Summary:
Three girls in a band travel to Hollywood to make it big, but instead only find drugs, promiscuity, and a procession of insane characters.
My Thoughts:
Where has this movie been all my life?
I found out about this film and it’s pseudo-predecessor, “Valley of the Dolls”, through the Criterion Collection. More specifically, I found out about “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” through John Waters’ Criterion Closet Raid (Video Linked HERE for those who would like to watch it). In that video, Waters praised “Beyond the Valley”, saying it was “Like a fine wine, it gets better and better as life goes on.” He went on to say that this film is what Roger Ebert should be remembered for, and that this film was much better than any of his film criticism. Right then and there, I was sold on the flick, though I forced myself to wait to pick it up until Barnes and Noble did their next bi-annual Criterion sale.
Before we watched “Beyond”, my roommates and I sat down to watch “Valley of the Dolls”, and, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t overly impressed. That first film is a bit slow and melodramatic, and the fun of it comes from knowing Hollywood history (“Valley” was one of Sharon Tate’s last movies before she was murdered) and the rather campy elements of the film, which are sort of few and far between. The second film starts off in a far more insane way, and almost immediately I could tell I was going to love this movie far more than it’s predecessor. To be fair, the first and second film have little relation, and even the opening title card says that “Beyond the Valley” isn’t necessarily a sequel, but a sort of reimagining of the same themes and ideas.
“This is my happening and it freaks me out!”
Kelly MacNamara (Dolly Reed, “That Tender Touch”), Casey Anderson (Cynthia Myers, “Molly and Lawless John”), and Pet Danforth (Marcia McBroom, “Jesus Christ Superstar”), are all in a band called The Kelley Affair, which is managed by Kelly’s boyfriend Harris (David Gurian). The band travels to LA, where they soon meet an eccentric producer named Z-Man (John LaZar, “Eddie Presley”), whom hosts wild, hedonistic parties, and soon convinces the girls to drop the name “The Kelley Affair” and start performing under Z-Man’s label as “The Carrie Nations”. As the band members get more involved in the perverse lifestyle, the band starts to drift apart, and some of the members are left hurtling towards destruction.
Now, I have given this film a 5/5 star rating, but let me say right up front that this is not, in the traditional sense of the word, a good movie; it’s absolute trash, but, as far as trash goes, this is the shiniest, most interesting piece of trash in the whole dump.
There’s a bit of backstory that goes the film, and I think knowing that backstory helps make the movie even better. First, despite the fact that “Valley of the Dolls” received only middling reviews, it was a box office hit (probably due to the success of the source material, a novel written by Jacqueline Susann). Second, the first film is also quite tame compared to this one (“Valley” is PG-13, this is NC17). Third, despite the fact that this film bears the “Valley of the Dolls” name, Ebert wrote the screenplay to be viewed as a parody of the original film. Fourth, Russ Meyer, the director, was known as ‘The King of the Nudies’ because he got his start in soft-core porn.
I’ll let Ebert describe the process in his own words, because he was right there in the thick of it:
“Remembered after ten years, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” seems more and more like a movie that got made by accident when the lunatics took over the asylum. At the time we were working on “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” I didn’t really understand how unusual the project was, but in hindsight I can recognize that the conditions of its making were almost miraculous. An independent X-rated filmmaker and an inexperienced screenwriter were brought into a major studio and given carte blanche to turn out a satire of one of the studio’s own hits. And “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” was made at a time when the studio’s own fortunes were so low that the movie was seen almost fatalistically, as a gamble that none of the more respectable studio executives really wanted to think about, so that there was a minimum of supervision (or even cognizance) from the Front Office.”
That hectic, unsupervised, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants attitude comes through Ebert’s writing and Meyer’s directing to send the film all over the place. There are moments in the script that seemingly come out of nowhere, and only when you read that Meyer and Ebert wrote this movie “in six weeks flat, laughing maniacally from time to time” making it up as they went along, does it makes sense what is happening before you on screen. Meyer seemed to want everything in this movie, saying that it should simultaneously be “a satire, a serious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, a skin flick and a moralistic expose of ‘the nightmarish world of Show Business’”.
I don’t know how, but this movie succeeds in being all of those things. It’s hard to describe why this movie works so well, but it just does. The characters are outrageous; the soundtrack is catchy; the plot is farfetched and ridiculous; and the direction is just so bizarre that I couldn’t help but fall madly in love with this weird little film.
Verdict:
“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” is a cult classic, and I don’t expect it to work for everyone as much as it did for me. Remember that this film is meant to be taken as a parody, though the way in which Meyers directed many of the scenes makes it seem as if he wanted the viewer to take it as genuine. The end result is something wholly unique, and, as a cinephile, isn’t that what we’re really searching for: something unique? Something we haven’t seen before? Something that makes us go ‘What the ever-living-f*ck was that?’
“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” was a film that excited me, disturbed me, made me howl with laughter, and kept me guessing up until the very end, and if that’s not a qualification for a 5 Star film, I don’t know what is.
Review Written By: