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Released by:
Secret Key Motion Pictures
Released on: 11/09/10
Director: Various
Cast: Virginia “Ding Dong†Bell, Bunni Bacon, Vicki Palmer
Year: Various
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The Film
I love stag loops. They're short, low-maintenance bits of adult entertainment that not only function as eye-candy and a sneak peek into mindsets, fashions and physicalities of bygone eras, but sometimes even achieve a level of surrealism that narrative (or even self-consciously artistic) film rarely can. Dipping once more into the cesspool of forgotten and once-forbidden filth, 42nd Street Pete and Secret Key bring you a BUSTling collection of 50 short crotch-hoppers entitled BUSTY BOMBSHELLS OF THE ATOM AGE. Hotcha!!
Focusing primarily on a stash of late 40's-early/mid 60's 50ft-ers from cinematographer Joe Bonica's skin'n'sin enterprise, the "Film Of The Month" Club (though he would soon find work shooting atomic test footage, hence the title of this collection), and after an introduction from 42P and his two "daughters", BBOTAA gets right down to the business of unspooling these archaic artifacts, all to the familiar racket of a projector and nothing else.
Most often, these shorts are strictly figure modeling/posing/undressing affairs, so actual descriptions do little justice to the overall effect of viewing them, but some standouts are Freddie Robbins (from the delightfully "out there" short "Sales Girls", available on TWO BIG BOOBS), zany blonde Elaine Jones (who looks like a young Joan Rivers with additional "assets"), Rubenesque brunette Lynn Carter (verrrry static in presentation, but pleasing in a "life portrait" sense), "Profumo Affair" beauty Christine Keeler (how she ended up in this collection is anybody's guess), and the stunningly stacked and mesmerizingly pretty Joan Brakeman (her hair is boss, too!), not to mention THREE separate loops featuring one-time H.G. Lewis starlet Virginia Bell (BELL, BARE, AND BEAUTIFUL).
So where's the surrealism, you ask? Well, besides the mind-expanding results of viewing silent loop after silent loop in which the subject spends as much time gazing into the lens as they do clearly receiving direction from and reacting to someone off camera (Brakeman's is the best), it's the instances of someone taking a minimal concept and sort of skipping with it (the term "running" doesn't seem to apply here) that really make one take notice. One such (obvious) example would be the mischievously-titled (by 42P or Secret Key, the actual card reads "THIS IS ME, ANNE") "Salvador's Dolly", in which a Dali-lookin' dude is conked by a lady in a portrait not once, but TWICE, and after some beautifully primitive geometrical animation clues us in that he is hallucinating, we see her lying on a bed playing with some flowers!
A less intentional bit of Dadaism is found in "ERICA", in which another powerfully-built brunette in Betty bangs answers an ad (shown in mirror image!) for nude posing, trots down the stairs to the office, is hired, has her hair done, and is photographed in a manner that might remind one of Leni Reifenstahl's OLYMPIA in its depiction of physical form (shaded musculature and all). These shots are cut together in a rapid montage and end with one of a pile of skin mags, perhaps signifying her success? Wow.
Want more? OK, how about "TOO HOT TO HANDLE" in which another incredibly "gifted" bru with far-away eyes and a toothy smile doffs her clothes in order to better light a gas heater, with explosive results, or the lone color short on the disc, "DONNA LONG ON A PICNIC", which features the titular fire-headed stunner in an angora sweater getting all caught up in barbed wire, until she gets the brilliant idea to take the sweater off, but not before wriggling around in a decidedly glamourous fashion!
There's more, of course, and while it never reaches the raunch levels of other comps of its type, the focus on this particular era of "sizzle-not-steak" pervy worship of natural wonders delivers the KA-BOOM in a big way!
Video
Presented 4:3/1.33/fullscreen/whateveryouwannacallit , BBOTAA is obviously culled from 8mm films, and these films are often in less than stellar shape and only looked so great to begin with, so what we're grading here is the disc replicating the look of the films themselves, and it does a fine job within that limitation. All shorts are intact, some are pretty scratchy, and a couple are even faded and possibly duped down from other film sources (certainly the case with a silent trailer for 1962's BACHELOR TOM PEEPING), but it all looks at least as good as one would expect, if not better. The transfer is interlaced, but once the shorts start, you won't notice.
Audio
Clackity clackity clackity clackity clackity etc. That's what you hear most of the time, but to be fair the rest of the audio on the disc is nice, no distortion or weirdness to report and good stereo separation throughout.
Extras
You wouldn't think there would be room for much more, but Secret Key socks it to your libido with a 24-trailer sampling of their sexploitation product, from 2069: A SEX ODYSSEY to THE FEMALE ANIMAL and lots in between. Also included is a 12-page B&W booklet which four color pages of photos of 42P's darling protegés Catherine and Sarina, as well as loop descriptions from the man himself. An extra bit of coolness is full color repros of a couple of the loops' original packaging on the back cover. Must. Have. TOO HOT TO HANDLE.
The Final Word
Dipping once more into the cesspool of forgotten and once-forbidden filth, 42nd Street Pete and Secret Key bring you a BUSTling collection of 50 short crotch-hoppers entitled BUSTY BOMBSHELLS OF THE ATOM AGE, a phantasmagorical parade of feminine pulchritude sure to flambé the viewer into a veritable frenzy!
