B Movie Venuses: the films of Andy Sidaris

We were Skyping to our particular friend S in Vancouver a week or so ago and bemoaning the fact that we were short on trashy films to watch at the end of a hard day with a bottle of Rioja, some slices of chorizo, cheese and a few olives.  We have quite a lot of  films to watch, some good TV (we are enjoying Fringe, which Agent DVD gave us for our birthday) but nothing really engagingly moronic (although, that said, we did enjoy the recent The Three Musketeers, much to our surprise) for when we want to switch off almost completely.

Mr Sidaris realises that his second career choice was a good one

Well, today what should arrive from the land of the frozen moose but a boxed set of films by Andy Sidaris.  A former Emmy award winning TV sports director he changed tack and made a host of B-movie (and that's being genererous, it seems), low budget action films in the eighties and nineties featuring a whole bevy of classic Playboy playmates.  This set features all twelve of these films and the Playmate cast list features some of Triple P's all time favourites from the eighties.  S says that she has watched them with girlfriends and they have to drink a shot of vodka every time an actress appears gratuitously topless and, as a result, they get completely drunk and out of control.  We can imagine!

McArthur

Michaels

Wiesmeier

Edwards

We have heard of these films but have never seen any of them as they had been out of production for some time. S tells me that the acting is terrible, the production values are laughable and the action scenes unconvincing.  However, she thinks we will enjoy them as the photography is nice (many of them were filmed in Hawaii) and they are "full of Playmates with big, bouncy tits." There are, we have to say, worse recommendations. So we are looking forward to watching Malibu Express later tonight and will report on this epic later.  According to IMDB it features Playmates Kimberly McArthur (January 1982), Lynda Wiesmeier (July 1982), Barbara Edwards (September 1983 and one of our favourites) and Lorraine Michaels (April 1981).  Also featuring B movie queen Sybil Danning, there should be plenty to look at at least and we are happily anticipating watching these ladies in motion!

We have some nice pink Rioja, some chorizo, olives, sundried tomatoes and some hot cheddar with chilli.  Perfect!

Non-Centrefold Venus of the Month 5: Susan Backlinie, January 1973

We are running behind a bit on our magazine girlies so will attempt to catch up over the next week or so. We realised that we haven't even done January's non-centrefold of the month let alone February or March's yet.

So let's go back over forty years to Penthouse's January 1973 issue where she featured in a pictorial by Ralph Nelson called The Lady and the Lion.

Well, and that is exactly what the pictorial is about, Susan cavorting with a lion.  She was an animal trainer at the Africa USA safari park in California (where the TV show Daktari, which Triple P remembers from his childhood, was filmed).

Apparently, for $1,000 (a lot of money at the time, she would hire herself out for film stunts involving lions, although she refused to work with any lion older than two years as they were too unpredictable.

Certainly it takes some nerve to strip off and pose with a lion like this.   On the picture at the top she is actually lying on it for heaven's sake!

Fortunately, she remained safe and was not attacked by the animal, a fate which would, of course, befall her in only a few years.  But not by a lion.

Away from her furry friend she poses effectively on a stripey hammock and shows off her 5' 8" and 37-25-37 figure.

Susan is in possession of an all over tan, quite unusual for American girls at this time but claims in the accompanying article that she prefers nudity and only wears clothes when absolutely necessary.  Quite right too!

The text claims she is a 23 year old from Washington DC but actually she was born as Susan Jane Swindall in Ventura, California in September 1946, which would have made her 26 when this pictorial appeared.

Susan would achieve worldwide recognition two years later when she stripped off for a skinny dip and became the first victim in Steven Spielberg's breakthrough blockbuster, Jaws (1975).

Her distraught look in the scene (which took nine days to shoot) was enhanced by director Spielberg not telling her when a diver was going to grab her leg in simulation of the shark attack.  It remains one of the most iconic screen deaths ever put on celluloid.  When she was recording the screams to be dubbed over the film Spielberg had her tilt her head back and poured water down her throat whilst she screamed.  Nasty!

Susan in the Mermaid Follies in 1966

Backlinie had been a champion swimmer in her teens and later became a professional swimmer at Florida's long running Paradise Mermaid Follies show.

Susan in 1941

She spoofed her Jaws scene in Spielberg's disastrous "comedy" 1941 (1979) where she skinny dipped once more only to find herself underneath a surfacing Japanese submarine and clinging on to the periscope in probably the only good scene in the film.

She appeared in a few other films usually either swimming or with animals but her iconic appearance in Jaws meant that magazines were still keen to run pictures of her if they could find them.  Here she is stripping off by the sea again in February 1977's Mayfair, which featured the famous pictorial of Linda Lusardi.  

Susan was over thirty when these pictures appeared in Mayfair so it may be that they were taken earlier.

The text accompanying the pictorial said that she was living in a 30 foot cabin cruiser and still doing a lot of diving.

She makes a splendid sea nymph!

Susan now lives in her birthplace of Ventura and is an accountant but can be seen attending conventions and autograph signings based on her Jaws fame.

Oldest Venus: The Venus of Hohle Fels

As it's International Women's Day today we thought it only right that we post a picture of the oldest representation of a woman yet discovered: the Venus of Hohle Fels.  It was found in a cave with a bone flute which is the oldest known musical instrument.

Discovered fairly recently (in September 2008, so after this blog first appeared, but around the time of our post on the Venus of Dolni Vestonic) in the Swabian Alps in Germany the small (6cm) figure is carved out of Mammoth tusk. It has been dated to some 35,000 to 40,000 years old.

