Indie Sex (Documentary TV Mini-Series/2007/Genius/IFC/Weinstein) + The Bettie Page Collection (Umbrella Entertainment/PAL Region 4/Zero Import DVD Set)

 

PLEASE NOTE: The Bettie Page DVDs that can only be operated on machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region 4 and Region Zero/0/Free and the PAL format software, and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the website address provided at the end of the review.

 

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+/C     Extras: C+/C     Main Programs: B-/C+

 

 

We are almost in a cycle of documentaries and mini-series that cover sexuality, censorship of that sexuality or sex in filmmaking.  The latest to take on the subject is the Lesli Klainberg/Lisa Ades mini-series Indie Sex, which offers an examination in four parts of the subject.  To its advantage, it is thorough about many recent films and even is good at remembering many landmark films.  Unfortunately, a little more research on their part would have made these episodes more definitive, missing some key films in each of the following cases:

 

1)     Censored

2)     Teens

3)     Extremes

4)     Taboos

 

 

Teens actually managed to include Little Darlings (1980) but misses other highlights of the teen films, including Roller Coaster (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and takes the John Hughes cycle too seriously.  It is also not political enough or aware enough of how the history of such films since the early 1970s work.

 

Taboos is an uncut show offered as a bonus when it is part of the series, which makes little sense, but it is also the best installment of the program, with the best selection of clips, best knowledge of history and made me wish the rest of the shows were this good.

 

In all cases, the makers are a little too impressed with any representation of sex, whether the films work or not, which is part of the problem with sex in cinema today.  It shows sex without doing anything with it, no mater what form it takes.  It wants to make a split between mainstream and independent cinema, but their approach to that does not always work either.  However, there is more than enough here to give the whole series a look and I commend them for what they did pull off.

 

One subject the series addresses is the Bettie Page phenomenon, recently revisited in a biopic of sorts shown here in a clip with the lead actress who played her, as well as actual film footage of Page in some of her classic shorts.  Though tame in many ways by today’s torture porn standards, some of the suggestions of the material are still racy and many DVDs are on the market with various feature films and compilations of her work.  Something Weird Video in particular has issued just about all her known catalog.

 

Umbrella Entertainment has collected all those works in a new 5-DVD set they are simply calling The Bettie Page Collection including the EastmanColor features Varietease and Teaserama.  There is also the documentary Bettie Page – Bondage Queen Collection and 100 Girls Of Bunny Yeager.  Oddly, one of the discs, The Irving Claw Classics, Volume One, is listed as both a main program and an extra!  Oh well.

 

Either way, it is a crash course on everything you could want to see about Page and cohorts joining and not joining her, plus you get a few other interesting extras.  They include Page talking in the “ultra-rare colour burlesque feature” Striporama, trailers for Varietease & Teaserama and David F. Freedman on those two features.

 

All this material over about 80 years is all in 1.33 X 1 block style presentations, expect for some clips in Indie Sex that are letterboxed, but that is very rare.  Even the Little Darlings footage looks like old, partly unsqueezed 1.85 X 1 in a 1.33 X 1 space.  The footage usually looks good there, but there are all kinds of scratches, dirt and imperfections throughout the Page footage from black and white shorts to color features.  I like the color film here more than any of the content and makes for a wacky look at independent production and all are in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono.  Indie Sex is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo.

 

The only extras on Indie Sex are the brief sex in cinema milestones piece, an extended old stag film and more interviews from the series, including with Tatum O’Neal, Peter Sarsgaard, John Waters, John Cameron Mitchell, Piper Perabo and Rosanna Arquette for this 2-DVD release available all over the U.S. and Canada.

 

 

As noted above, you can order the import Bettie Page set exclusively from Umbrella at:

 

http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo