Beyond The Valley of the Dolls (1970)

“The world is full of them – the super-octane girls who are old at twenty . . . If they get to be twenty!”

Despite its title, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls has nothing to do with the novel by Jacqueline Susann.

It is, instead, a sexploitation movie featuring girl-group madness from the director of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!– with a screenplay by Pulitzer-Prize-winning movie critic Roger Ebert in his first collaboration with Meyer – filled with buxom young women surrounded by swarthy old men, horny young men, and predatory lesbians, all of whom are driven wild by their craving for mammaries.

Kelly MacNamara (Dolly Reed), Petronella Danforth (Marcia McBroom) and Casey Anderson (the incredibly foxy Cynthia Myers) journey from Hicksville to Hollywood hoping to make it with their rock trio, The Carrie Nations.

They meet enigmatic rock mogul Z-Man Barzel (John LaZar) in LA and plunge headlong into his wild world of drugs, parties, and kinky sex.

They fall prey to the “business” as well as their own inflated ambitions in what is arguably Meyer’s most purely entertaining, pop-culture sex-fest (co-written by film critic Roger Ebert).

All Russ Meyer fans know this is among the sleaze king’s sleaziest  – with additional tunes from The Strawberry Alarm Clock. The group’s songs, Look On Up At The Bottom, Come With The Gentle People and Sweet Talkin’ Candy Man, have a certain charm and are said to be personal favourites of Courtney Love.

The film’s final scenes are tasteless and incompetent to an almost perversely funny degree.

The jovially shifty character Porter Hall (Duncan McLeod) is named after a familiar 1940s bit-player, usually seen as jovially shifty characters in the likes of His Girl Friday and Double Indemnity.

Kelly MacNamara
Dolly Read
Casey Anderson
Cynthia Myers
Petronella Danforth
Marcia McBroom
Z-Man
John LaZar
Lance Rocke
Michael Blodgett
Harris Allworth
David Gurian
Ashley St Ives
Edy Williams
Roxanne
Erica Gavin
Baxter Wolfe
Charles Napier
The Strawberry Alarm Clock
The Strawberry Alarm Clock

Director
Russ Meyer