CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

SnoopyStyle Deborah Hoople (Barbara Stanwyck) is burlesque headliner Dixie Daisy at the Old Opera House on Broadway. It's a wild time on stage and even wilder backstage. Gee Gee Graham is a supportive showgirl. S.B. Foss owns the theater. Infatuated clown Biff Brannigan endlessly chases after Dixie. Snooty Lolita La Verne has a cat fight with Dolly Baxter. During a police raid, someone tries to strangle Dixie in the dark. Former star Princess Nirvena returns. Lolita has a fight with jealous gangster Louie Grindero and then she's found murdered.The burlesque is not particularly risqué probably due to production codes which makes the police raid kinda silly. The girls shake their booties a bit. I love Stanwyck but she's not the strongest song and dance gal. The strength is the backstage antics. I'm surprised that the Chinese waiters seem like human characters without the expected broad accents. The murderer would be more compelling if he's targeting only Dixie. The initial strangling is quite a good turn but the killer starts going elsewhere. This is nice for Stanwyck fans.

Dalbert Pringle This barely entertaining "whodunnit" Chick Flick, set in the supposedly bawdy world of the New York burlesque scene, certainly could've been (and should've been) a helluva lot more exciting and risqué than it was.Regardless of the rigid censorship that hung over its head back in 1943, this film wimped out, big time.Based on Gypsy Rose Lee's titillating novel, The G-String Murders, Lady Of Burlesque's story concerns the decidedly preposterous backstage murders of 2 strippers who are strangled by the killer with (get this!) their very own g-strings. (Spare me!) Believe me, this film's premise definitely sounds so much more enticing than it really is.Since it takes a whole 45 minutes before the first murder actually occurs, the viewer is, instead, expected to be satisfied by a literal barrage of backstage bickering from a bunch of 2-bit strippers (with a token cat-fight thrown in for good measure) - And even some mediocre "bumps & grinds" done in a slapdash fashion on stage didn't cut the mustard enough to hold my undivided attention for very long.In Lady Of Burlesque, actress Barbara Stanwyck plays Dixie Daisy, a stereotypical stripper (or, is it a hooker with transferable skills) who, though jaded-to-the-core, naturally, has a heart of the purest gold. (ho-hum!) Personally, I don't give a hoot what sort of rave reviews that Barbara Stanwyck has garnered for herself from her die-hard devotees and fans, she certainly isn't my cup of tea as the consummate actress who can, pretty much, play any part thrown at her, even with her eyes closed.Filmed in b&w, thank goodness that this boring backstage bullshit only had a running time of 90 minutes.This picture was directed by William Wellman whose other films include Public Enemy (1931), A Star Is Born (1937), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and Blood Alley (1955).

secondtake Lady of Burlesque (1943)This is a pretty goofy movie with a forced murder plot thrown in. Some of the actors are comedians in this theater group, so there are gags and one liners throughout. Others are dancers, so there's some dancing, though nothing too worked out. It's fascinating to see how Barbara Stanwyck is head and shoulders above the other actors in screen presence (if not in dancing--she's never been elegant, just sharp). The scene is limited to a few rooms in a dingy theater, and it's filmed with the camera usually just sitting there facing one way and the actors sitting or standing facing the other. It didn't help that the print Netflix has streaming is faded out so the shadows are merely grey. But director William Wellman is better than this film would let on--he's one of those working experts of ordinary cinema, cranking out lots of really good if rarely astonishing films over many decades.It's worth noting that the music is routine stuff, too, so if you are in it for the "musical" aspects you might beware. I just happened to finish a couple of hours ago the 1943 "Stormy Weather" which has incredible music (and an even weaker plot). Needless to say, this one is not about the music, per se.This whole scenario is based on the milieu of Gypsy Rose Lee, a famous burlesque dancer from the early 20th Century, and her apparently silly murder mystery "The G-String Murders" was the basis for this movie. But she wrote an autobiography in 1957 which led to a movie actually about her life, "Gypsy." Ethel Merman of all people was the start of that (with Sondheim music). These are the more interesting tidbits here. I really think this movie is best avoided, especially with many other good musicals out there from the 1940s.

arieliondotcom This film is full of surprises. I saw it accidentally and thought it was much older than I discovered it is when looking it up on IMDb. It's like a peek backstage at a burlesque show (exactly where most of the action takes place). And it actually catches your interest and manages to hold it, because of these historical artifacts if nothing else.For example, you'll be surprised to see Barbara Stanwyck dancing and doing it very well, in long full body shots that show it's actually her doing the dancing. And, to my surprise, it was quite a body. I've never been one to think she was very attractive in the face (which in my opinion detracted from Double Indemnity because the whole point of that movie was that she was irresistible). But here she shows off a comely set of gams, as they would say in the day.Next you'll see Pee Wee Herman...then realize it couldn't possibly be him and you realize it's Pinky Lee, the one who inspired Herman's career which is nothing (period in my opinion) without Lee. But there's none of the perverse overtones with Lee that you felt with Herman even before the scandal where he proved it.You'll recognize all of the vaudeville routines from other comedians. Abbott and Costello's routines especially. But burlesque and vaudeville were the library where all of these comics and all after them drew their knowledge of how to make people laugh, even in spite of themselves. And many of the stars in this film were experts since childhood in the very acts they portrayed in burlesque and vaudeville all their lives.All in all it's a film worth watching, and watch for the surprises as well. You'll never realize how much you owe to burlesque and vaudeville and how you have laughed all your life at jokes that were written long before any of us were ever born.