Suicide Girls - The First Tour (2005) DVD

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• Actors: Pearl, Ravenisis, Reagan, London Suicide, Missy Suicide
• Directors: Mike Marshall
• Producers: Mike Marshall
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Live, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: Epitaph / Wea
• DVD Release Date: August 30, 2005
• Run Time: 110 minutes

The Suicide Girls aren't your grandmother's burlesque troop, unless your grandmother dyed her hair fuscia and counted The Germs among her favorite bands. This collective of young punk and goth women has become a phenomenon thanks to an immensely popular website where models' journal entries appear alongside their photo sets, a bestselling book, and other merchandise.

With Suicide Girls - The First Tour, the movement makes its debut on DVD, following a group of performers as they take their show on the road. The Suicide Girls founder, the charming Missy Suicide, appears with her camera in segments filmed during photo shoots, and is clearly having the time of her life helming this growing brand. In between performances in sold-out venues, interviews with the girls reveal the post-feminist ethos of this striptease empire, in which self-confidence, creativity, and personal ambition are hailed as the motivating factors behind why they enjoy taking their clothes off in front of a camera. Some viewers may be attracted to the message, while others may just be content to watch nubile young women with a variety of piercings vamp it up. Either way, Suicide Girls - The First Tour presents a spirited glimpse of a subculture bent on redefining what is beautiful.--Ryan Boudinot

Now comes SuicideGirls: First Tour, a DVD featuring the unique mix of punk and burlesque that made the SuicideGirls first national tour such a hit with audiences. Beyond the stage performances, this DVD follows the women along for an intimate behind-the-scenes look at life in the van, along with exclusive video fantasies conceived and performed by the touring company. The millions who have already discovered SuicideGirls will have to own their first appearance on DVD, while new fans will be curious to see what all the buzz is about.

A "Girls Gone Wild" video for the rest of us!, November 1, 2005

By	Scott Bresinger (New York, USA)

"Suicide Girls" started out as just a website to display creator Missy Suicide's "erotic photography." This is a different category than "porn," but I guess at some point it's splitting hairs. If we can place this DVD on a continuum with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or Maxim on one end and "Barely Legal" or "Shaved Asian" on the other, I suppose it would be closer to the former. Of Course, considering most of the Suicide Girls come from the punk subculture, complete with the tattoos and piercings to prove it, that would have to add to the kink factor somewhat. Then again, compared to the "Girls Gone Wild" franchise, SG has a far lower perv factor; i.e. you can watch this without feeling all icky afterward. You may want to put on actual porn, though, so that can be a strike against SG, even though that's hardly their fault. Heck, the girls themselves seem to have a bit more going on in their heads than the "Gone Wild" variety. Actually, in the interview segments that pepper the main attraction of the disc, they have precious little to say to prove this, but they just seem smarter. I mean, they HAVE to be smarter, don't they?

As for what you actually get for your hard earned perv budget, the main thing is a 94 minute "documentary" of the girls as they embark on a cross-country tour of burlesque shows, usually in venues normally reserved for music. Within that are profiles of the various girls on the tour: a short "interview" gives way to a short example of their stage routine (pasties and duct tape are involved) gives way to a filmed photo shoot (this time without the pasties and duct tape, thankyouverymuch). There's plenty of music to accompany the segments, not all of it punk. A complete listing in teeny-tiny print can be found underneath the disc's back cover. But wait, there's more! You can also watch the movie without the interview segments, which cuts down on the running time considerably. An interview with Missy is the closest you'll get to actual information here, as she discusses what she was trying to do with the site, which was present "real" girls of all shapes, sizes and body modifications in a "sexy" manner. Mind you, by all sizes they seem to run the gamut from thin to really thin, though at least none of them seem to have much interest in implants, which works for me.

The rest of the disc has some mildly fun outtakes and a music video by Probot featuring some Suicide Girls which is much better with the mute button. I guess if Missy is serious about expanding the franchise, we can expect calendars, books and, one would guess, "Toys." There's already a CD of some of the girl's favorite goth tunes, so I guess the sky's the limit.

All in all this is a great DVD for fans of the Suicide Girls.

