The Beautiful, the Bloody, and the Bare starts out on a good foot and with a sense of low-budget fun. Credits are incorporated into the action, painted on foreground and background props or walls. The dvd is culled from great source material and the film stock is unexpectedly vibrant and alive. The streets of New York City invoke a strong sense of place and time. The colors are amazing, and as the narration unfolds there even seems to be some purpose to the whole affair. "Seems" is the operative word because it all gives way to a growing realization that the whole premise is nothing but a thinly veiled crutch to allow the camera to gaze endlessly at naked women as they model for artists. Now, to most guys reading this it may seem a misplaced complaint to grouse about seeing nothing but naked women, but keep in mind that these women are mostly frozen in poses so that make you wonder if you accidentally hit the "pause." The plot, such as it is, has our narrator relating how a photographer friend he hasn't seen in a long time comes into town, starts working with some of artist models, and also begins acting weird when the color red gets flashed around (oddly enough, his own red sweater seems to have no effect on him). After 45 minutes of voyeuristic thrills on par with shopping for mannequins, something happens. This interjects the remaining 20 minutes with a roof chase and a violent outcome, but it's nothing to write home about. Apropos soft-core exploitation fare, it's worth noting that a similar conceit would find itself more fully flushed out by the next generation in Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer. Ultimately what resonates here is the beautiful color stock of the film itself, the bloody and bright reds that pop out from the screen, and the bare truth of how real naked women looked back in a time before liposuction and boob-jobs were prerequisites for even the worst low-budget affair.
Behind Locked Doors pushes the lurid content up a notch but suffers from wear-and-tear, emulsion scratches, and general sloppiness. In one case a woman's bare leg seems to have a distractingly bad case of varicose veins, but it's really just some hair in the camera gate. What can be said about Behind Locked Doors is that, compared to the first film on the double-bill, the plot here is a rich tapestry of three acts with a beginning (girls gone wild in a barn - a party!), a middle (girls get stuck in a spooky old house run by two crazy people - lesbian sex scene, anyone?), and an end (which I won't give away, but a party is involved).
Both of these drive-in oddities are tiresome affairs that are easily eclipsed by the most entertaining thing on the dvd: the bonus features. The collection of trailers and other goodies are rich in camp value and include a variety of shorts (Part Time Pin-Up, Playgirl Models, Sex Workshop, and Sexycises), original trailers for the features on the dvd and more (Tender Flesh, B.J. Lang, Color Me Blood Red, Blood Bath, Pets, The Sinful Dwarf, and The Captive Female). These latter trailers are a real hoot. For B.J. Lang, which stars Mickey Rooney (and shows him in drag!), the tag line reads "Get ready for a motion picture so haunted, it will never be shown!" They sure got that right. In The Captive Female a woman gets chased around by a boom mike (well, there's also a guy with a hook, but the boom mike is more distracting). All-in-all, it's a pretty good package for people chasing "Lurid Stories of Lust!"
For more information about The Beautiful, the Bloody and the Bare, visit Image Entertainment. To order The Beautiful, the Bloody and the Bare, go to TCM Shopping.
by Pablo Kjolseth
