Reissued in a limited 2-disc set, Bettie Page: Dark Angel comes with a nice bonus documentary that should please fans of model Paige Richards, and the vintage erotic photography by Bunny Yeager. (Disc 1 replicates the contents of the film's single-disc edition, reviewed HERE.)

Cult Epics have already released a Yeager DVD in their series of Bettie Page-related discs (see end of review), so this limited set furthers the material with a special angle on the behind-the-scenes work of shooting a model in deliberately tongue-in-cheek poses at various locales, including the zoo, the beach, and in a studio.

Many of the locations were picked to evoke the famous stills taken by Yeager of Page back in the fifties (a selection of which are also archived on Disc 2), and Richards manages to bridge temporal style of the lengthy photo shoot with a sense of modern fun, largely through her own vivacious personality (Yeager admits, in the doc's opening interview with Richards, that her latest model already possesses a number of the key qualities that made Bettie Page such an enduring icon of twentieth-century erotica).

The silliness of modeling - the poses, the over-expressive body and facial requirements, and nit-picking meant to create the best-possible photograph - are way up front; the doc's style is pretty much a series of edited moments from the shoot, as Richards is guided and photographically captured by Yeager's colour still camera. (The doc's final modeling session begins with some black & white nudes, but unlike the colour stills, the former aren't represented in Richards' own still gallery on the DVD.)

Producer/cinematographer/editor Nico B. doesn't go for the usual visual enhancements - fast editing, canted angles, shakycam footage, omnipresent music - and while that may slow down the doc's pacing, the sometimes lengthy segments do showcase the mercurial nature required of a model to respond, improvise, and maintain specific moods in wide open spaces like a zoo (and fighting the scene-stealing, bored expression of a cheetah) and the safely secluded, still environment of Yeager's studio.

Most of the photo sessions contain various levels of nudity - either topless or in full birthday suit - so the doc delivers a steady quotient of frank T&A, rendered erotic by Richards' fast responses to Yeager's off-camera direction.

Yeager herself opens the doc with a lengthy Q&A with Richards, and while it remains an ongoing medium shot, the personal discussions ultimately establish a personality for the physical form to be captured in the hour-long doc.

The DVD's outtake gallery offers a short extract of Richards in a vintage maid outfit (pretty standard fodder in Irving & Paula Klaws' own still and film work of the fifties), and an interview segment with Richards talking about dating.

Cult Epics' genuine Bettie Page loops were previously released in a boxed DVD set containing “Bettie Page: Pin Up Queen," "Bettie Page: Bondage Queen," and "100 Girls By Bunny Yeager."

© 2006 Mark R. Hasan