Dom Robinson reviews

Cat.no: MDV 112

Cert: 18

Running time: 59 minutes

Year: 1995

Pressing: 1999

Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)

Chapters: 20 plus extras

Sound: Stereo

Languages: English

Subtitles: None

Fullscreen: 4:3

16:9-enhanced: No

Macrovision: No

Disc Format: DVD 5

Price: £15.99

Extras : Scene index

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Director:

Vicangelo Bulluck

Anna Nicole Smith, real name Nicki Hart, is a single-mom model from Mexia, Texas, who came to fame by modelling for Guess? Jeans but soon realised that dark hair and an ironing board for a chest was not the way to be popular in school, so she chose the route later adapted by the UK's own Melinda Messenger, by investing in a bottle of peroxide blonde and a boob job, putting all the curves in all the right places with a 39-29-40 figure. After that there was no turning back.

Her private life in recent years was splashed all over the papers when she married aged Texan billionaire J. Howard Marshall, who, had he been living in our country, wouldn't have been far off getting a telegram from the queen. Still, it was clearly a marriage of convenience as she never had to want for anything after he popped his clogs and at least he died with a smile on his face...

This film charts her rise to fame interspersed with a number of slow-motion scenes in which naked flesh is the order of the day. "Warm Afternoon", is the cue for Anna to greet the outside world with little more than a smile; "Lonely in the Night" sees Anna having an accident with the baby oil (ahem!) and "Bathing Beauty" which places Anna in the bath. There's also chat from the lady herself as well as representatives from Guess?, Playboy - including Hugh Hefner - and journalists, some commenting on the likenesses between her and the late actress/model, Marilyn Monroe.

Since her rise to fame, she has appeared in feature films such as To the Limit, Skyscraper and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.

That's what you all wanted to see...

The picture quality has few encoding problems so artifacts are rarely to be seen, but the picture isn't quite as sharp as it could be, having been converted from NTSC and also being a little grainy in places. The film is presented in fullscreen 4:3 as originally shot and the average bitrate is 6.38Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 9Mb/s.

The sound quality does is fine, but doesn't amount to any more in the music scenes than some soft rock or light country. There's no Dolby Digital logo on the cover, so I presume it's Linear PCM Stereo as with most of the BMG DVD releases.

Extras :

Chapters :

Languages & Subtitles :

The film is in English only, with no subtitles. This seems to be the case for all of the current batch of BMG releases.

Menu :

The menu has all of two options: Scene selection or start the programme rolling. There's no problems to be found with selecting anything.

Typical woman - never off the phone !

If you're a regular purchaser of Playboy videos and own a DVD player then this release will fare better than the video, which has been available for a while. The DVD only costs a pound more but allows you to skip to the different sections, freeze-frame and (ahem) rewind the best bits...