There's already a number of books collecting the erotic photography of Bunny Yeager, and while "100 Girls" may be technically crude in spots (and a little heavy on tungsten lighting), it's a fairly straightforward introduction to the work of an artist generally overshadowed by some of the models who went on to more notorious careers - the biggie being Bettie Page.

Yeager's career began with modeling, and the doc's intro gives a good impression that her time in front of the camera, mimicking all the standard looks and poses for men's cheesecake and sweatergirl magazines, proved valuable when Yeager swapped positions to become a photographer, and imparted her own sensibilities on what was a business run mostly by men.

Bunny Yeager's work - here sampled through the stills of about 100 models - offers the titillation men love, but the independent quality of the models themselves is also a prominent feature in Yeager's work. A flair for capturing personal pride, bemusement, and the latent seductiveness of the girl-next-door, Yeager's images are very modern, and one can trace the overtly expressed exuberance - both from the visages and poses of her models - to the popular photography of best-selling works like the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issues. Distancing her work from lewd, crude, gimmicky (think Pirelli tire calendars) or weird (like the French Photo magazine), Yeager's 100 models form an excellent time capsule of mainstream erotic photography in transition, as the mores of the repressed Fifties gradually moved away from knit sweaters hiding torpedo mammaries to a more liberated form of provocative entertainment no longer aimed squarely at average males.

Cult Epics' DVD has added extra footage which mostly includes additional model profiles, and two expanded bookends. The doc's beginning includes extracts from Barry Mahon's 1963 "Bunny Yeager's Nude Camera" and 1964 "Bunny Yeager's Nude Las Vegas" before the doc's core - basically filmed still images set to Yeager's narration - takes over. Closing the doc is Yeager shooting zaftig 'Bambi' on the beach in 1996, and the End Credits feature Yeager crooning "Bye Bye Blackbird" (in an enormous peroxide hairdo).

The DVD inlay card has a detailed chapter table for each model, and the DVD menu replicates the indexed with photos and model names.

This Cult Epics title is available separately or as part of the Bettie Page Collection that includes: “Bettie Page: Pin Up Queen," "Bettie Page: Bondage Queen," and "100 Girls By Bunny Yeager." Also available is "The Irving Klaw Classics" collection, with additional Page material.

Note: For the sake of easy database searches on this site, “Bettie Page” is the chosen spelling of her name in titles and reviews, although if hunting for the titles via online retailers, you may wish to try “Betty Page” in some instances.

© 2005 Mark R. Hasan