Q: Sogo Ishii has taken the old myth of Musashibo Benkei and stood it on its head to produce a dark, gory, spellbinding and terrific-looking movie. Those unfamiliar with the legend won't need to be; the story explains itself nicely as it goes along. Well worth seeking out even though there are no English-language home video versions.
A: positive
Q: I've known about Bettie Page for many a year now. The soft-core porn images of her from the 1950's have since become iconographic and still have a strong draw even today. The "Bettie Page" look is also still hugely popular within the hetero fetish world and remains as distinctive today as it did then. So I watched this film with quite a bit of familiarity to begin with. The result did not disappoint.

Among other things, it was hugely entertaining to see the movie's recreation of actual figures like Irving Klaw, John Willie, and Bunny Yeager all consider trailblazers today. Mary Harron did an excellent job creating the desired ambiance of sexual repression and hypocrisy in 1950's America along with a sexuality that, by today's standards, was innocent in the extreme. I particularly liked the use of monochrome versus color as a visual shorthand for the emotional and spiritual climate Bettie found herself in.

I think that Gretchen Mol did an excellent job of presenting the character of Bettie in all her innocent sexuality and all her utter naivete. Bettie loved to look pretty, loved the attention, saw nothing wrong with nudity, and enjoyed dressing up in "silly outfits" for the camera. The underlying sexuality and deeply fetishistic desires all that evoked were completely lost on her. To this day she still doesn't understand "what all the fuss was about" when it comes to her pictures or the S&M content of them.

This isn't to say she's uneducated or too simple to understand it's just that she simply doesn't "get it" about fetishism and never will. No harm there. Bettie Page is simply being who she is. The film captured this quite nicely.

The social atmosphere of the 1950's depicted by Ms. Harron and written by her along with Guinevere Turner makes me truly glad I live in the day and age that I do. The hypocrisy and repression combined with the massive ignorance about our sexuality all combined to a frighteningly stifling world. The film well captures this and brings to cheering as Bettie endures it all with her unshakeable faith and her unchangeable naivete.

This film was a bit slow at times but hit all the points Ms. Harron attempted and hit them well. I'd recommend this film even for those folks with little to no knowledge of who Bettie Page was and what effect she had on American culture. For those with such interests, then this film is a must see.
A: positive
Q: Its not sophisticated, and nobody in the credits had a great career, but taken as a whole, because there are no famous personalities; the film seems more realistic than some high budget, well cast films.

A film made for a few bucks, that is worthy of watching should give hope to all those would be film makers and wantabee actors.

The problem with this film is it was made in the worst possible time. TV was taking over the revenues of the film industry, and this film could have easily been shown on TV. In 1950, all the fare on TV would qualify for a "G" rating. The film industry began to make more "adult" films that could not be shown on TV during the days when TV wouldn't dare show the sex and skin of today's commercials.
A: positive
Q: By God, it's been a long time since I saw this. Probably about 18 years ago?

The movie tells us (kids) all about human blood and the circulatory system. Very professionally put together--Disney-style animation, plus human actors--it was directed by Frank Capra, for pete's sake!

Kind of an overkill. I wonder if the very high production value is worth what amounts to a film-strip's worth of information on the human body? But boy will those kids watching it learn: even now I can clearly remember Dr. Baxter being challenged by Hemo himself to name what common material most resembles human blood, to which the Doctor immediately answers "sea water."
A: positive