Mjeteconer Just perfect...

GazerRise Fantastic!

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

ben hibburd "Buyer beware" that's the cautionary tale underscored in Russ Meyer's campy, melodramatic foray into the seedy underbelly of Hollywood, where sex, drugs and every vice imaginable runs rampant after dark. The film is co-written alongside Meyer by Roger Ebert. Together there cynicism and self-awareness help elevate a scattershot screenplay that's filled with clichés, and under-cooked plot threads.The film follows three young women performing in a rock band 'The Kelly Affair' featuring Kelly (Dolly Read), Casey (Cynthia Myers), and Petronella (Marcia McBroom). They are managed by Kelly's boyfriend Harris (David Gurian). Together they head to Los Angeles to collect Kelly's inheritance. Upon arrival she meets with her estranged aunt, who invites them to a party, which gives the group a taste of the high-life. Whilst simultaneously, outside influences begin digging their claws in, which starts splitting the four friends apart piece by piece, as is the nature of the beast.For the most part this film doesn't live up to the craziness the films reputation has. For it's time I could imagine the ruckus it caused, but by today's standard it's fairly tame. So where this films main focus is now, is in its characters, all of whom are hyperbolic and aren't given a great deal to work with. However there's a strange likability to the characters that makes you care for them.There isn't a great deal of plot in this film, other then a power struggle over the band between Harris and the bands new manager, which isn't fully explored. The film acts more as voyeuristic look at the hippie scene of the late 60's early 70's, as the parties become more and more crazy and dangerous. All of which leads up to a final act that is so over the top, and so far out of left field. I've never seen a film shift gears into sheer mania so quickly.Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a dated film. It's script and parables are at times fairly clunky and in your face. However there is a-lot of fun to be had from this film, and it's a film that still has a-lot of gas left in its tank.

rooee Valley of the Dolls was a famously rubbish 1967 relationship drama, dead earnest in its execution. So naturally this 1970 follow-up is a raunchy sex comedy directed by Russ Meyer and penned by the late film critic Roger Ebert. Valley starred Sharon Tate, who along with four others would be murdered by the Manson family in 1969. The fact that this homicide forms the basis of Beyond's insane bloodbath ending tells you all you need to know about the approach Meyer and Ebert are taking with this remake/sequel.Dolly Read plays Kelly, the lead singer of an up-and-coming all-girl pop-rock band, which heads to LA to meet Kelly's aunt, Susan (Phyllis Davis), and hopefully meet with her $50k inheritance. But Susan's adviser, Porter (Duncan McLeod), has his eyes on the money and dismisses Kelly and co as kinky hippies. While this battle is waged, the girls live up to Porter's title, boozing and bonking their way through a series of parties, while their new svengali, Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell (a lascivious John Lazar), sidelines their existing manager Harris (David Gurian), changes the band's name, and shamelessly promotes them for himself."All uptight about tomorrow and hanging onto yesterday," moans Randy Black (Jim Iglehart, channelling a low-rent Mohammed Ali); "all that matters is now." Combining counterculture energy with cheapo raunchiness, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls boldly and ruthlessly satirises the Love Generation.The story begins with a road trip promising boundless opportunity and free-spiritedness, but ultimately the girls' desires are parochial and shallow: sex and wealth. It takes a genuine tragedy to wake Kelly up to what's really important – as the needless narration only too clearly spells out in the end: "Those who only fake must be prepared to pay the highest price of all." Throughout, the aesthetic is pure gaudy music vid, edited like some kind of hangover flashback, especially in the party scenes, hopping back and forth between scraps of crazy cat dialogue from hedonists self-medicating on booze and weed and downers. ("Dolls" is a slang term for the latter.) When Z-Man is showing Kelly around her first party, he introduces her to a whole cast of characters, defining their uniqueness as if they all have a special part to play in maintaining the Free Love myth.But individualism taken to its endgame is dangerous, and Kelly's indulgence of her desires is precisely what ends up hurting those around her. Harris's old-fashioned monogamous romanticism is incompatible with the wild world into which he follows Kelly. His old world values leave him not only isolated but assumed to be gay. In the end he is metaphorically de-sexed, embodying a deeper, less possessive love, one equally free.I'm making the movie sound like a Freudian bore but it's quite the opposite. It totally indulges and hyperbolises the excesses of the period, and it's packed with frank-yet-harmless sex and nudity, as well as a host of awesome driving pop songs you've heard somewhere before. The whole cast plays it straight, because that's how satire should work – and also because Meyer never let the cast in on the joke. It works perfectly: Casey's (Cynthia Meyers) pregnancy revelation is pure soap brilliance.Long before the final reel you'll be well entrenched in the joke, revelling in the film's breathless pace, blinding colours, and ridiculously intricate wordplay. Z-Man's climactic actualisation of his medieval king persona is the zenith of excess. As he beheads his subject we hear the 20th Century Fox theme. It's the icing on one of the most subversive cakes in mainstream cinema history.

toddowen2000 There are points in this movie that I believe no one can proceed any further without discarding any thought of taking seriously. I'm reminded of a my first viewing of "This Is Spinal Tap" and how one of the audience members I knew got up right in the middle of the film and left with his girlfriend because it attacked the lifestyle they embraced.WELL...Stay and watch.Can you imagine the filming of this movie? The Z-Man party scenes? I'm going to collapse a lung laughing about Russ Myer domineering the circus that must have taken place while getting this all down on film. Filming scenes has a personality of its own. Imagine what happened here in 1970 with the scenes of decadence and debauchery for the age it was in. Just try and imagine this set up of camera and sound people and the rest of the production crew watching this unfold in the background. Perhaps no filming event before or since has been such a ridiculous stage of campy carnal depravity. It's a good thing that the music was turned up- to drown out the laughter and giggling of the production crew.Yeah...these actors thought they were filming a serious movie.

Leofwine_draca I started off hating this film. An exploration of male/female relationships set during the 1960s party scene, I found it alternating between bouts of cheesy singing and dull conversation. The characters irritated me and the script (by none other than film critic Roger Ebert) felt outlandish.But nonetheless I kept watching. Or rather, something kept me watching. I started getting to know the intriguing characters, and then I realised I was hooked. It's barely reminiscent of a Russ Meyer movie - despite focusing on sexual relationships there's little smut or nudity - but it has style to spare. The ending is both shocking and hilarious and comes totally out of left field. Odd, yes, but compelling with it.