Teaserama

This is horribly dated piffle. It doesn't have a plot and it's completely tedious. The wonderful Betty Page is wasted in one of the worst movies of all time.

This film is bad even by 1955's standards. Sexy, it isn't. Even by the lowest rent version of Burlesque, it is a mess. The "Top Banana" has the unfortunate problem of not being funny. Not even with the "take my wife, please" joke. Production values are non-existent. With one exception, the women are...well, you judge for yourself. As for the stripping? You will see more skin on a Cape Cod beach in January than is displayed here.

There is nothing wrong with being tacky. But this is just incredibly boring. One dance goes on for seven minutes and is not one-hundredth as sexy as Rita Hayworth's dance in "Gilda".

The one glimmer of light in the entire film is 1950's icon Bettie Page. Bettie has two dance numbers. Neither of which are very good. She also introduces each act with it's own title card. It is here that she shines. There is a freshness, a sexy naughty girl-next-door quality that she lends to these all to brief moments.

If you are a BIG Bettie Page fan and have a fast forward button then rent this. Otherwise, for your own safety, stay a way from this film at all costs.

Well, at least Teaserama has Betty Page and the spectacularly-chested Tempest Storm to lure the viewer into a false sense of security. Once you get past these two, however, the film degenerates into dull gyrations from a variety of forgettable women, as well as painfully unfunny comedy routines. I assume they're supposed to be comedy; they could be just random words, it's hard to tell.

If you're a fan of Betty Page, Tempest Storm, or just kitschy camp silly costumed burlesque then you might as well watch it. If you want something erotic, or exciting, then don't watch it..

Everything the first reviewers have said is true. However, if you weren't there when old-time burlesque was in vogue, you have no way to see it except really awful b/w shorts with bad performers, or sanitized revues like THIS WAS BURLESQUE, or modern burlesque done in an entirely different historical context.

TEASERAMA and VARIETEASE have top-name performers presenting their routines exactly as audiences of the day saw them.

This is the real thing, and if the dancers don't seem all that erotic, or the comics don't seem funny, still that's the way it was for the guys in the audience back then.

IF ONE IS expecting to see some really steamy scenes or a really credible recreation of the Burlesque Shows of bygone days, he'd have to look elsewhere. Oh sure, you say, "How do you know, Ryan? Well, you'd be right, at least to a degree. We never did see any such live performances; but in this fact is the key to our assertion.

THE PRODUCTION, AS it is, looks wooden. stagy and the product of a cheap sound-stage; rather than would a filmed record of a show at the FOLLIES, MINSKY'S or What Have You.

AS FOR THE cast, we recognize two of them from their work outside of the Burlesque circuits. First of all, Bettie Page is much in evidence. The impish little brunette with the Prince Valiant/Page Boy hairdo does her number and assists later.

SECONDLY IN THIS category of "the recognized & Familiar" is veteran Burlesque Comic, Joe E. Ross. Having once been described as "a Jewish Wallace Beery", this was before he and his work became known to the general public through his characterizations on TGV sitcoms. He was Mess Sergeant Rupert Ritzyk on THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW/YOU'LL NEVER GET RICH and followed that up with a co-starring gig (with Fred Gwynne) as Patrolman Gunther Toody, NYPD, on CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU?

AS FOR THE "adult content" of TEASARAMA, one must remember that it was 1955, not the "enlightened" days that we have witnessed. What was considered to be 'naughty' or 'sexy' or even 'hot stuff' in that day bygone day.

THIS SORT OF film was usually exhibited in various "Art Theatres" or in the local Drive-In Theatres (aka "Passion Pits"), which also would screen some 'soft core', semi-nudies which usually displayed bare breasted, movie-star wannabees in some silly, senseless "comic" stories; which were clearly designed to be titillating and aimed at the prurient interests of young males.

IT DOES REPRESENT a vanishing or even now extinct branch of the lively arts. The Burlesque Show's being a conveyance of being 'naughty' for young males has gone the way of the steam locomotive, ash trays and public telephone booths. It is for these reasons that one may enjoy screening this, if only once.

ONE OTHER ASPECT of this movie, TEASARAMA is that some of the strippers featured sure appear to have become rather "Long in the Tooth".

WE CAN ONLY surmise that making a film like this was a sort of last resort for the aging strippers, possibly a Swan Song.

NOTE: At the time of this writing, neither Schultz nor I have any reason to footnote anything in this write-up. Amazing, no?