“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is not a sequel. There has never been anything like it.”
Russ Meyer’s ultra-lurid 1970 magnum opus, infamously penned by a young Roger Ebert, remains a towering achievement. What it achieves, however, is difficult to define. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a frantic and earnest paean to libidinous excess, joyously and unabashedly celebrating big hair, big music, big melodrama, and, of course, big Babylonian breasts. It is a shocking, frenetic race through a carefully deconstructed collection of beware-the-big-city Hollywood clichés, snapping up bits and pieces of vaguely-remembered sex-fueled cautionary tales from Hollywood’s former era. In many ways, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is the direct grandfather of Quentin Tarantino’s work; heavy on cinematic quotation, but emerging as something much more than the sum of its parts.
And while Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has made its way into regular midnight movie rotation, and is most often celebrated for its glorious overacting, over-written dialogue, and adoration of all things campy, it still somehow feels utterly genuine; Meyer and Ebert loved this kind of movie. They loved tales of excess. They admired when cinema pushed the envelope. And, at the end of the day, they both loved big tits. And while Beyond the Valley of the Dolls seems to function almost entirely on a prurient level – the camera ogles its women to within an inch of their lives – it also feels undeniably subversive. There is something delicious about the fact that 20th Century Fox scraped together a rather large budget for an NC-17-rated (originally X-rated) sex fest. It’s a B-movie with a big budget. This wouldn’t happen again until 1995’s Showgirls, another orphaned grandchild of Beyond.
20th Century Fox
The soapy, soapy story follows a trio of hot young women as they trek to Los Angeles to seek out a long-lost rich aunt, and to pursue their music careers. Given the breakneck pace of the film, it takes very little time for each of the women to become successful and subsequently corrupted by the high-party life in the big city. Innocent Kelly (Dolly Reed) begins humble, but is soon asking for unreasonable financial favors from her rich aunt (Phyllis Davis) at the behest of her ugly-handsome new lover Lance (Michael Blodgett).
Pet (Marsha McBroom) falls in with an ambitious would-be lawyer, and seems to be living the purest life, having to face only occasional bouts of racism. Casey (Cynthia Myers) falls under the protection of a predatory lesbian named Roxanne (Erica Gavin) who eventually guides her into bed. Kelly’s would-be boyfriend (David Gurian), meanwhile, becomes the target of the minxy porn star named Ashley St. Ives (an awesomely hammy Edy Williams). All of this is overseen by the Mephistophelean Z-Man (John LaZar), the lord of the Los Angeles music scene, and the Nero of its parties.
20th Century Fox
According to Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was intended to be read as a satire of the dumb melodramas that Hollywood had been living on for decades. You can go back as far as the 1930s to find tut-tut tales of fallen women who move to the big city and become embroiled in vice. Such movies were often seen as hypocritical, as they allowed audiences to cluck their tongues at the bad behavior of the young ladies on screen, even though they were clearly in the theater for a lascivious taste of the forbidden fruit themselves. Ebert and Meyer wanted to explode that hypocrisy by expanding trite conventions to massive proportions. The film, however, might be seen as the genuine article. Perhaps it works as a satire and as a melodrama. Whatever the intent, audiences leave feeling dazed.
The Criterion Blu-ray is loaded, of course, with more features than your mind can handle. Be sure to watch the interview with John Waters, one of the film’s biggest proponents, as his insights into camp are the sharpest of any living filmmaker’s. Most notable, however, is the commentary track that Ebert recorded for the film back in 2003. That commentary originally appeared on the first edition DVD, but the track was actually recorded for an earlier (stalled) Criterion release from over a decade ago. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, in many ways, has finally come home.
Top Image: 20th Century Fox
Witney Seibold is a longtime contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
