Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)

Valley of the Dolls was a famously rubbish 1967 relationship drama, dead earnest in its execution. So naturally this 1970 follow-up is a raunchy sex comedy directed by Russ Meyer and penned by the late film critic Roger Ebert. Valley starred Sharon Tate, who along with four others would be murdered by the Manson family in 1969. The fact that this homicide forms the basis of Beyond's insane bloodbath ending tells you all you need to know about the approach Meyer and Ebert are taking with this remake/sequel.Dolly Read plays Kelly, the lead singer of an up-and-coming all-girl pop-rock band, which heads to LA to meet Kelly's aunt, Susan (Phyllis Davis), and hopefully meet with her $50k inheritance. But Susan's adviser, Porter (Duncan McLeod), has his eyes on the money and dismisses Kelly and co as kinky hippies. While this battle is waged, the girls live up to Porter's title, boozing and bonking their way through a series of parties, while their new svengali, Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell (a lascivious John Lazar), sidelines their existing manager Harris (David Gurian), changes the band's name, and shamelessly promotes them for himself."All uptight about tomorrow and hanging onto yesterday," moans Randy Black (Jim Iglehart, channelling a low-rent Mohammed Ali); "all that matters is now." Combining counterculture energy with cheapo raunchiness, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls boldly and ruthlessly satirises the Love Generation.The story begins with a road trip promising boundless opportunity and free-spiritedness, but ultimately the girls' desires are parochial and shallow: sex and wealth. It takes a genuine tragedy to wake Kelly up to what's really important – as the needless narration only too clearly spells out in the end: "Those who only fake must be prepared to pay the highest price of all." Throughout, the aesthetic is pure gaudy music vid, edited like some kind of hangover flashback, especially in the party scenes, hopping back and forth between scraps of crazy cat dialogue from hedonists self-medicating on booze and weed and downers. ("Dolls" is a slang term for the latter.) When Z-Man is showing Kelly around her first party, he introduces her to a whole cast of characters, defining their uniqueness as if they all have a special part to play in maintaining the Free Love myth.But individualism taken to its endgame is dangerous, and Kelly's indulgence of her desires is precisely what ends up hurting those around her. Harris's old-fashioned monogamous romanticism is incompatible with the wild world into which he follows Kelly. His old world values leave him not only isolated but assumed to be gay. In the end he is metaphorically de-sexed, embodying a deeper, less possessive love, one equally free.I'm making the movie sound like a Freudian bore but it's quite the opposite. It totally indulges and hyperbolises the excesses of the period, and it's packed with frank-yet-harmless sex and nudity, as well as a host of awesome driving pop songs you've heard somewhere before. The whole cast plays it straight, because that's how satire should work – and also because Meyer never let the cast in on the joke. It works perfectly: Casey's (Cynthia Meyers) pregnancy revelation is pure soap brilliance.Long before the final reel you'll be well entrenched in the joke, revelling in the film's breathless pace, blinding colours, and ridiculously intricate wordplay. Z-Man's climactic actualisation of his medieval king persona is the zenith of excess. As he beheads his subject we hear the 20th Century Fox theme. It's the icing on one of the most subversive cakes in mainstream cinema history.

There are points in this movie that I believe no one can proceed any further without discarding any thought of taking seriously. I'm reminded of a my first viewing of "This Is Spinal Tap" and how one of the audience members I knew got up right in the middle of the film and left with his girlfriend because it attacked the lifestyle they embraced.WELL...Stay and watch.Can you imagine the filming of this movie? The Z-Man party scenes? I'm going to collapse a lung laughing about Russ Myer domineering the circus that must have taken place while getting this all down on film. Filming scenes has a personality of its own. Imagine what happened here in 1970 with the scenes of decadence and debauchery for the age it was in. Just try and imagine this set up of camera and sound people and the rest of the production crew watching this unfold in the background. Perhaps no filming event before or since has been such a ridiculous stage of campy carnal depravity. It's a good thing that the music was turned up- to drown out the laughter and giggling of the production crew.Yeah...these actors thought they were filming a serious movie.

