Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Beyond The Valley of the Dolls - 1970

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS 1970lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2015/12/beyond-valley-of-dolls-1970.html

"Not a sequel, but like Valley of the Dolls, deals with the oft-times nightmarish world ofShow Business!" Ad copy for theposter

One of the advantages of being old enough to remember a cult film before it became a cult filmis that it gives you a sense of perspective. Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (alsoreferred to hereafter as BVD) is one of the most deliriously campy, quotable, contagiouslymusical, visually kinetic, laugh-out-loud bad/good films EVER. A top-ranking favorite of mine,BVD is a non-sexy sex comedy that’s also a surprisingly ingenious send-up of every showbusiness cliché mined by movies since the days of What Price Hollywood? (1932).Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a caffeinated homage to glossy Hollywood soap operaslike The Oscar, The Best of Everything and, of course, BVDs rootstock and inspiration:Jacqueline Susann’s immortal Valley of the Dolls (hereafter also referred to as VOD).

Although released in the summer of 1970, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a '60s movie downto its bellbottoms and sandals. Depicting a burlesque vision of the Swinging Sixties as itexisted only between the tragically unhip pages of "gentleman's magazines" like Playboy; BVDis both groovy and square. A cross between a hyperactive geek fantasy (via 27-year-oldscreenwriter Roger Ebert) and siddle-aged wish fulfillment, the film is a garish, never-a-dull-moment, laugh-out-loud paean to '60s pop culture excess. Directed with a manic combinationof aplomb and amateurism by budget skin-flick impresario Russ Meyer collaborating with first-time screenwriter, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert; BVD is a film so exhaustivelysteadfast in its desire to affront and entertain, at times it feels like a Tex Avery cartoon come tolife.

1/20

Dolly Read as Kelly MacNamara

Marcia McBroom as Petronella Danforth

Cynthia Myers as Casey Anderson

David Gurian as Harris Allsworth

2/20

Having now fully established the extent to which I lovingly clutch this carnival-colored trashclassic to my negligible-by-Russ-Meyer-standards bosom, I can elaborate on what I meanwhen I say that having an actual recollection of 1970 and the atmosphere in which BVD wasreleased, allows for a sense of perspective.When a once-dismissed film is rediscovered by a new generation of fans, it's not uncommonfor history to be rewritten a bit as a means of staking an up-to-date-claim on an older work. Inthe years it took for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to morph from film reviled to film reveled, asomewhat rarified legend has developed among BVD cultists. One which contends 1970 filmcritics raked BVD over the coals because they didn't understand that Meyer's film was asatirical comedy (i.e., intentionally terrible), and therefore never meant to be taken seriously.Well, that's not entirely true.

John Lazar as Ronnie 'Z-Man' Barzell. He forgot that life has many levels

Granted, a few critics may have been confounded and didn't know what to make of a film thatcareened at breakneck speed from musical to melodrama to comedy to ultraviolence; but RussMeyer's oeuvre of the outrageous was a fairly well-known commodity by the time he'd landedhis contract with Fox. Having leapt from peep-show Orson Welles to being the darling of thecollege film circuit, Meyer's reputation as a sex parodist was well known to any '60s film criticworth their salt. Everyone knew that Russ Meyer had never made a conventional or seriousmovie in his life. If anyone was apt to misinterpret the built-in sex mockery of Meyer's films, itwas likely the grindhouse trenchcoat set—individuals who, by nature, were inclined toapproach their softcore T & A with the utmost solemnity.

3/20

Edy Williams as the infamous Ashley St. Ives. Men were toys for heramusement

From what I recall of reviews at the time, the critics who failed to respond favorably to Meyer’sfirst studio outing didn't do so out of an inability to grasp the film's sophomoric satire; rather,they disliked it because they failed to find cultural value in a bad movie being used to parody abad movie.

Tale also into account that a great deal of what is so camp and amusing about BVD hadn't yetthe distance of nostalgia quaintness to make it appealing. Today we laugh at everything fromits hippie-dippie rock music, to the extreme fashions, oversized hairstyles, carnival-coloreddecor, and hooty slang idioms. Although granted the amplified exaggeration of exploitation, thelook and feel of this movie was not as absurd then as it looks now. Much like we're all going tolook back at the styles and fads of today and laugh at how terrible we all look (Skinny jeans!Full beards? Tattoos and piercings!) but the elderly today find them to be as ridiculous as theyare.

