Striptease: The Greatest Exotic Dancers of All Time

If you are a fan of the more modest striptease which leaves more to the imagination, this video is for you. Some excellent video footage here, with reasonably good, unobtrusive voice-over commentary. Some footage is in color, though most in black and white.

It is somewhat disappointing that the video leaves off pretty abruptly somewhere in the mid-50s to the early 60s and the narrator speaks openly of the "decline" of stripteasing in the 60s. But there were still quite a few excellent girls working the circuit in the 60s, many of which went on to appear in famous "B" or exploitation movies.

That being said, as this video proves, there was certainly a high art in dancers such as Sally Rand, Gypsy Rose Lee, Cherrie Knight and Lilli St. Cyr. I had heard of Miss Rand and her "fan dance" for years but had no idea of how intricate and indeed erotic it was until I saw this high-quality footage here. The Gypsy Rose Lee clip was an apt and welcome inclusion. When a stripper can drive you nuts by baring a little bit of clavicle, that's talent!

Interestingly, there is almost no attention paid by the narrator to the use of physique alone as an attraction. In the opening monologue, he states that "contrary to popular belief, burlesque striptease artists came in all shapes and sizes." The selection of girls used in this video certainly bears this out! Makes the tagline somewhat vacuous.

Other criticism is the totally gratuitous inclusion of bondage pin-up girl Bettie Page and the inclusion of a long segment on black ecdysiasts, born more out of a sense of political correctness than germaneness.

There is also DVD bonus material which consists of about 10 vintage reels of little-known or unbilled ecdysiasts. The first reel, "Caught On Barbed Wire", is placed first for good reason: it is the best of the lot, very well-conceived and well-acted, and rivals anything in the main program for electricity factor. Don't miss it!