The Suicide Girls: SuicideGirls: Beauty Redefined Book

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SuicideGirls - Beauty Redefined explores the Suicide Girl phenomenon from their start in 2001 to their websites one million unique weekly visitors today. This popular version of the jumbo 11 x 11 edition provides the same bang for less bucks! A timely look at the fascinating women who created and inhabit the Suicide Girls community. With a manifesto by SG founder, Missy Suicide and beautiful color photos of Suicide Girls from around the world, SG BR shines a light on a new female aesthetic. The look is reminiscent of vintage Betty Page and Bunny Yeager photos, but with a decisively 21st century edge. There's no other place in the media to see girls (like these) who are tremendously smart and beautiful in their own way says Missy, Everywhere you look you just see the super-thin, super-tall, bleach blonde Baywatch babe. There are a lot of people out there who want to see a different kind of beauty.

The book is done in a very tasteful manner and the models are Stunning. As a coffee table book I think it will start many conversations and be the center of discussions for a long time to come at my place. The book itself is well made and the pictures are clear and crisp. The pages are heavy materials and look like they should last a good long time. I am very happy with my purchase!!

Combining her love of pin-up photography, music and art with personal ideals of female empowerment nurtured in DIY culture, Missy founded SuicideGirls as a place where a woman can be herself and where her confidence, creativity and uniqueness are what defines her. While it is true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Missy found the camera lens of mainstream media a bit myopic for her taste. SuicideGirls began and has grown from a desire to expand mainstream culture's definition of what is beautiful, and to show that it can be realized in a more diverse range of women than those who grace the pages of most fashion magazines and movie posters. What started for Missy as personal expression has now become a revolution.

Raised in Portland, Oregon in what could be described as an eclectic and artistic environment, Missy combines her traditional fine arts training with new media business acumen in the operation of SuicideGirls. In addition, Missy continues to photograph women for the site. Her photography focuses on depicting how each model feels sexiest about themselves in the photos and has inspired a generation of young women to embrace their bodies and showcase their confidence.

Since launching SuicideGirls, Missy has become a voice for the culture on sexuality outside of what mainstream media is reporting. She has been interviewed on issues relating to music, the Internet, pop culture and body image on numerous radio stations and in publications such as the New York Times, Wired, Spin and Elle. Recently featured as one of the top "12 Sexiest Jobs in Hollywood" and the "20 Sexiest Jobs on the Web", Missy has appeared on HBO, Fox News, the new hit series "CSI: NY" on CBS, as well as the two SuicideGirls movies in constant rotation on Showtime. She hosts a weekly SuicideGirls talk radio show on LA's Indie 103.1 and was recently chosen to model as part of peta2's 2008 "Ink, Not Mink" celebrity, anti-fur ad campaign.

Available in both hardcover and paperback editions.

The Suicide Girls Book (Hardcover)

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This collection of glossy shots marks the second birthday of the near-legendary eponymous Web site founded by Missy Suicide (borrowing a little hipster terminology from a Chuck Palahnuik novel in the process) to promote her own pin-up photography, and to make a place where women could "be themselves." The large format book is well designed and finely printed, with over 150 full-color photos of Scarlett, Flux, Fractal and the rest of the pierced, tattooed, leather-'n-lace-lovin' gang. The bulk of the book consists of Missy's portraits of the girls, but a section at the back allows the girls to speak for themselves through diary extracts, their own photos and their answers to questions like "How did you hear about SuicideGirls and what made you want to become one?" As 25-year-old Le from San Francisco puts it, exposing herself in various ways on the internet is both "a hobby and an art form." The S-Girls are spirited, sans doute, and you have to applaud Missy for making such a go of something she loves. But after a while, the tattoos and pierced nipples do tend to blur into something of a sub-Courtney Love mush. (And readers of a certain age won't be able to help wondering if any of these bedroom performance artists have boned up on Lora Logic, Poly Styrene and the much less generic-looking fem-punks of a previous generation.) One diary extract gives the flavor of the whole: "Fuckin' ex boyfriend. You suck. Your records suck. Think I'm gonna throw 'em somewhere, in a garbage dump."
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Praise for SuicideGirls: "It's like a punk rock Vogue. With artful nude photos of women."