SATAN'S ANGEL: QUEEN OF THE FIRE
TASSELS [Now available
on home video.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
Very often I get the blues that B-Ware
Video and Books is no longer in operation in Lakewood. Cult-movie
fans, art-house mutants and exploitation-trash hounds came from
different counties to patronize the "Bad Movies For Bad People"
emporium run by Natalie Wille and her late husband, eminent local
musician Ed Wille. Every time a movie comes out like SATAN'S
ANGEL: QUEEN OF THE FIRE TASSELS, for example, I can't help
thinking how Eddie would have enjoyed it, and how good it would have
looked sitting on the shelf with all the Ed Woods, Russ Meyers and
Werner Herzogs.
The movie is a documentary on as louche
a topic as was ever dear to the B-Ware demographic. Blowsy Angel
Walker, 67, may look like a matronly broad, but she is a living
legend of "burlesque revival." The "Cadillac of
Burlesque" has returned from retirement with an act she honed
under the stage name `Satan's Angel,' a routine in which she sets
tassels of her nipple pasties ablaze (assuming it doesn't violate the
venue's wimpy 21st-century fire codes).
Often in tandem with her prim but very
tolerant mother, Walker recounts a Catholic-schoolgirl-rebel San
Francisco upbringing. There, nude art-modeling led her to 1960s
exotic dancing (more money than office work). She suffered a
bone-breaking motorcycle crash that compelled her to forsake go-go
choreography for the slow, sinuous moves apt for classic striptease,
so that became her subsequent career path. Thanks to her curves and
sultry looks, Angel's 12-year of headlining the strip shows in Las
Vegas may be a record for the genre.
Despite lifelong lesbianism, Walker had
an indeterminate sum of marriages/affairs, sometimes with
celebrities. And, while there are indications that Clint Eastwood was
a onetime boyfriend, the lady only rates two of her many paramours as
decent, caring lovers: Frank Gorshin and Bobby Darin. Those of you
who were placing bets, collect at the ticket window.
She entertained Vietnam troops, claims
to have been targeted by biker gangs, and succumbed to addiction in
the 1980s during a hiatus from a flesh circuit that she found too
hardcore-extreme even for Satan's Angel - when the Reagan-era skin
shows alternated her act with live, raw sex acts on stage, Walker
said her "Catholic" tastes just couldn't take it anymore.
But, after hitting bottom, she gradually re-emerged, like Bettie
Page, for the retro-kitsch circuit.
Filmmaker Josh Dragotta avoids
chalkboard lectures from, say, a Hugh Hefner, Camille Paglia or John
Waters about burlesque history, staying with voices of Angel, her
mom, and fellow "classic" strippers and modern imitators.
One thing he also avoids, rather disappointingly, is showing very
much footage of the legendary flaming-nipples bit. Then again, there
is much around the edges to suggest that Ms. Walker, brazen as she
is, wasn't the most tractable subject all the time.
While there's an intrinsic defense of
LGBT relationships, and a timely gay-marriage tie-in (or untimely, as
any given gay marriage will prove as disastrous as any given straight
marriage, mark my words), any coherent "feminist"
interpretation here is mainly implicit in that Angel Walker and other
"classic" strippers proudly flaunt realistically aged,
Rubenesque bodies rather than Barbie-Doll products of plastic
surgery/anorexic emaciation. Oh hell, we all know that "real"
feminists out there probably wish the killer biker gang had gotten to
Angel after all, so screw them. And all the more reason to check out
this docu-appreciation, rickety production values and all.
Best be apprised that, as classic
striptease does put the emphasis on `tease,' there is less
toplessness than one might expect. Hey, B-Ware did have a children's
section, don't forget. (3 out of 4 stars)
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