Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Venerable film critic and writer Roger Ebert, penned Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. It's basically a spoof, of the 1967 film, Valley Of The Dolls. The plot of this movie revolves around a female rock group, that pursues their dreams of stardom in the Hollywood jungle of ambitious hopefuls.

All the characters are beautiful looking, particularly the drop-dead gorgeous women in the band. They do have an old toothless women in the film, who hangs-out at a party with the beautiful people. She's the comic relief, in an already hilariously campy film.

There's lots of sleazy, over-the-top sex, ravenous opportunists, drug addicts, and overall flash-n-trash scenes. Ebert was obviously milking the satirical element of the film, to the hilt. The humor in all of this, works throughout most of the movie. But when the film veers towards bloody violence in the latter part of it, it's very jarring to the viewer. The brutal violence winds-up spoiling the fun, comic tone of this movie.

For the most part, this film is an amusing send-up of The Valley Of The Dolls. But the violence in this film, winds-up deflating the wacky, tongue-in-cheek premise of the movie. This film would've worked much better, if the brutal, gory violence was left out of it.

Based on a lot of the reviews posted here, it's obvious that satire isn't truly understood by many. This is surprising when it comes to "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," because this film is way over the top when it comes to mocking the ridiculous, "tell-all" melodramas like "Peyton Place" and "Valley of the Dolls," which were so popular in the late 1950's and 60's. Just the plot alone is absurd - a "shocking" morality tale about an all girl rock band making it big in Hollywood and facing corruption by drugs, fame, and sexual predators of the lesbian and transsexual variety. Couple this outrageous story with a script sparkling with the cliched "hip lingo of 1960's youth" (penned by a young Roger Ebert, who must have gotten a huge kick out of having his characters use phrases like `You're a groovy boy, I'd like to strap you on sometime' and utter words like `groovy' and `dig' with heart rending earnestness), a ridiculously fetching sound track (I happily own one of the very few surviving copies on CD - only 1000 were ever made), a bevy of buxom, big-haired, Playboy bunnies who can barely act, and the uniquely stylistic camera work of soft-core porn master Russ Meyer, and what we have is a film that is so intentionally bad that it defies fantastic. This movie is supposed to be bad, it was designed that way. That's where the genius lies. There has never been and can never, ever be a film as phenomenal as "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." This isn't just my opinion - it's a fact!

This film is a necessity for anyone with a sense of humor.

Anyone who doesn't think it was intentionally funny needs to sit back and groove baby. Some of the dialog seems to have been influenced by Dragnet '69 (which by the way is a much dirtier sounding title than BVD), The only other example of such painfully "hip" dialog. The use of Wonder Woman, and Robin the Boy Wonder at the end was too cool for words.

See it now!!!

Russ Meyer's most lavish production is still jaw dropping, and still beyond comparison. BTVOTD is the ultimate camp film that, unlike Valley of the Dolls, is knowingly campy, deliberately absurd, never comes down to earth, and achieves a non stop contact high. Beyond description, it must be seen to be believed. A rapid fire, mind-rending parody of virtually every genre and cliché squeezed into a 2 hour film which hasn't aged a bit and has seen its reputation grow since its initial release in 1970. The songs, dialog, direction, editing, music, and acting all provide endless amazement every time I see it. In the 30 plus years since its release nothing else comes close to the experience of this film. Even more than The Rocky Horror Picture Show, BEYOND is a true audience film with so many lines and scenes that viewers have memorized. BEYOND is and was ahead of its time, and remains essential viewing.

This movie really tested my patience and I went to see it after Ebert waxed poetic about it in a two page article in the Sun Times. It's not enjoyable camp like Rocky Horror and it really says or adds nothing to the original Valley of the Dolls. It's just dumb and wears thin very quickly.