CULT CORNER (VALENTINE'S DAY EDITION): BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970, dir by Russ Meyer, written by Roger Ebert)

What can one say about a wild movie that is near impossible to explain? The movie is a crazy part-satire part heart on its sleeve, part Shakespearean, part soft-core sex, part LSD trip out musical. It’s directed by self-made filmmaking genius, World War II vet, and breast enthusiast Russ Meyer, the Stanley Kubrick of exploitation, and written by young future Pulitzer Price winning critic Roger Ebert.

First off, if you love crazy movies that will bend your mind like metal heated to liquid molten and re-forge it into a sword of cinematic singularity, you NEED to see this movie.

It’s ostensibly a sequel to the melodramatic VALLEY OF THE DOLLS except it has nothing to do with that movie.

Instead, we follow an earnest female rock band, the Carrie Nations, who, along with their good hearted if naive manager, decide to make it big in Hollywood. From there. . .well. . .we get lots of reefer smoking, musical numbers, promiscuity of all variations, heartfelt examinations of racial injustice, some of the best editing this programmer has ever seen (even Martin Scorsese is a huge fan), and the singular character of record producer Z-Man (somewhere between Mick Jagger and a psychotic Renaissance Fair manager).

Ebert wrote the movie partially in iambic pentameter but also included classic lines like “It’s my happening and it freaks me out!”. Russ Meyer directed the movie like he knew this would be the only time a major studio would give him millions of dollars and carte blanche to do whatever he wanted.

The movie is wild wild fun from start to finish but also, surprisingly, heartfelt in its affirmation of basic core values of friendship, equality, loyalty, family, and integrity. By the time a character tries to jump to their death, becomes paraplegic, then miraculously regains their ability to walk during a shoot-out, you too will be believing in cinematic miracles.

Cult movies are as important to the life’s blood of cinema as towering classics. Cult movies often kick open doors that show you as a filmmaker ways to do things of which you never could have dreamed. But if you are savvy enough to figure out how to customize them to your own sensibility, add countless tools to your cinematic bag of magic tricks.

So kick open some hidden doors, listen to crazy 60’s music, slap your head at the plot twists, and journey BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS!

Written by Craig Hammill. Founder & Programmer Secret Movie Club