Movie Bad Girls – Volume One (Sins Of
Jezebel/Queen Of The Amazons)
Picture:
C Sound: C- Extras: C Films: C each
Following
trends coming in as widescreen films arrived, Reginald LeBorg’s Sins Of Jezebel (1953) was a quick
cash-in on Fox’s CinemaScope hit The
Robe, while Edward Finney’s Queen Of
The Amazons (1947, miscredited as 1951 on the DVD case) was trying to
become that first female Tarzan film so many studios tried to pull off and
never did. Both have been collected in
VCI’s new Movie Bad Girls – Volume One,
both B-movies produced by Robert Lippert.
Though
neither are great, they are amusing in their small B-movie ambitions and
smaller stars like Paulette Godard, George Nader, Robert Lowery and Patricia
Morrison are more watchable than most new actors today just by not being
plastic and bored-looking. The titles
suggest female-centered stories, but this is more about kitsch and excess than
anything remotely resembling feminism.
Still, it shows what you can do with a low budget, even when so much can
look dated. If you want to be amused,
they are worth a look.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Jezebel
was processed in AnscoColor, but that color is as dull as the detail here. At least this is in print on DVD, but work
for a future HD version will take some doing so we can see how well
Cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton (Panic
In Year Zero!) used color here. Amazons is 1.33 X 1 and black and
white, more typical of low-budget productions of the time and has fairly good
Grey Scale and Video Black, if not spectacular.
Detail is again an issue, but it is watchable enough thanks to
Cinematographer Robert Pittack, who knows how to shoot monochrome. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is more strident
and broken up than expected, down a few generations from whatever the original
audio was. Extras include bios, stills
and trivia for each, plus text and an essay on producer Robert Lippert.
- Nicholas Sheffo
