I like to say I’m a connoisseur of vintage pulp. I like to say “connoisseur of vintage pulp” because it sounds a lot better than “I like rifling through bins of moldy old porn at antique shops,” but I digress…
While high camp is (obviously) the appeal of this sort of pulp novel, 1963’s Commie Sex Trap is the only example I’ve ever seen with an explicit Red Scare plotline. My copy is still en route to me in the mail but I kind of don’t need to read it to know what’s going to happen. In case the brief synopsis on the front cover wasn’t enough, they got a little more scandalous on the back!
“Sergeant Joe Guthrie was in love, but he was also an American soldier in the all-important Berlin decoding room. Would an American sell his country short for the woman he loved? Could the Communists force a healthy man to surrender to their army of sex sirens—trained rousers schooled in every area of erotic abandon?”
Joseph McCarthy—and Michele Bachmann—eat your hearts out.