In 1932, just a few years after the advent of cinematic sound, Marlene Dietrich starred in this amazingly bizarre drama, playing a nightclub singer with a unique sense of entertainment. In one number, “Hot Voodoo,” she performs a striptease – but the tease is that she’s stripping out of a very believable ape costume, revealing the shapely songstress underneath. The first time I saw this number in Blonde Venus, at a cinema revival house when I was in college, Dietrich instantly became the gorilla my dreams.