After the grimy amorality of 'Get Carter', director Mike Hodges and star Michael Caine teamed up again to do exactly the opposite. 'Pulp' is a whimsical, lop-sided satire of the thriller genre located somewhere between the two poles of '70s Brit cinema (gritty realism), and lolloping, seaside comedy.
Caine is a gadabout crime author who's seduced by Mickey Rooney's retired Hollywood villain, with real-life connections, to ghost his memoirs. In a loose and rather woozy plot, life imitates pulp and dead bodies pile up. More curio than comedy, the determinedly unromantic Hodges manages to make the snazzy Mediterranean coastline resemble Camber Sands.