The figure has the usual large bust and pregnant looking belly of other prehistoric carvings but also an unusually anatomically rendered vulva.  It has a ring instead of a head so could well have been worn as an amulet.

It is intriguing to wonder whether this was based on a real woman...

Burlesque Venus: Happy birthday Tempest Storm

Nice muff

It must be curious being born on 29th February but that is the case for burlesque legend Tempest Storm who was born on this day in 1928.

Tempest shows off her 21 inch waist

Born Annie Blanche Banks (she later changed her name legally to Tempest Storm) in Georgia she had already been married and divorced twice by the time she was twenty.  Heading to California, at the age of 22, she worked as a cocktail waitress and then a chorus girl before her 40-21-38 figure saw her ride the tail end of the burlesque era as one of its last great performers.  In fact she is the last great performer as she was still appearing in Las Vegas shows as recently as 2010 at the age of eighty two!

Rumoured to have had associations with John F Kennedy, Sammy Davis Jr and Elvis Presley, she married another two times.  She had her impressive bust insured for $1 million by Lloyd's of London in the nineteen fifties.  She was always part of the burlesque tradition that left something to the imagination and famously walked out of the Raymond Revuebar in London when she saw that the other dancers didn't wear g-strings.

So, happy 21st birthday Tempest!

Two new milestones

Venus Observations passed two more milestones in the last week or so.  

Firstly, we topped more than two hundred followers, which we could never have imagined when we started this blog in late 2005.  The blog has now been running six years and four months.  Secondly, we have just reached two and three quarter million page views.  We get something like 5,000 page hits a day and between 1,500 and 2,500 separate visitors.  Triple P is very grateful for all those who visit and, in particular, comment.  It really does encourage us to put more stuff up!

Anyway, by way of celebration, here is a picture we have had floating around in our "to post" section for some time without ever really finding an excuse to do so.  It is the actress Lynn Collins who we saw recently in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and who is to play Dejah Thoris in the forthcoming John Carter (2012) film.  There have been comments online to the effect that the Texan born actress isn't attractive enough to play "the incomparable Dejah Thoris" who in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books goes about mostly naked, apart from a few bits of jewellery.  It's a Disney film, however, so she will be very much clothed but not, as we can see, because she does not look good without clothes.  Still, Texan-born Lynn is an experienced Shakespearean actress so we will see what she can do with the role.

Centerfold Venus of the Month: Tamara Kapitas update

The purpose of this site is to celebrate erotic images of women and the real women who are the subject of these images, whether photographs or artwork.  Sadly, nude images have been, and remain in some unenlightened societies, to be images of shame.  A less threatening image than a naked body we cannot imagine, we have to say. 

Our particular friend S makes comments about the pernicious influence of the fourth century Christian church, whose activities and pronouncements sought to diminish women's role and importance in society. Certainly, over time, human society has evolved from one worshipping a mother goddess to one of a male dominated pantheon.  We are currently reading Robert Graves novel The Golden Fleece which, interestingly, posits the idea of a Greece of Triple Goddess worshippers being displaced by barbarian invaders from the north and their male chief god, Zeus, and his cohorts (or, more properly, perhaps, phalanxes).

We would not, therefore want to upset any of our subjects, particularly if things they did when they were younger continue to impact negatively on their lives today.  We are grateful to those ladies who posed in the men's magazines from the fifties to the eighties, especially as this was at a time when societal negativity to such actions was stronger than it is today.  We suspect the girls who pose today, who are more likely to be part of an organised sex industry which is their primary source of income, do not have the same issues as their pioneering sisters. The latter girls, blessed with exceptional bodies and seeing an opportunity to make some easy money from them to fund, for example, college fees, were more likely to be "the girl next door".  What none of them could have foreseen was an internet that made their pictures easily available decades later when they had thought that they were posing for a disposable magazine that would be forgotten and unavailable in a few months.  We are also under no misapprehension that many of these girls, who were often very young, were exploited by older and more powerful men.   

It is for these reasons, therefore, that we have removed some of the pictures of Tamara Kapitas from our recent Centrefold of the Month post and all of the material relating to her subsequent career.   Miss Kapitas has been in touch with us and pointed out that detractors were using her Penthouse pictorial to attack her current work.

She kindly shared some information about her shoots for Playboy and Penthouse which we have incorporated into the re-edited piece here.

Engaged Venus: The Betrothed by John William Godward

The Betrothed (1892)

As it's Valentine's Day today we thought we would go for a nice, romantic image.  Agent Triple P attended an event at the Guidhall Art Gallery last night where they have a small but significant collection of Pre-Raphaelite and classicist paintings.  Latterly most of these have been buried in the basement but we were pleased to see that they have now been restored to the main floor once more.

Of these, Triple P's favourite is The Betrothed by John William Godward which was painted in 1892 whilst he was living in Chelsea; one of sixteen paintings he produced that year.

A typically langorous Godward girl contemplates her engagement ring in an equally typical marble-ous Mediterranean setting.  This painting marks the first appearance in one of Godward's paintings, of the spotted stola around her hips.  It would appear in many more of his pictures, which makes you wonder whether it was an actual piece of costume from his studio.

Sir Harry Vanderpant

 

This was also the first of Godward's paintings that ended up in a major gallery. It was bought by Sir Harry Sheil Elster Vanderpant (1866-1955), later the Lord Mayor of Westminster, who gave it to the Guildhall Art Gallery in 1916.

It's quite a small painting, just 24 inches across, but confers the idea that she is thinking about her man extremely well.  Godward has rendered the leopard skin superbly in this.