What are Suicide Girls? Well, kind of a cross between Playboy Bunnies and the goth/punk/insert-whatever-alterno-sub-culture-group-you-want-here. It all started when a Portland, Or. photographer named Missy decided that it might be fun to take glamour/pin-up/burlesque shots of a different kind of girl than you might expect to model for such material. Rather than the cookie cutter types you see photographed for most men's magazines, she decided she'd focus on some different looking, but no less attractive, femme fatales and thus the Suicide Girls website was born. It's now less a website than it is a phenomena with not only an online presence but also a book of pin-up photography out, this here DVD (distributed by Epitaph Records) and a CD in the works (also distributed by Epitaph Records). The website has thousands of members and the number of girls who have modeled for the burgeoning enterprise now number in the hundreds and looks as different as different can be.

Don't look here for the fake titted bleach blonde gals you're likely to get a look at in the latest issue of Penthouse, instead look for that pretty girl with the tattoos and the lip ring who works at the record store or that gal with the pink dyed hair and the stretched ear lobes who you see downtown sometimes. These are regular girls in the sense that they're untouched or unblemished by implants but at the same time, the body modification art is all over the place in the form of tattoos, piercings and the like, which makes for, from a purely visual standpoint, an interesting contrast to the look that the site has developed for itself. Not content to showcase simply one type of model, however, you can expect to see all manner of different girl from all manner of different racial backgrounds and all manner of different body types – variety is a good thing, right? In this case, yes it is.

At any rate, a few years back the Suicide Girls took their show on the road. While quite a few of the models had done exotic dancing at various locales around the country (you can see some them weekly if you live in Portland) this marked the first time that there had been a legitimate 'tour' and the results of the endeavor are captured for posterity's sake on this here DVD.

Missy, the founder of the site and thus the reigning queen of the organization, starts the show off by discussing why she started the site, how she started the site, and where she wanted to go with it and then from there, we hit the road with a selection of exotic beauties crammed into a van. Strutting their way all across the country, the film captures them both on and off stage in front of crowds of various sizes doing what they do (taking off their clothes). Things are broken up a bit with some interview footage, some candid behind the scenes footage and some photo shoot bits here and there and each of the girls who was a mainstay on the tour gets her own little spotlight to talk about how she became a Suicide Girl and why as well as to provide a little biographical information about herself. That's more or less all that there is to it – it's a simple formula, but an effective one.

The result is a documentary that plays out very much like a tour video for a rock band would. The fact that a wide variety of punk and rock n roll is played overtop of the girls' performance further solidifies this connection and it works perfectly with the image that they're trying to keep up. Some parts of the documentary are funny, some parts are downright sexy but more importantly the bulk of the feature is genuinely interesting which makes watching the DVD interesting even when the girls are full clothed… and let's be honest, that's a big part of why you'd be interested in this in the first place right… the naked ladies? Well you won't be disappointed in that regard as there's plenty of flesh on display.

For those savvy enough to put names to faces, the girls who are featured on this DVD are: Pearl, London, Stormy, Sicily, Reagan, Ravenesis, Nixon, Shera, Snow and Tegan. The disc features music from: Sparta, Head Automatica, !!!, Muggs, Youth Group, The AKAs, Places To Park, Bumblebeez, Voyager One, Bloom, The Mooney Suzuki, Jolie Holland, Los Halos, Mindless Self Indulgence, Thavius Beck, Whole Wheat Bread, Hush, Ima Robot, Shipping News, The Shipping News, Volcano I'm Still Excited, Probot, Daedalus, Bleubird, The Bouncing Souls, Mike Doughty, Her Space Holiday, Open Hand, The Drama, By Divine Right, The Kinison and finally, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult.

It's all softcore and the majority of it is quite artistic in the way that it's shot. There's a pleasant sense of sensuality about the whole thing but also a sense of playfulness that work really nicely together making for a truly enjoyable viewing experience for those who appreciate the beauty of the female form.

Video:

This fullframe presentation was shot on digital video while on the road – hardly the best way to capture optimum image quality for your film, but sometimes the only way to capture the action as it happens, which is the case here. Overall though, the picture quality on this release is pretty solid. Yeah, there are plenty of shots where the lighting isn't perfect or something gets in the way of the camera's shot composition but such are the perils of shooting real life. There's some slightly fuzzy shots here and there, some mild edge enhancements, and one or two instances of mpeg compression noticeable in the blacker spots of the picture but nothing so severe as to take away from the fun.