Bettie Page: Dark Angel is a 2004 biographical drama directed and produced by Nico B., founder of Cult Epics. It lands in New York from 1953 to 1957 — the window when Bettie Page shot bondage and gag specialty reels and stills for Irving Klaw. Fetish model Paige Richards plays Page. Dukey Flyswatter plays Klaw, the man behind the camera and the mail bag.
The film’s device is reconstruction. Page’s bondage images earned her the nickname Dark Angel and pulled her into a U.S. Senate committee investigation. Klaw’s 16 mm fetish shorts mostly circulated as mail-order loops; unlike the stills, most of those reels did not survive. The movie remakes six lost shorts and tries to turn the career the investigation helped end into a continuous story.
Richards already knew the poses the Klaw stills taught. The picture premiered at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival in February 2004 and stays on the Cult Epics label. The original Klaw reels are still missing. This is what you watch if you want the Dark Angel years as a narrative instead of a pile of surviving stills.
