Well, this is the wrong place to look for a carefully edited and documented history of classic femmes fatale or fallen women in the movies. You won't find Gloria Graham in here, or Barbara Stanwyck, Barbara Nichols, Veda Ann Borg or Joan Shawlee.
Instead, there are numerous clips from what appear to be cheap, color, dubbed Drive-In fodder from the 1970s, with names you never heard of an no discernible skills. Well, you may recognize one or two names. When they appear on screen, a subtitle tells you their names in case you don't know who Diana Dors is or was. There's an abundance of violence and even more nudity, in case you've not only forgotten what Diana Dors looks like but what the female anatomy looks like. It could have been called "Naked Girls In Sleazy Movies." Of course, you can't blame this historical illustration of a traditional cinematic role for presenting undignified material. That's what it's supposed to do.
But the documentary itself is slapdash. There is a framing story. A tough young tattooed babe is put in prison and sentenced to the electric chair. Cigarette hanging from her mouth, she illuminates the character she represents, trait by trait. But the opening scene of her being put into prison takes up several minutes -- so extended is it that I wondered if I'd stumbled into the middle of the movie. Finally, the opening credits rolled and I sighed with relief.
I wish it had been in some way witty, that there had been some tongue-in-cheek editorial comment, that it had a few of the features of Science Fiction Mystery Theater or whatever it's called. But it doesn't. It's all laid out for us, as if we're supposed, not to smile or laugh at this nonsense, but rather to enjoy it. The only time I laughed was when Gene Autry's name was misspelled in the subtitle.
Well, one man's meat is another man's poisson, but this smells like dead mackerel to me. If there's reason for any applause, it must be for the hardiness of the producers and editors who must have sat through hundreds of hours of nearly unbearable garbage.
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