Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: warning--excessive amounts of homosexuality may get you killed

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: campy shock (?) film of the '70's (?) by Roger Ebert


pretty great, this was. i feel like at this point, if anyone has ever read this blog, he or she may have noticed that i tend to LIKE things i'm supposed to find bad, and DISLIKE things i'm supposed to find good. and i won't deny this, necessarily--if something's supposed to be campy, racy, and stupid, i tend to give it the benefit of the doubt and am prepared to enjoy it, whereas if it's supposed to be fine, good, and quality, i tend to give it the opposite. but within these parameters, i do attempt to exercise taste. for instance, i wasn't wild about casino royale (the peter sellers version--i liked the new one), though from the externals of the thing, it was right up my alley, and i wouldn't call, say, dementia 13 a favorite movie of mine, even though it was low budget, with an awesome title sequence and a girl hanging on a hook (i mean, i like it, i just don't love it). also xanadu. it was supposed to be bad; it was bad; and gene kelly dancing in roller skates didn't save it.

beyond the valley of the dolls was also supposed to be right up my alley, and, hey, it was--it delivered to my door (yeah, not sure what that's supposed to mean; i'm trying to say "i liked it"). i mostly liked the script, and the fact that everyone in it was super-attractive. not that creepy attractiveness of the '60's through the '80's where you go, "eurgh! hunh..." like the blonde girl in shivers, or the girl in die! die! my darling!--not that these ladies (especially stefanie powers) are NOT good looking--it's not that. it's just that it's kind of hard to dig under the hair and the clothes. whereas in beyond the valley of the dolls, it wasn't. i don't know why. maybe it's because they got taken off with such frequency.

the best part is definitely the script. it's awkward, it's grammatically perfect, it's beautiful--it incorporates slang without rhythm, and at the beginning there's a whole use of slant rhyme that makes you glad to be alive. the plot is...not really comprehensible, which is okay. it's all about the script. if emily dickinson had written a movie about swinging, drugs, and rock and roll in hollywood, cast it with not great but extremely good looking actors and actresses, and then gone back home to amherst, it would look something like beyond the valley of the dolls i think. the best description i can think of is, precision almost entirely divorced from meaning--the z man's lines were a case in point.

and that's a pretty impressive feat. go go roger ebert. also i liked the part when z man killed everyone due to an excess of fruitcakery--they said it was the drugs, but we knew it was the cross-dressing. go go superwoman.