#retrocrush

Oh God I'm old

Let me tell you, to do this mode in hard mode, try to find pictures of a Southeast Asian star who was famous before the mid 2010's. It's really a lot of work. Doubly so if they are dead. Which, spoilers, Anita Mui is dead, she sadly died of cancer at 40. A thing you likely know if you saw these pictures and said, "Anita Mui!" But is less likely to be known by most of you who are saying, "Anita Mui Who?" Anita Mui was one of Asia's biggest pop stars of the 80's and pretty revolutionary. I know her better as an actress, cause she's been in some truly great movies, but her fame really comes more from pop stardom. And right now @kat-with-eleven-lives is looking at a certain picture on this post and going, "Whoa," so I should take this moment to point out she was also an important queer icon. I have seen people say she was queer but it's hard to find actual confirmation there. What I do know is she purposefully embraced some form of androgyny and gender fluidity but also was a staunch supporter of LGBT communities in a time when that was not popular in Hong Kong. Openly supportive ally at the least. Anyway, she is here because I got the recent Jackie Chan boxed set that is some of his biggest movies in 4K and have been working through it. It's a joy, Jackie Chan movies are a marvel in that they aren't very good on paper because there is barely any plot but they have some of the best action you have ever seen and Jackie Chan is one of the greatest physical comedians in history so they tend to be hilarious as well. Just feats of athleticism and choreography and comedy. They are just fun and have a very high floor because even his lesser movies make you smile because it still has him kicking things and making funny faces. Anita Mui is in the two best movies in the set, Rumble in the Bronx, which is good but not great, and Drunken Master II, which is my favorite Jackie Chan movie and I believe one of the top 5 martial arts movies of all time. The final fight in that movie is probably the greatest fight scene ever filmed. Anita Mui is also great in it, she plays Jackie Chan's step mother who is basically a degenerate just like him and together they are always covering up each other's transgressions from his father who is really the only upright and straight laced person in the movie. She is flat out hilarious in how she vacillates from scheming to loving and doting and well, it's hard to explain, these movies tend to have broad humor for international audiences and it's really impressive how well she makes the jokes land. She reminds me of Lucile Ball in I love Lucy honestly. I also had a whole thing about how now I have finally posted all of the Heroic Trio but somehow I have never posted Michelle Yeah, massive oversight on my part, but hey, now two of the three are here. That is a movie well worth watching. It's just crazy and fun. @kat-with-eleven-lives said she was going to once but then decided not to because in her word, "I don't like movies about awesome women doing awesome things". Crazy but to each their own. Today I want to fuck Anita Mui.

Which is a long way of saying I am posting Madeline Smith who was not in this movie at all but it had me thinking about the fact that I am only a few years away from the Vampire Lovers. I am watching every Hammer movie in chronological order. Slowly but getting there. It's 4 years way from Plague of the Zombies and I thought, "I know myself, I am posting Ingrid Pitt after I watch that". And I thought that was very unfair to Madeline Smith, who I also would like to post. She has nothing to do with Zombies, she loves Vampires you see, but she is attractive. I want you to know that since she's in a lesbian Vampire movie I got the opinion of a real life Lesbian. I showed my friend @wildflagsure pictures of her in the past and she said, "Ugh she's so hot" and "Fuck those tits". I think the second one is positive but who knows, maybe she was just really angry about boobs. She has never watched the movies because she said she doesn't need to see topless girls kissing. Well, need or not, it's on deck so I am posting Madeline Smith and no doubt this will all be revisited in a few months when I finally get to the Vampire Loves. Today I want to fuck Madeline Smith.

