Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (4 Stars)

The text at the beginning of the film states, in capital letters: The film you are about to see is not a sequel to "Valley of the Dolls". The reason for this bold statement is that when the film was first released viewers expected it to be a sequel. In fact, it should have been a sequel. Jacqueline Susann, author of the novel on which "Valley of the Dolls" was based, had been commissioned to write a sequel, but was now caught up in a legal case with the film studios. For this reason Russ Meyer stepped in as the director of a film with the same name as Susann's planned sequel, but the film that he had co-written with Roger Ebert had a completely different style. The only similarity was that it was also set in the Hollywood world of decadence, although even the "dolls" only play a minor role in this film. Rather than drugs it's all about the decadent world of sex and daily parties.

Kelly, Casey and Pet are the members of the Kelly Affair, an all-girl rock band. They travel to Los Angeles to meet Kelly's Aunt Susan, who has just inherited a large fortune. While there they're invited to a party at the house of a record producer called Z-Man, who Ebert claims is based on Phil Spector. Z-Man takes over the management of the band and changes their name to the Carrie Nations, after which they have a string of hit records. The film ends with a massacre when Z-Man claims to be Superwoman and kills everyone at one of his parties. On the way there are so many subplots that it's difficult to keep up. Love triangles, suicides, heavyweight boxers, Nazis, the film has it all!

But does the plot really matter? No. The colours and the psychedelic feeling of the film are all that matters. The film was made in 1970, but though the film occurrences aren't given a date it's obviously set in the mid to late 60's. Roger Ebert calls the film "a satire of Hollywood conventions, genres, situations, dialogue, characters and success formulas, heavily overlaid with such shocking violence that some critics didn't know whether the movie 'knew' it was a comedy."

The film was a box office flop when first released, but has since attained cult status. Russ Meyer's attitude towards the film changed over the years. Speaking shortly after the film had become a box office flop he said that it was his worst film ever, and it had flopped because there weren't enough naked breasts in the film. Towards the end of his life he said it was his best film. I don't understand why he made the latter remark; he made much better films. "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" is Meyer's most popular film, but I'm certain it's because it's the only one of his films ever shown on American television. If confronted with all of his films I'm sure that film fans would agree with me.