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Released by: Cult Epics
Released on: September 13th, 2016.
Director: Various
Cast: Bettie Page
Year: 1951 - 1956
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The Movie:
Born in Brooklyn in 1910, New York City based photographer Irving Klaw came to some notoriety when he began selling racy photographs through his mail order business, Movie Star News (which started as a simple magazine and periodical store). Partially responsible for launching Bettie Page to international stardom (some credit has to go to Bunny Yeager as she did her share of work with Ms. Page as well), his niche seemed to be more fetish oriented than other cheesecake shutterbugs of the time. Alongside the instantly recognizable Bettie Page, Klaw also shot such notables as burlesque superstars Tempest Storm and Blaze Storm.
When the photographs made him oodles of cash, Klaw made the next logical step and started shooting the girls doing their thing on 8mm film. By the time that the fifties came around, however, Klaw was more or less run out of business by the government who linked his work to juvenile delinquent behavior and a few years later, in 1966, Klaw passed away just over two months away from his fifty-sixth birthday, the victim of severe appendicitis.
What remains of Klaw's output is quite scattered. After the government cracked down on him he did burn much of his material, though thankfully his wife managed to save some of them. Cult Epics, who have released a few compilations of Bettie Page related loops by way of their Bettie Page Collection boxed set (featuring Bettie Page - Pin Up Queen, Bettie Page - Bondage Queen and Bunny Yeager's 100 Girls) and the Page bio-pic Bettie Page - Dark Angel, have compiled four discs worth of Klaw's films and made them available on DVD as separate releases or in one handy boxed set containing the following films on their respective discs as follows:
The Exotic Dances Of Bettie Page includes the following short films:
Betty's Clown Dance Part 1/Betty's Clown Dance Part 2/Flirtatious Dance By Betty/Peppy Graceful Dance/Betty Waltzing In Satin Scanties/Betty High Heel Dance/Tambourine Dance/Betty's Hat Dance/Dream Dance By Betty/Betty's Lingerie Tease Dance Part 2
How does this material hold up, fifty some odd years after it was shot? Well, it certainly doesn't compare with modern pornography in terms of explicitness, but then again, it doesn't really need to. There's a sort of naive charm at work here that adds something to the productions and there's definitely some seriously sexy material contained in the frames of these old 8mm loops. There's something timelessly alluring about a well built woman strutting her stuff in black stockings with all the trimmings and Klaw's lens, as leering as it gets at times, demonstrates this well.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The shorts are presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition in their original 1.33.1 fullframe aspect ratio taken from new 2k scans of the original 8mm elements. These look about as good as they probably can, but expect some wear and tear throughout. Detail can and will vary a bit from one short to the next but everything is certainly watchable enough and there's no doubt that these look quite a bit better than they have on past releases (they were originally included on one of the discs in Cult Epics' Irving Klaw Classics boxed set).
These shorts were all shot silent but Cult Epics has put some era-appropriate instrumental music over top of them for good measure. Presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, the music sounds clean, clear and nicely balanced.
There are a few interesting extra features here, starting with the Bettie Page Kamera Club films, also transferred in high definition from original 8mm elements. The four films included here are run just under fifteen minutes in combined length and are:
Betty Page Nude/Betty In Black Lingerie/Betty In White Lingerie/Betty In Red Lingerie
Quality, as far as the transfers go, is about on par with the material that makes up the feature attraction. These shorts are a bit racier and more revealing then the Exotic Dances material, but are still very much a product of their time. Still, having them included here definitely adds some value to the disc, given that Exotic Dances only runs thirty-five minutes or so.
The disc also includes a twenty-two minute featurette entitled Bettie Page Uncovered: The Private Life & Photographs which is essentially a Q&A session conducted with Ron Brem, Bettie Page's nephew. Conducted at a gallery showing of some sort, here we get some insight into what Bettie was like as a person and family member as well as some thoughts on her work and her enduring popularity.
It's also worth noting that on the flip side of the cover insert for this release there's a brief bio for Bettie Page as well as a chapter listing and some notes on the history of these films from Cult Epics founder Nico B.
The Final Word:
Cult Epics' Blu-ray release of The Exotic Dances Of Bettie Page offers fans of one of the most recognizable sex symbols of all time a nice high definition upgrade for some of her more popular dance shorts. The material is a bit on the short side but the bonus films help to make up for that as does the inclusion of the interesting featurette. A pretty fun release overall!
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
