Beyond The Valley of the Dolls (1970) - By Matt Singer

Film Reviews: Beyond The Valley of the Dolls (1970) - By Matt Singer
Posted on Friday, October 01, 2004 @ 00:22:30 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

Russ Meyer passed away last month, and was remembered as a pioneering director of independent filmmaking and a smut peddler -- but mostly as a smut peddler. Even amongst my open-minded classmates in the field of cinema studies, the general level of familiarity with Meyer’s work consists of a three words: “big breasted women.” While its true Meyer had what could be qualified as a small scientific curiosity in the physics that dictated the movement of enlarged mammary glands, he was also a talented filmmaker who was, in many ways, ahead of his time.

Take, for instance, 1970’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Hired by 20th Century Fox, a studio on the verge of destitution, to sequelize and satirize 1967’s hit Valley of the Dolls, Meyer created a surreal, daring, and altogether hilarious film which keyed into the era’s drug-fueled zeitgeist, celebrating and lampooning simultaneously. According to Roger Ebert, who co-wrote the film with Meyer after enjoying the director’s previous work, Meyer, “wanted everything in the screenplay except the kitchen sink... [it would] simultaneously be a satire, a serious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, a skin flick, and a moralist expose.” Released within a week of the similarly outrageous Myra Breckinridge -- which included a scene where Raquel Welch rapes a man while draped in the colors of the American flag -- it separated itself through one key distinction: it was entertaining.

Like the original Dolls, BTVOTD follows the fortunes of three fetching young women who come to Los Angeles in search of success. Kelly (Dolly Reed) is the leader of the trio’s rock combo The Kelly Affair, and through a well-connected aunt, she brings the band to the attention of a superstar music manager named Ronnie “Z-Man” Barzell (John LaZar). He wrests control of the band from the hunky but whiny Harris (David Gurian), changes their name to The Carrie Nations, and fulfills the girls dreams for stardom, money, and love. There are, of course, prices to pay, as there are in all cautionary tales, though here those prices are stretched to improbable limits. The disconnect between the monumental pathos of the situations (“I’m going to have his baby!”) and the mostly air-headed delivery inspires moments of huge laughter. The result is like melodrama written by and intended for schizophrenics.

If Meyer didn’t inspire certain elements of modern editing techniques - jarring jumps cut to a tense tempo - he at the very least anticipated them. Though the late 1960s boast some of the most important and groundbreaking films of the century, even the era’s edgiest have become dated in certain ways (The shocking violence of Bonnie and Clyde looks pretty tame in 2004, for instance), but BTVOTD still feels both futuristic and timeless. It certainly captures its period, but it does so in a way that still feels fresh and unorthodox.

The women in BTVOTD are certainly sexy (and certainly naked with impressive frequency) but the film is not about titillating its audience; it’s about shocking them and surprising them by any means necessary, manipulating them on a roller coaster of emotions from laughter to horror. With time, as people forget the infamy associated with his name, I suspect films like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! will be picked up as key era texts that were about more than big breasted women.