Within the past half year or so I've had this freakishly outlandish movie called Beyond the Valley of the Dolls grow on me. The film was made back in the 1970s back in the golden era of hippies, rock'n roll, sexual revolution, experimentation, and exploitation. Directed by the great Russ Meyer, commonly known for his fem-sploitation flicks has crafted a psychedelic mess of a soap opera combining the genres of Rock musical, comedy, blaxploitation, art house, and horror. What really stuck out at me is that the screenplay of this movie was written by one of my favorite movie critics Roger Ebert which makes the movie even more investing. The plot basically revolves around the characters Kelly, Casey, Petronella, and the manager Harris who are apart of "rock group" The Kelly Affair accompanied by numerous subplots and other campy characters they get involved with upon their arrival to Los Angeles to find fame and fortune. John Lazar's performance of Ronnie "Z-man" Barzell's character is a major part of the reason why this movie sells to me as true 70s camp entertainment. This character is an eccentric record producer who instantly attracts and persuades the main protagonist Kelly MacNamara to sign a deal with him to be their new manager leaving Harris out which spawns a major conflict in the movie. The course of this movie plays out as a story with interwoven plots and stereotypically different characters. The film's dramatic and violent final act is what makes this a memorable and distortingly surreal experience.
Overall this movie is purely enjoyable schlock that is by no means supposed to be taken seriously, people will miss the point. All you should do while watching this is to suspend your disbelief and embrace the cheese. At the same time this movie is in its own way quite heartfelt and concludes with a nice philosophical message which is partly what makes this film so memorable. The color palate used in this movie is bright and gorgeous, I personally dig vintage technicolor. This movie is meant to be seen more than once for it's highly rich in its story. I give this movie Grade: A.
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