Blond beauty Gretchen Mol dons a raven wig and oodles of provocative costumes for the title role in The Notorious Bettie Page, out this week on DVD.

Page grew up in an deeply Christian Tennessee family, eventually escaping to the big bad city, New York, where she soon switched from beauty pageants to what would now be considered tame bondage stills and films - with titles like "Sally's Punishment" and "Second Initiation of the Sorority Girl." There's a lot of faux spanking and dominatrix wear - the Pussycat Dolls meet the Henri David Halloween Ball.

Shot mostly in black and white (director Mary Harron switches to sun-drenched Technicolor for the Miami scenes), Bettie Page is meant to evoke America's pre-Playboy climate of repressed sexuality, when Senate hearings were called to explore the implications of pornography, starring girls who wore seamed hose and cone-like bras and didn't look like underfed twigs.

So how did a God-fearing, Bible-reading country girl reconcile a strict upbringing (mother's rule: no dating) with posing nude, or using whips? "Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden of Eden," she explains in one scene, in an entirely innocent and strangely believable way. When Adam and Eve sinned, she says, they put clothes on. Posing for pictures is just using her "God-given talent" to make people happy.

Despite all the giggle-inducing fetish photo shoots, the film has dull spots, as Mol's character slides in and out of people's lives, rarely making real connections or saying anything of substance that would hint at an inner life. By the end, we don't understand what makes Page tick, though Mol tries her darnedest, flinging her hair around and her clothes off.

The extras are about as skimpy as the costumes. The "Inside Look" featurette includes short interviews with Harron, cowriter Guinevere Turner, Mol, and costume designer John A. Dunn. The extras could certainly have used a bit more costume-related content, given their significant costarring role. Dunn says that he did 55 to 60 outfit changes on Mol, and that Page herself was an accomplished seamstress, who often sewed her own clothing.

Guy viewers will appreciate "Presenting Bettie Page," a silent nude strip reel starring the real Page. She's now 83, but lives a quiet life, turning down public appearances. But back in the day... wow.

** Commentary by Mol, director Mary Harron, and cowriter Guinevere Turner; "An Inside Look at the Pin-Up Queen of the Universe" featurette; "Presenting Bettie Page" archival footage; theatrical trailer.

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