Dark Angel

Cult Epics founder, Nico B., claims in his liner notes that he never thought he'd make a biographical film about Bettie Page's last three years as famed pin-up star, but finding look-alike Paige Richards to play the part in Bettie Page:Dark Angel changed his mind. This film recreates Page's trials and tribulations as an aspiring actress, by placing dramatized scenes from her life between faux bondage flicks that have the grainy, black and white quality of the long-lost real ones. Nico B. studied the remaining stills to imagine live action for these entertaining bondage films that, combined, take up over half of the movie. Scenes of Bettie (played by Paige Richards) crying to her boyfriend about her frustrations are benign as are most narrative scenes in porn. Rather, the best parts in Dark Angel are the vintage-looking fetish sequences that show Bettie as dominatrix, Bettie as a captive jungle girl dressed in shredded furs, Bettie legs tied to a coffee tables', and the most classic, Bettie as Pony-Slave. Of course, seeing the real Bettie would be preferable, but Richards looks uncannily similar, sharing the same sweet smile and inner radiance that made Bettie Page so famous. Plot-wise, Bettie Page:Dark Angel explains Bettie Page's sudden disappearance from the media during a scary sequence in which horny fans and an obscenities court case slapped against her agent, Irving Klaw, leave Bettie unsure about her own safety. The kitschy premise of the film makes Bettie Page:Dark Angel a fun homage to the Queen, and for future pin-up girls, the Two-Disc Limited Edition set offers Bunny Yeager, Bettie's original photographer, interviewing Richards then setting out to various scenes for sexy photo shoots. --Trinie Dalton