Michael Blodgett as Lance Rock. He never gave of himself

4/20

For example: Z-Man's parties were only only raunchier reenactments of those "penthouseparty" sequences that kicked off every episode of TVs Laugh-In since it debuted in 1967. EdyWilliams' enormous mane of hair and ever-present bikini was basically Raquel Welch'sstandard photo-op uniform at this time in her career. And comparable variations on Beyond theValley of the Dolls' outrageous crayon palette decor and outre fashions could be found in aplethora of way-out Mod Cinema releases (like Britain's Smashing Time -1967), Italian giallothrillers (The Sweet Body of Deborah - 1968) as well as so-called "serious" films likeJacqueline Susann's The Love Machine (1971).

Phyllis Davis as Susan LakeExcessive goodness can often blind us to the human failings of those less

perfect

A lot of '70s film critics were predisposed to dislike Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on principle,finding abhorrent the very idea that the same studio that gave the world The Sound of Musichad enlisted the services of a "nudie" director to make an X-rated exploitation film. And as thefilm's X-rating had as much to do with its violent finale as for its sexual content (it was a rathersoft X, but graphic violence was still relatively new to films at the time), cries of "poor taste!"met BVD's bloody 3rd act massacre which was inspired by the less-than-one-year-old tragedyof Sharon Tate's murder. (To make matters more distasteful, the Manson Family murder trailsbegan just two days before Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' July 17 release.)

Erica Gavin as the languid Roxanne

Meanwhile, serious cineaste factions, encouraged by the emergent New Hollywood and the

5/20

ushering in of innovative, artistic films like Bonnie & Clyde, They Shoot Horses, Don’tThey?, Easy Rider, and Midnight Cowboy, felt strongly that the motion picture industry was ill-served by a film like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. A film which many felt, like the wholesaleauctioning off of studio backlot land taking place at the time, symbolized Hollywood'sdesperation, decline, and imminent demise. Ironically, these very sentiments proved near-irresistible when it came to marketing Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to the college/youthdemographic.

Harrison Page as Emerson ThorneBehind that friendly mask lies fermenting the unholy seed of a lawyer

The '60s were the age of the "put-on" and the "put-down." Movies that challenged tradition andpoked fun at middle-class convention were popular with the youth market, and the swiftest wayfor a mainstream film to appear "hip." Young people flocked to the underground films of AndyWarhol (Flesh - 1968, Lonesome Cowboys - 1968), the gonzo cinema of John Waters (MondoTrasho – 1968), and Russ Meyer’s own string of grindhouse “nudies” (Faster, Pussycat! Kill!Kill! – 1965, Vixen 1968). When cinema scholars and film critics began to pay attention tothese films, cash-strapped Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon with mainstream attempts tocapture the campy, comic book zeitgeist with films like Casino Royale (1966), Barbarella(1968), and the popular Batman TV show (1966-1968).The derisive send-up of pop culture grew to be such a popular mainstay, by 1970 America hadfairly overdosed on irony and satire.

Duncan McLeod as Porter HallUsed his profession to mask selfish interests...to betray the trust that should have been

sacred

6/20

Released during the waning days of the public's brief infatuation with Psychedelic Cinema(druggy, youth-oriented films invariably made by middle-aged men), Beyond the Valley of theDolls and its sister-in-sleaze, Myra Breckinridge (twin Fox releases opening within a week ofone another) were last-ditch efforts to hitch a ride on the already steamrolling Youth Culturegravy train. Both films arrived at the tail-end of a veritable onslaught of look-alike outrageouspsychedelic send-ups of the Flower Power generation. Oddities like Otto Preminger's Skidoo(1968), The Big Cube (1969), Head (1968), Angel, Angel Down We Go (1969), The GayDeceivers (1969), and a recent personal favorite, An American Hippie in Israel (1970).

James Iglehart as Randy BlackRandy's body: A cage for an animal

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls—serving up old-fashioned bare bosoms counter to MyraBreckinridge's fenmdom anal rape—was the hands-down bigger hit of the two (it was also thebetter film); duplicating Valley of the Dolls' fate by being wildly popular with the public,yet widely panned by the critics, and regarded with disdain by the very studio that bankrolled it.

The success of BVD should have put Russ Meyer on the road to mainstream legitimacy, butthe following year he tried his hand at his first straight dramatic film with the courtroomdrama, The Seven Minutes (1971). The results proved that Meyer was something of a none-trick-pony, and that without his trademark bare breasts and ultra-violence, he was a mediocrefilmmaker at best. The financial failure of The Seven Minutes (Meyer's only flop) soured Fox'srelationship with the director and happily laid to rest all those film class debates regarding theso-called "intentional" ineptitude of his films ("He knows what he's doing, he's sending up thegenre!") and his clumsy way with actors and dialogue.

