing their own work. This is based on the fact that book covers were generally made not only in countries other than the source author's, but also created to sell books with sensual covers that did not always match the plot (the same is true of foreign film posters).
- #030
It is never stated, but Mickey Rooney's character had been thrown out of Hollywood twenty years earlier, during the Blacklist in the 1950s. Ironically, the previously blacklisted Lionel Stander discusses this.
- #031
Arrow Films released PULP on Blu-ray with a double-sided cover: one side features brand-new artwork showing Michael Caine sitting in a chair with the genius holding a film camera to his left; the other side has the original poster artwork of the climax of the beach scene. Before this, only the MGM DVD was available.
- #032
The title of the book 'Kill Me Gently' is a play on Mickey Spillane's 1952 Mike Hammer pulp novel 'Kiss Me Deadly' and has nothing to do with the song 'Killing Me Softly'.
- #033
Joe Zammit Cordina, who plays the man following Michael Caine's character, was born in Malta and also played a Maltese customs officer in Sweeney 2 (1978), another British-made crime film.
- #034
Mike Hodges took the idea of using narration for the character from an episode called Rumor (1970) that he wrote for the British TV series ITV Playhouse, in which he narrates the main character; this is one of the veins of classic Film Noir.
- #035
The character of Mickey Rooney, a short actor who played many tough gangsters, resembles James Cagney (in terms of height and roles, not personality or anything else).
- #036
Arrow released a Blu-ray for this film.
- #037
Mickey Rooney was the perfect choice to play this legendary old actor because he too was not only a character actor but also an acting legend.
- #038
Preston Gilbert left Hollywood 15 years earlier. Perhaps not coincidentally, that is the same amount of time that had passed since Lizabeth Scott's previous film.
- #039
The title of the book Kill Me Gently is a play on Kill Me Softly, which is based on the famous song Killing Me Softly.
- #040
Dennis Price quotes from Lewis Carroll's piece 'The Lobster Quadrille' (the Mock Turtle's Song in Alice in Wonderland). That same year, Price played the King of Hearts in the all-star film Alice in Wonderland (1972).
- #041
Preston Gilbert's ship, the Minor Eagle, was later renamed MV Cominoland; it was originally built in England in 1942 and was a former Captain Morgan Cruise passenger ship that ran day trips around Comino and Valletta. In August 2006 it was broken up when it was purchased near Gozo, along with MV Karwela, to begin creating an artificial reef for scuba divers.
- #042
A British television broadcast: BBC, Monday 5 September 1977 - 21.25 > 23:00.
- #043
Mike Hodges made a big mistake by not using John Trumper as editor on Pulp. John was an excellent cutter, but he did not get along with Mike Hodges on Get Carter, which John paced and edited superbly. The main title sequence of Get Carter is still one of the best-edited sequences of any film. By not bringing John Trumper onto Pulp, Mike Hodges shot himself in the foot, and Mike Hodges never really made a good film after Get Carter.
- #044
Writer-director Mike Hodges made his name by focusing on films with a very strong central character.
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