Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

[box cover]TV film critic Roger Ebert is spinning a revolving wheel of colorful guest critics to partner his increasingly silly opinions on Roger Ebert & the Movies this season. However, back in the late 1960s, Ebert was at his absolute silliest, and his most colorful, most unlikely partner was none other than crazy tittie-flick maven Russ Meyer. It was alongside Meyer that Ebert made his one official contribution to film content, credited as screenwriter for Meyer's classic 1969 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Inspired by the torpid melodrama of Jacqueline Susann's popular novel Valley of the Dolls and the subsequent film, Meyer and Ebert conjured a laser-sharp send-up of the old young-girls-corrupted- by-the-horrors- of-show-biz tale. The young girls here are Kelly, Casey, and Petra (all played by Playboy playmates), a go-go rock trio who ditch their small town gigs playing senior proms and split for L.A. Within days the group is re-christened The Carrie Nations, and their whirlwind ride to fame takes them through pit stops of drugs, debauchery, and flat-out grooviness. Meyer, it is said, put the "tit" in titillating, and he and Ebert throw every decadent wrench in the monkeyworks: porn stars, Nazis, abortions, prizefighters, transvestites, suicide, lesbians, peyote trips, beheadings, you name it. But they don't rest on their filthy laurels -- Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is lively, funny, and masterfully observant of film clichés. Meyer had the smarts to direct his inexperienced cast to play it straight, and the result is fully committed life-or-death wackiness and purely deranged entertainment. Nowhere else will you hear sincere delivery of such dialogue as "'Ere this night does wane, you will drink the black sperm of my vengeance!"

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is crying out for a special edition DVD (Criterion, are you listening?). Not only has its 2.35:1 aspect ratio been cruelly smushed and chopped on VHS, but there's a wealth of extra material out there to augment this ruthlessly hip and energetic mess of exploitation. Meyer shot X- and R-rated versions of the film's racier scenes (he submitted the R-version, but got an X-rating anyway), so there's plenty of deleted footage to include. A commentary by Laserdisc and DVD fan Ebert would put the finishing touch on the package. For now, if you want to see the unrated version on tape you'll have to buy it as an import, which some online retailers sell for as much as $80. And it's probably still pan-and-scan.


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