7/20

Valley GirlsJacqueline Susann is credited with coming up with the title Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, for the two (rejected)

screenplays she submitted to Fox as bid for a legitimate sequel to her hit, Valley of the Dolls.When a disgruntled Susann sold the rights to her next book, The Love Machine to another studio, Fox (forbidden

to make a sequel without her permission) kept her title and made a satire instead. Lawsuits followed

Henry Rowland as Otto. The man with the benign, Germanic countenance

Signed to a 3-picture deal by Fox, Russ Meyer, in spite of the failure of The SevenMinutes, might have been allowed to see out his contract had it not been for the matter ofhis employers, Richard Zanuck & David Brown, being ousted not long after the release of BVD.Finding himself suddenly and once again a free agent, Meyer more or less returned to being“King of the Nudies,”independently (re)making his trademark live-action breast fetish cartoonswith little variance until his death in 2004.

8/20

I felt compelled to contextualize Beyond the Valley of the Dolls—a miraculous mess of a movieI’ve loved since the days it was primarily known as "20th Century Fox’sembarrassment"—because the revisionist narrative ascribing canny premeditation toeverything risible and inept in BVD is just too pat. The whole "They knew what they weredoing" scenario doesn't pay respect to the freakish, one-of-a-kind, lightening-in-a-bottle qualityBVD possesses that makes watching it for the 50th time as much of a blast as the first. No onecould have foreseen that a breast-fixated, Johnny one-note director; a newbie screenwriter;and a cast of Playboy pin-ups and hysterically disparate actors would produce a film sodementedly sublime.

The Carrie NationsBeyond the Valley of the Dolls chronicles the exploits of an all-girl rock band coping with the toxic show business

cocktail of quick success, easy sex, & plentiful drugs

The making of a completely satisfying, entertaining film is a major feat in itself, and Russ Meyerachieved this miracle twice (BVD and Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), and in having the ratio ofintentionally awful to inadvertently awful so well-balanced and impossible to discern, thesefilms achieve a kind of ideal perfection. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is my idea of perfecttrash art.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMBeing that I can't think of a single thing I DON'T love about this movie, here is my Top Ten Listof favorite things in BVD:

1.Nobody blinks!

On the DVD commentary, we learn that Russ Meyer's rapid-fire editing style is at least in part9/20

the result of his determined resolve not to show his actors blinking (he believes it breaksaudience concentration). Consequently, the actors all look to be in a constant state ofastonishment. 2. Boobies, boobies, boobies!

Russ Meyer's concept of the feminine ideal is mired inextricably in the full-figured, breast-fixated 1950s. The lean and lanky hippie silhouette typified by Peggy Lipton on The ModSquad is nowhere to be found in Meyer's Playboy Pictorial vision of an abundantly well-fed andcurvaceous 1970. "The-head-is-missing!" Dept: that's headless actress Veronica Ericsonembraced by the equally decapitated Michael Blodgett.

3. The fashions!

The 1970s Peacock Revolution in men's fashion made it not only possible but acceptable foryoung men in their 20s to look like Norman Bates' mother.

4. The hair!

I guess those ginormous breasts have to be offset by something, so towering manes of real

10/20

and synthetic Bobbie Gentry-sized hairdos abound in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

5. The cartoonish camera angles and sound effects!

Whether it be the sound of a dive-bomber accompanying a suicidal leap, the 20th Century Foxtheme played over a beheading, or "Stranger in Paradise" heard during a male-on-malegroping session; the sound effects, music cues, and wacky camera angles in BVD confirmsRuss Meyer's claim that his films are basically "Superbly made cartoons."

6. Diversity!

Compared to what's going on in mainstream films today (I still can't get over that all-white Intothe Woods), the high volume of black actors and PoC used in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls ispositively radical. Not only are the two most genuinely beautiful actresses in the film African-Americans: the striking Lavelle Roby (above) and Marcia McBroom, but the depiction of theintimate relationship between Petronella and Emerson is actually very progressive for its time.

7. That unexpectedly sweet lesbian relationship!

Gavin & Myers give two of the better performances and display the most chemistry of any11/20

couple in the film. That their scenes have a touching sweetness thoroughly absent elsewherein the film is, by all accounts, attributable to Meyer staying out of their way.

8. The movie franchise missed opportunity!

I can never look at Russ Meyer stalwart, Charles Napier (as Baxter Wolfe), without thinking hewould have made a wonderful Clutch Cargo in a series of live action features based on the1959 cartoon TV series

9. The montages!

BVD is full of montages. Breakneck fast montages, slow-mo montages, and charmingly old-fashioned, up-the-ladder-of-success montages. This screencap from the Hollywood montage isof the very first place I lived when I moved to Los Angeles in 1978 (the brick building to the leftis the Villa Elaine Apartments on Vine), and the Adm & Eve adult book store next door, the siteof my very first LA job! (Stephen Sondheim collaborator George Furth came in once and I gothis autograph. As he signed he said, "This is equal parts flattering and demoralizing!")

10. That leopard-print bikini!

12/20

I don't think I need to say anything more.

