Burlesque! The mere mention of the world is enough to make some of us excited. Granted, not everyone appreciates the old school art of jiggly bumping and grinding and a lot of your enjoyment of such material will depend on just how tolerant you are of seeing women who, by today's standards (and sometimes by yesterday's standards!) aren't the perfect physical specimens that modern smut movies have taught us is the norm (which it is not). Regardless, for those who do dig on variety and off the wall strip tease routine with a healthy dose of bad stand up thrown in for good measure, Something Weird Video's releases have proven to be a blessing. This latest teams up two hour long presentations and throws in some extra shorts for good measure.

Want details? Read on…

Ding Dong – A Night At The Moulin Rouge:

This feature doesn't deviate from the formula at all, so if you've seen any of the burlesque features out there you know what to expect. Here we're treated to seven ladies: Pat Flannery, Little Audrey, Doreen, Iva Pratt, Joanna, Jenny Lee, and Illona. Each of the ladies does her thing in front of the camera (there are plenty of close ups if that's your bag) while in between numbers we get bad jokes aplenty.

The jokes frequently stink and are delivered in such a forced and awkward manner that you can't imagine anyone ever finding this material funny for any of the reasons that the writers intended. That being said, they're just so unbelievably bad and delivered with such complete and utter failure that you can't help but laugh in spit of yourself.

As always, however, the real reason anyone is going to watch this type of thing is for the ladies, right? Right. How do the seven sirens of the Moulin Rouge hold up? Many of them have seen better days, to be frank. Some of these ladies are not in the best of shape and some of them have all the rhythm and enthusiasm of roadkill. Regardless, they get up and do their thing whether they look like they want to or not and that does count for something. The music kicks in, the hips start to wiggle, and inevitably the top comes off for better or worse. Highlights of the revue are Flannery and her make up that looks like it was applied by Mimi on The Drew Carey Show, Iva Pratt and her Russ Meyer-sized super-cans, and the genuinely sexy Jenny Lee who, far more so than the other ladies featured here, is actually quite fetching in her own odd way.

The rest of the ladies on parade don't offer much of anything noteworthy here. These are the ones that just don't work, the forgotten ladies of the stage who exist only in these clips and who probably never went on to anything more fancy or interesting than what we see them doing on film. In the end, this is an average quality entry in the archive of burlesque material currently available. There's definitely worse material out there, but there's also much better footage if you want to look for it.

The Merry Maids Of Gay Way:

Much like the first feature, this is strictly a by the numbers affair in that we get a few more ladies and a few more corny stand-ups but nothing of any real substance or anything that makes this one stand out from the crowd.

The line up of ladies for The Merry Maids Of The Gay Way features Cherry Lee, Doreen Cannon, Taffy Terrell, Gerri Darnelle, Betty Shay, Petty Varga, Rhea Walker, Diane Delayne, Sherri Winters, Janine France, and last but not least, the one and only Zabouda! The variety is a little more expansive here than in the first feature but the quality of flesh being peddled is actually a little worse with many of these women looking like they've just come off of a three day bender only to be thrust on stage in front of the camera.

Once again, bad comedians get up between girls and do their routine to minimal effect, though there are a few groan inducing gags in here that work a little bit better than those featured in the first film. Even with that said, it's not surprising that the comedians featured here stayed here and never went on to bigger or better gigs.

Do the ladies fare any better? Well, as stated, some of them are in pretty grim condition but there are a few diamonds in here that are worth skimming through to see. Cherry Lee isn't so much good as she is just weird, her dance routine consisting of much stomping and shuffling of feet and it's all completely in appropriate but somehow entertaining for all the wrong reasons. Taffy Terrell is a looker, and though her dancing isn't that great she is fun to stare at and she's the stand out babe of the feature. Betty Shay has got some interesting gymnastic moves but unfortunately looks like a cross-dresser. Janine France isn't half bad looking but someone get the girl a sandwich, it doesn't look like she's eaten in a while. As such, she's not as curvy as burlesque dancers should be, even if she is kind of cute. Zabouda finishes things off not with a bang but with a whimper, though her belly-dancer outfit is at least a nice try.

If the girls aren't all that, the comedy sucks, and the entire thing is formulaic, why bother with this type of material? That's a good question and a tough one to answer. In all honesty, this reviewer isn't sure what it is about grungy old burlesque footage that works for him, and obviously it's different things for different people but part of the allure probably lies in the fact that material like this just doesn't really exist anymore outside of a specific subculture of pin up magazines and shot on video recreations. Modern pornography, as wonderful as it can be at times, is very different and having been raised in the era where it's always been legal and available, perhaps the fact that this material will probably never be considered 'hot' by the masses again is what makes it work. Food for though, it nothing else.

Video:

Everything is fullframe here, which is how it was all shot. Video quality is decent when one takes into account the age and obscurity of the movies, but not great. There is some compression evident in a few spots as well as some mild aliasing. Plenty of grain, mild print damage, scratches, splices, etc., but it all looks good enough and really, did we expect perfect video quality for a release consisting of old stripper films? The reality of the situation is that these are old, low budget movies that weren't perfectly preserved and so sometimes they're going to be a little rough around the edges.