I feel like I just recently posted Laetitia Casta but that was a wildly different post to the degree it almost feels like posting someone different. Or a post by someone completely different. No, that isn't true but there is a bit of a Ship of Theseus thing going on here because this post is very much about the Laetitia Casta I thought was extremely attractive when I was just a kid. I don't know when I first knew her name nor do I know where she ranked in the order of models for whom their name was just a thing I know. She couldn't be the first because in those days it was on the national news when someone like Elle MacPherson was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, so I knew names but Laetitia Casta was among the first for whom the journey was not, "This is a part of pop culture" but instead was me going, "Who is that?" and putting in the effort to know. It was harder then but luckily Victoria's Secret sent catalogs to people in those days and Guess had ads in every magazine on the planet. Anyway, I knew her and these are all very old pictures of her because someone has been uploading very high quality pictures of some of her old shoots and I am thankful for it. As a matter of fact, one I consider to be among her most favorites, that red Vivian Westwood outfit, just got the treatment and I knew I had to post her. That shoot is 32 years old. Which is insane. Which is why this is just somehow a radically different posting than when I posted her recently, she is the same person technically but how many of us are really the same as we were 30 years ago? Anyway, it was a pleasant little trip back in time, though finding decent picture from the era is hard and I had to fudge how far back is retro here. Today I want to fuck Laetitia Casta.

Anyway, today's post is easy because as thanks I should post someone Kat likes and luckily her type is "girl". I found one! She really likes old ladies, so here is Barbara Bouchet who I am certain Kat would really like if she wasn't too much of a weenie to watch old Italian horror movies. But I get it, the open misogyny and bare breasts are not for the feint of heart. Barbara Bouchet was of course a major star in the sense of b level celebrities once upon a time. She was a huge sex symbol who was largely in second rate films. Of course, she is a Bond girl. But she was known as the girl with the perfect body and largely considered to be exceptionally beautiful. I hope these pictures do her justice, it's actually hard with older celebrities because I watch an old movie in 4K and they look stunning and you look for pictures and they are all suck low quality and like.. well, she looked better laying around and walking around naked in a movie about an evil priest than she does in any of these. But trust me, she is exquisite. Today I want to fuck Barbara Bouchet.

Here is Etsuko Shihomi, a Japanese actress and Martial Artist who had he heydey in the 70's. I am much better versed in Hong Kong Kung Fu films of the era than I am Japanese ones, though what I saw of her in many ways seemed to want to emulate the Hong Kong style of movie but it definitely had a flair I associate with Japan. Anyway, she is a total badass. Just a really skilled martial artist and the movies I saw were silly in a way I totally love. At one point some creeps are being creeps (because she's a woman and creeps can't help but creep on a beautiful woman but guys, wait, it's going to be ok) and she literally orders spaghetti just so she can use it as a weapon. She also makes one creep eat a fly and shoots another fly up a different creep's nose so he can't breath. She also kicks another dude through a fishtank. What I am saying is it was awesome and she's awesome. In one movie I saw her brother is the government's top agent but is kidnapped so they come to her as the only person on Earth badass enough to take on the drug dealing karate school that has kidnapped her brother. In the other one she's a racecar driver who fights organized crime because she's also a secret agent. She wears red leather gloves for a lot of it and kicks the shit out of everyone and guys, that was all kind of hot. So I am posting her. Today I want to fuck Etsuko Shihomi.

There is a great conflict with this blog when it comes to Veronica Lake. As a star who was at the height of her fame decades before I was born, there aren't really many new pictures of Veronica Lake, which means I have a finite pool of pictures to choose from. As well, the world was a very different place then, while she certainly was photographed for publicity reasons, there aren't really that many pictures of her because there weren't magazines loaded with pictures back then. Reproducing that sort of thing in any way that was worthwhile was expensive, it's why you'll see so many posters for movies with drawn images, not photos. It's why magazine ads of the day had art, not photos. It means by our standards, there just aren't a lot of pictures to choose from. A few hundred at most really and most of those are only from a handful of shoots. The conflict comes from when I watch a Veronica Lake movie at which point it is impossible to not want to post her. Thus I am posting her cause like… well, it's Noirvember, there was going to be a Veronica Lake movie at some point. A Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd movie but let's be honest, I am always going to post Veronica Lake. Alan Ladd is great and all but she's the miniature blonde for me. This time out I watched The Glass Key, it was good but not great, likely just a result of the subject matter and the fact that Noir movies get away with a lot of darkness but it couldn't go after the American political system as hard as it needed to make this one sizzle. Still, Lake and Ladd have wonderful chemistry and she sure is attractive. Today I want to fuck Veronica Lake.