PERFORMANCESBy any rational assessment, the performances in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls are not muchworse than those found in (limiting the degree of awful to the Jacqueline Susann family)in Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine, or Once is Not Enough. The major difference being amatter of aptitude (can’t act vs. won’t act) and energy (there’s not a single lazy performance inBVD. Indeed, Meyer’s idea of pacing seems to be pitched somewhere at “fire drill”). And in thatvein, Dolly Read, David Gurian, Phyllis Davis, and Duncan McLeod are all pitch-perfect.

"What I see is beyond your dreaming."Faster Pussycat star, Haji, whispers mystically in Z-Man's ear

Spouting an endless stream of ersatz-Shakespearean double talk, John Lazar as Phil Spector-ish music tycoon Z-Man Barzell (who looks uncannily like the former husbands of both JudyGarland and Liza Minnelli) gives an unforgettable, appropriately bizarre, Frank N. Furterprototype performance.

Edy Williams (acting with her teeth) makes Ann-Margret's thesping in Kitten With a Whip look13/20

nuanced. Although a campy, fun presence onscreen, Williams was apparently not very popularwith many on the set, save for Russ Meyer, whom she later wed. And even he, according toErica Gavin, "Couldn't stand her."

I harbored a crush on reptile-eyed MichaelBlodgett for a long while, inducing me tosubject myself to 1971s The VelvetVampire (available on YouTube) becausehe has a few nude scenes in it.

THE STUFF OF FANTASYAs a fan of all manner of '60s pop music, Ilove the soundtrack to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. As a fan of women’s prison films (RogerCorman's Swamp Women), girls reform school movies (Girls Town), and Andy Warhol’s BAD- a movie about an all-girl hit squad; there’s something irresistibly badass about the idea of anall-girl rock group.

"In the Long Run" & "Find It" are two songs on heavy rotation on my ipod

I was 12-years-old when Beyond the Valley of the Dolls came out, and I remember at that timetelevision programming was chock full of rock groups. Real-life bands like The Beatles, TheJackson Five, and The Osmonds all had their own animated TV shows, and in addition, therewas The Archies, The Groovie Goolies and The Cattanooga Cats. Live action had TheBugaloos, The Partridge Family and reruns of The Monkees. The only women's rock group thatI van recall was the fictional, animated, Josie and Pussycats.

14/20

The big singing voice we hear coming out of Dolly Read's mouth belongs to Lynn Carey (shown above, right, givinggrief to Tuesday Weld about her lack of cashmere sweaters in Lord Love a Duck). Carey also co-wrote two of the

songs with composer Stu Phillips.

THE STUFF OF DREAMSNo tribute to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls would be complete without a list of my favoritelines of dialogue:

"I’ve already seen a display of your discretion. It’s reminiscent of a meat axe!"

"In a scene like this you get a contact high!"

"Who is it Emerson. The delivery...boy?"

"Have you ever been whipped by a willow until the blood came?"

"You’re a groovy boy. I'd like to strap you on sometime."

"And there's someone else inside, but I - I don't know who it is...THE HEAD IS MISSING!"

15/20

"But you said you were going to study!"

"Yes, I vow it; Ere this night does wane, you will drink the black sperm of my vengeance!"

"The cat swore up and down it was Acapulco Gold, so if we’re lucky, maybe it’s at least pot!"

"And how's she getting home?"

"Roxanne, will you watch out for me?" (not funny, just the sweetest line in the movie)

"Don’t Bogart the joint!"

BONUS MATERIAL

16/20

Listen to it HERE

From Z-Man to King HerodThat's Marcia McBroom behind those Foster Grants in 1973's Jesus Christ Superstar

17/20

In 1967 Michael Blodgett was the host of "Groovy" an LA-based teen music show shot on location on Santa Monica beach

The fey art director Haji locks in a cage in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is Sebastian Brook,

18/20

Although never seen onscreen, Pam Grier was cast as an extra in BVD. Marcia McBroom says she and Grier wereroommates at the time, and both auditioned for the role of Petronella Danforth

The extras on the BVD DVD features production stills showing Dolly Read in old-age makeup. They accompany youthfulphotos of her in a mod Union Jack outfit in a stylized church setting. A deleted musical or dream sequence, perhaps?

who portrayed by the mysterious Argyron Stavropoulos in Rosemary's Baby.

Bad Idea Dept: Slated for 2016, Will Ferrell & Josh Gad are set to star as Russ Meyer andRoger Ebert in a film about the making of BVD titled: "Russ & Roger Go Beyond"Released with much fanfare, the X-rated Beyond the Valley of the Dolls opened in the first-runPantages Theater on Hollywood Blvd.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

19/20

EricaGavin.com

20/20