Beyond the Valley of the Dolls movie review (1980) | Roger Ebert (2024)

* Ebert's Note: "Beyond the Valley of theDolls," a movie for which I wrote the screenplay in 1969, has over theyears become a cult film. Although it would not be appropriate for me to reviewit or give it a star rating, I offer the following observations written forFilm Comment magazine on the occasion of the movie's 10th anniversary in 1980.

Rememberedafter 10 years, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" seems more and morelike a movie that got made by accident when the lunatics took over the asylum.At the time Russ Meyer and I were working on "BVD" I didn't reallyunderstand how unusual the project was. But in hindsight I can recognize thatthe conditions of its making were almost miraculous. An independent X-ratedfilmmaker and an inexperienced screenwriter were brought into a major studioand given carte blanche to turn out a satire of one of the studio's own hits.And "BVC" was made at a time when the studio's own fortunes were solow that the movie was seen almost fatalistically, as a gamble that none of thestudio executives really wanted to think about, so that there was a minimum ofsupervision (or even cognizance) from the Front Office.

Wewrote the screenplay in six weeks flat, laughing maniacally from time to time,and then the movie was made. Whatever its faults or virtues, "Beyond theValley of the Dolls" is an original -- a satire of Hollywood conventions,genres, situations, dialogue, characters and success formulas, heavily overlaidwith such shocking violence that some critics didn't know whether the movie"knew" it was a comedy.

AlthoughMeyer had been signed to a three-picture deal by 20th Century-Fox, I wonderwhether at some level he didn't suspect that "BVD" would be his bestshot at employing all the resources of a big studio at the service of his ownhighly personal vision, his world of libidinous, simplistic creatures whoinhabit a pop universe. Meyer wanted everything in the screenplay except thekitchen sink. The movie, he theorized, should simultaneously be a satire, aserious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, askin flick and a moralistic expose (so soon after the Sharon Tate murders) ofwhat the opening crawl called "the oft-times nightmarish world of ShowBusiness."

Whatwas the correct acting style for such a hybrid? Meyer directed his actors witha poker face, solemnly, discussing the motivations behind each scene. Some ofthe actors asked me whether their dialogue wasn't supposed to be humorous, butMeyer discussed it so seriously with them that they hesitated to risk offendinghim by voicing such a suggestion. The result is that "BVD" has acurious tone all of its own. There have been movies in which the actors playedstraight knowing they were in satires, and movies which were unintentionallyfunny because they were so bad or camp. But the tone of "BVD" comesfrom actors directed at right angles to the material. "If the actors performas if they know they have funny lines, it won't work," Meyer said, and hewas right.

Themovie was inspired only incidentally by "Valley of the Dolls."Neither Meyer nor I ever read Jacqueline Susann's book, but we did screen theMark Robson film, and we took the same formula: Three young girls come toHollywood, find fame and fortune, are threatened by sex, violence and drugs,and either do or not do win redemption.

Theoriginal book was a roman a clef, and so was "BVD," with an importantdifference: We wanted the movie to seem like a fictionalized expose of realpeople, but we personally possessed no real information to use as inspirationfor the characters. The character of teenage rock tycoon Ronnie"Z-Man" Barzell, for example, was supposed to be "inspired"by Phil Spector -- but neither Meyer nor I had ever met Spector.

Themovie's story was made up as we went along, which makes subsequent analysis alittle tricky. Not long ago, for example, I was invited up to SyracuseUniversity to discuss Meyer's work, and the subject of Z-Man came up. (Readerswho have seen "BVD" will know that Z-Man is a rock Svengali who seemsto be a gay man for most of the movie, but is finally revealed to be a woman indrag.) Some of the questions at Syracuse dealt with the "meaning" ofZ-Man's earlier scenes, in light of what is later discovered about thecharacter. But in fact those earlier scenes were written before either Meyer orI knew Z-Man was a transvestite: that plot development came on the spur of themoment. So, too, did such inspirations as quoting a "Citizen Kane"camera movement from a stage below to a catwalk above, or the use of the Foxmusical fanfare during the beheading sequence.

Theyasked at Syracuse if Meyer's use of the Fox trademark music was a put-down ofthe studio system. Meyer's motive was much more basic: By using the music, hehoped to establish a satiric tone to the scene that would moderate the effectof the beheading and help protect against an X rating.

Inthe event, of course, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" was rated Xanyway. There is a story about that. If the movie were to be rated today, itwould probably get an R rating with a few small cuts. It was a very mild X.That was because Meyer and the studio were aiming for the R rating. When theydidn't get it, Meyer believed the ratings board had felt obligated to give the"King of the Nudies" an X rating, lest it seem to endorse his movieto the Majors.

Becausethe movie was stuck with the X, Meyer wanted to re-edit certain scenes in orderto include more nudity (he shot many scenes in both X and R versions). But thestudio, still in the middle of a cash-flow crisis, wanted to rush the film intorelease. Meyer still waxes nostalgic for the "real" X version of BVD,which exists only in his memory but includes many much steamier scenes starringthe movie's many astonishingly beautiful heroines and villianesses.

Thevisit to Syracuse was a chance for me to see BVD again for the first time in afew years. The movie still seems to play for audiences; it hasn't dated, apartfrom the rather old-fashioned narrative quality it had even at the time of itsrelease. It begins rather slowly, because so many characters have to beestablished and such an ungainly plot has to be set in motion. (The story issuch a labyrinthine juggling act that resolving it took a quadruple murder, anarrative summary, a triple wedding and an epilogue.) But the last hour has areal kinetic energy, and the scenes beginning with Z-Man's psychedelic orgy andending with his death are, I must say on Meyer's behalf, as exciting,terrifying and dynamic as any such sequence I can remember. That stretch of"BVD" is pure cinema, combining shameless melodrama, highly chargedimages of violence, sledge-hammer editing and musical overkill. It works.

Andthe movie as a whole? I think of it as an essay on our generic expectations.It's an anthology of stock situations, characters, dialogue, clichés andstereotypes, set to music and manipulated to work as exposition and satire atthe same time; it's cause and effect, a wind-up machine to generate emotions,pure movie without message. The strange thing about the movie is that itcontinues to play successfully to completely different audiences for differentreasons. When Meyer and I were hired a few years later to work on an ill-fatedSex Pistols movie called "Who Killed Bambi?" we were both a little nonplussed,I think, to hear Johnny Rotten explain that he liked "Beyond the Valley ofthe Dolls" because it was so true to life.