Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

While making my way through the special features on Criterion’s fab new Blu-ray of Brian De Palma’s “Dressed to Kill,” I was tickled to find a conversation with Victoria Lynn Johnson, the woman who served as Angie Dickinson’s body double in the movie’s notorious shower scene. Despite my long standing as a fan of the film, I hadn’t previously realized that Johnson is the redhead who graced the cover of the August 1976 issue of “Penthouse.” My father had that issue. He kept it in his “secret” stash of old girly magazines up in the attic. And let’s just say that it helped me to pass many a frustrated afternoon during my teen years, by which period that tattered mag had acquired the charmingly musty smell of old and poorly stored paper. Ah, the sweet smell of illicit porn. Millennials will never know its power.

I found Ms. Johnson captivating, and I loved the artsy quality of the photographs by Stan Malinowski, especially the ones taken at magic hour, in which the raking light picked out the finer details of Victoria’s already quite fine bod. I don’t know if I ever considered redheads as an object of lust before discovering Victoria. But afterwards it seemed natural to covet their coppery creaminess — to savor it as a rare and delicate erotic dish.

If you’re like me, the things that first turned you on as a kid occupy a special place in your erotic imagination. Having first beheld naked women in magazines from the late ’70s and early ’80s, I have an attachment to the accouterments of that era. Feathered hair; oversized glasses; heavy eye makeup; unashamed, exuberant bushes. Phew! As silly as it probably sounds, all of it gives me a rush for which I can’t quite account. Below all the layers of adulthood, the greasy kid is still down there somewhere. And he’s still a horny little bastard.

Speaking of unashamed, exuberant bushes, Victoria’s strikes me as one of the great ones: it’s a big, downy corona of sunset-colored fluff that beckons you to take a closer look — provided, that is, you’re man enough. Sadly, De Palma had her dye it to match Dickinson’s bottle-blonde locks. But he knew a good thing when he saw one: he gives Victoria’s bush a few close-ups worthy of D.W. Griffith.

I know at least 50% of dudes disagree with me, but I think the world of erotica really lost something when it lost its female pubes.

Nudity below the line. Have a good weekend.