It's weird in a way that the biggest film critic in the world, Robert Ebert written one of the stupidest movies ever. I know it's probably cliché for me to say this, but it is a movie made by Roger Ebert, so I'd just like to say that I give, 'Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls' two thumbs down. It just doesn't look like something Ebert of today would do, even if it's supposed to be a 'parody'. Then again, it was the early 70s, so the young Robert Ebert must be a pervert on drugs. Thank God, he became a critic, instead. This schlock melodrama was supposed to be a sequel to 1967's Valley of the Dolls, but author Jacqueline Susann didn't want no part of it. As a result, the studio placed a disclaimer at the beginning of the film informing the audience that the two films were not intended to be connected. If they really wanted to make sure, it wasn't relate to the other film. Why didn't they just change the title of the film?! Wouldn't that be better than putting a disclaimer? So Ebert and director Russ Meyer retold the movie in a parody of the first movie. The movie became a satire of Hollywood conventions, genres, situations, dialogue, characters and success formulas, heavily overlaid with such shocking violence. The story is about all-girl rock band Kelly MacNamara (Dolly Read), Casey Anderson (Cynthia Myers), and Petronella "Pet" Danforth (Marcia McBroom) who travel to Los Angeles to find success, but instead find themselves in a world of sex, drugs, violence, and rock & roll. None of the actress could play or sing, and you can pretty much tell. At less, have one that has talent, rather than them stripping their clothes off. The movie is a pure acid trip as the characters over-act, and there is nudity everywhere and violent everywhere. It didn't help that the Sharon Tate murders happens just a year ago when this movie came out. Not only was it disrespect to Sharon Tate who star in the original Valley of the Dolls, but makes fun of her murders as well. It supposed to be nightmarish world of Show Business, but it's seem like hippies just doing downers or 'dolls' and being stupid. The film was badly put together as the film makes no sense. There is little to no plot that the movie meanders from meaningless scene to meaningless scene. There is a big twist in the end of the film, which is pretty shocking, but the movie ruins it by having the first scene show most of the events. You pretty much knew what was going to happen. When the film got a X-rating, rather than putting more of a story in the film, director Meyer's response was attempt to re-edit the film to insert more nudity and sex, but Fox wanted to get the movie released quickly and wouldn't give him the time. Who does that? It's weird in a way that the film characters were based upon real people at the time such as Muhammad Ali (Randy Black) and Phil Spector (Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell) despite Russ and Ebert never meeting them at the time. The only good thing that came from this movie is it probably inspired some girls to form rock bands at the time when there were almost none at all. Supposedly this movie inspired a young woman name Joan Jett to form a band at the time. Altogether, the film is full of unbelievable dialogue, pointless gratuitous nudity, over the top cheesy violence, and campy drug scenes. Not worth the time and money buying this. The movie ask me one question, how on earth did Robert Ebert even became a critic by producing some trash? Still, Robert Ebert RIP. You will be miss.

Yeah...it's atrocious, but immensely watchable. One sits there dumbfounded trying to determine what exactly Russ Meyer's intentions were. Was he really trying to butcher the memory of Jacqueline Susann's sleazy VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (which in itself was nerve-numbingly bad) or was the soft core king simply making another of his lame-brained un-erotic erotic epics, albeit one with a rather large budget. In any event, what's here is so goofy and so hyperactive that you can't help but enjoy it. The acting is lousy all around and the editing is done with a dull razor. When Meyer isn't using endless dissolves over endless montages, his camera appears to be on a broken dolly. The script is credited to Roger Ebert, which is even more perplexing as he's become so well known (rightly so) as such a wonderful writer. His script here is a square's version of a dirty movie. Marcia McBroom, Dolly Read, and Cynthia Myers play the leads...rock stars of the Josie & the Pussycats ilk. They're awful. The colorful supporting cast includes Michael Blodgett, Edy Williams, Erica Gavin, and Phyllis Davis.