- #Beyond the valley of the dolls movie#
- #Beyond the valley of the dolls full#
- #Beyond the valley of the dolls series#
(As the film dabbles in lesbianism, it also introduces some gay notes as well, but these are more vilified than embraced, with the movie firmly coming down on the side of heteronormativity.) By the time LaZar delivers his signature line, "This is my happening and it freaks me out!", there is no doubt that he is the star of the show, and he will confirm that in the final sequence, selling moments that should, by all rights, be truly terrible cinema, but instead are a true pleasure. Playing his role to the hilt and then 10 levels higher, LaZar slings Shakespeare-esque lines with gusto and is magnetic in every scene, no doubtly aided by his almost alien looks, with an angular face and high cheekbones that recalls an in-his-prime Mick Jagger, mixed with the androgyny of David Bowie. Gurian is pretty much a sad-sack, whose presence mainly serves to help delineate between Kelly's two worlds and be the subject of much pitying, while Harrison Page, playing law student Emerson, gets a rather progressive role as the only truly together person in the movie (though he also gets pit against heavyweight boxer Randy Black for Pet's love.) Michael Blodgett, portraying an arrogant con-man with very clear motivation, is much more of a presence, but this film belongs as much to LaZar as it does any of the women it heaps the spotlight onto. There's a very positive view of sex in this film, with the ladies taking what they want and giving what they please.Īs for the guys, things aren't as good.
#Beyond the valley of the dolls full#
If a curvy lady with a head full of big, bouncy hair is your cup of tea, Beyond delivers in spades, with some of the most gorgeous sex kittens to ever grace the screen (read that line in Meyer's inimitable Mondo Topless narration voice for full effect.) Aside from the main three, there's also Meyer's Vixen star Erica Gavin, who injects a healthy dose of the lesbianism that was excised from the adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's book, and the sexually-charged Edy Williams (one-time wife of Meyer), who plays a porn-star bon vivant (while another of Meyer's muses, Haji, appears in one scene as a memorably odd extra.) There's nothing explicit going on (despite the NC-17 rating, it's all eye candy) and the limited sex depicted is mainly (and unusually) free of nudity, and sometimes played for laughs.
Naturally, since this is a Meyer film, this movie is overloaded with beautiful, buxom women and doesn't shy away from nudity. This film's slogan should be the era's catchphrase "be here now", as nothing is ever as important as what's happening on the screen at the moment.
There's certainly an ending-an insane, transfixing sequence that pays off in the film's starting promise of depicting "the oft-times nightmare world of show business"-but to say that there's a direct-line connection from the start to the finish (outside of Meyer's clever construction of the two elements) would be insincere. The plot is more of a way to get from coupling to coupling than a legitimately interesting story, and thinking about it, it's hard to remember if there's ever a resolution.
#Beyond the valley of the dolls series#
The film is little more than a series of episodes involving the girls (and guys) and their various sexual partners. And that's when their troubles begin, as they become ensnared in a world of sex, drugs and money that threatens to tear them apart. Their lives change when a visit to Kelly's aunt Susan leads them to attend a swinging party thrown by Z-man (John LaZar), a pansexual imp of a music producer, who immediately takes the reins, rechristens the group as The Carrie Nations and sends them hurtling toward superstardom. The core story involves Kelly (Playboy Playmate Dolly Read) and her bandmates Pet (Marcia McBroom) and Casey (Cynthia Myers, also of Playboy), members of The Kelly Affair, a three-piece girl group managed by affable Harris (David Gurian), who is also in a relationship with Kelly. The differences between the two films couldn't be more stark, as Beyond, directed by noted nudie-film auteur Meyers and written by a 27-year-old Roger Ebert, is vivacious and manic-a delightfully strange vision of the destructive path of fame. Boring is one term you absolutely cannot use when it comes to Russ Meyer' Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which stresses, right at the beginning of the film, that it is not a sequel to the first film, but a film touching on similar topics. Valley of the Dolls gets a lot of recognition as a cult classic, with a devoted fan base that luxuriates in how terrible the film is, but when you watch it, the big problem is, it's not only poorly made, it's also deathly boring. Loves: Weird movies, the Russ Meyer woman, that ‘60s look, John Waters Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert's crazy, sexy soap opera