Valley of the Dolls

This movie truly is badly done and campy. However, there is one good reason to watch it: Sharon Tate. She was truly one of the screen's all time beauties (if you disagree at first, name someone prettier =)

She is not a bad actress either and did her best with the forced, artificial dialog. Overall the movie has virtually no suspense or drama or tension it just chugs along predictably with one badly written scene after another. Then all of sudden Wham! Sharon appears and you stop caring about the worthless "plot" and watch her. She steals all her scenes and makes the other actresses invisible.

All in all its a bittersweet vehicle for an extraordinarily lovely woman who met a very violent and tragic end.

This movie is the greatest example of 'camp' that Hollywood ever produced. It is hysterical, stupid and lame, but you cannot take your eyes off the screen for a second. The casting is questionable (Patty Duke cannot sing, Parkins cannot do drama and I cannot badmouth Tate, but...), but the greatest legacy is Susan Hayward as Helen Lawson, the biggest bitch in the world. No one spits out a swear word or an insult like Hayward!

Wow! What a movie! I didn't know what to expect going into this. But I didn't expect for Valley Of The Dolls to be this good!!! I saw this movie in the Criterion Collection and wanted to check it out since it starred Sharron Tate, and being a true crime nerd, plus having loved Margo Robbie's performance of Sharron Tate in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, I knew I was only doing myself a disservice having not seen a Tate film. I really did love her performance in this movie and thought she did a great job of giving a sobering performance. It was almost haunting. But the surprise of the movie was seeing Patty Duke as one of the staring characters. I felt her character stole the show. Really really enjoyed it.

One of the great landmarks in the history of American cinema. This is one of those movies that tells it like it is, takes it on the chin, and really shows some SPARKLE. Oh yeah, the wigs and gowns are fab, too, especially that sequined poison-green trapeze minidress Patty Duke is too trashed to get into towards the end.

There is a kind of sublime awfulness about the performances that elevates every sentence in the screenplay to some scriptural stratum of indelible elegance. Lines like "Gee, honey, that ole witch oughta be boiled in oil," "You're not the BREADWINNAH either," and "SPARKLE, Neely, SPARKLE" ring with poetic resonance in one's mind long after viewing the film. Especially when you find yourself compulsively watching it over and over and over again...

The montage sequences are unbelievably powerful. Forget Medium Cool, you haven't experienced the true tacky splendor of the Sixties till you've seen Barbara Parkins' Gillian Girl Commercial. Get the soundtrack and use the jingle composed by master artiste Andre Previn on your answering machine. Why, all your friends will be ringing the phone off the hook just to have a listen.

As Superstar Helen Lawson, Susan Hayward is head and shoulderpads above the rest of the cast, especially when she's attempting to lipsynch her way through "I'll plant my own tree" while dodging the giant translucent fake Calder mobile (probably built by Monsanto) that's slowly revolving around her. The symbolic-castration wig-in-the-loo sequence has to be seen to be believed. "I'll go out the way I came in" admirably sums up the sentiments of everyone connected with this movie after it was released. See Patty Duke's autobiography for some anecdotes about the filming.

This movie pretty much destroyed Director Mark Robson's career, but it made pots and pots of money for the studio, and was still playing drive in theatres around the country years after its release. And curiously enough, many women I have known now in their fifties and sixties felt drawn to this film, felt that it spoke to them (if not for them) in a way nothing else up till that time had done.

Probably my favorite film of all time. The best classic trash, with the greatest costumes, and the biggest hair! Watch for the poolside scene in which Patty Duke, Martin Milner, and Sharon Tate all say "fag"! I'm sure everyone on Earth noticed the famous "beads-around-the-breasts" shot, so we won't go there. My favorite line: Barbara Parkins tells Patty Duke that she shouldn't be taking her "dolls" with alcohol, and Patty says "It makes 'em work faster."