Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a fascinating movie. I'm not sure if it's a good fascinating movie or a bad fascinating movie or even if the distinction matters. In some ways, it's so bad it's good and in others, so good it's bad. I do know it's about one-tenth as much fun to watch when you aren't in a hip audience with a great sense of humor…so in a way, the new DVD is disappointing. It doesn't come packaged with a hip audience with a great sense of humor.
The film was, of course, made by the grand lecher, Russ Meyer, with a script by Roger Ebert, who could match him leer for leer. It started out to be a sequel to the original Valley of the Dolls (which also just came out on in a new DVD deluxe edition) and then turned into an unrelated parody, not just of Valley of the Dolls but of everything else that occurred to Meyer and Ebert at the time. Some of the parody is so expertly done that you aren't certain all the actors even knew they were in a spoof, and there have been filmgoers who've watched the entire movie without realizing it.
First time I saw BVD, as everyone calls it, it was on a double feature with Valley of the Dolls at the old Criterion Theater in Santa Monica. It was a matinee and the place was filled with little old ladies and others who didn't "get it." It was one of my strangest moviegoing experiences because I was the only one laughing and others were turning around, telling me to shhh. Like I was ruining this fine dramatic film for the rest of them.
I knew it was funny but I didn't know how funny until I attended a late screening at the NuArt one evening. The place was packed with people who "got it" and Russ was there with a couple of starlets and — to use the kind of descriptive term I usually hate — the NuArt rocked that night. We all had the best time, savoring every little oddment, howling at every cliché and every line of deliberately unnatural dialogue. It was like reading a good Kurtzman MAD comic for the second or third time, noticing things you hadn't noticed the first time through. When folks laughed in the NuArt, others would suddenly get a joke they hadn't realized was there.
I've seen it a few other times with good audiences, including a time up at U.C.L.A. maybe a dozen years ago when they brought in Meyer, Ebert and all the major cast members who were willing to show their faces. There was a miserable splice-filled print and that almost added to the fun. The great cartoonist Carol Lay and I were seated behind star Dolly Read and her husband, Dick Martin, who were in hysterics. Their laughter bolstered ours — you know how that works — and for a time there, I thought the Martins, Carol and I were going to have to take turns administering C.P.R. to each other. After nights like that, watching the film alone, as I just did on DVD, is just disappointing.
I purchased the DVD mainly for the special features, which include "making of…" documentaries and two commentary tracks — one by Ebert, one by a bevy of cast members. I thought both tracks were disappointing. Ebert's especially was dry and only occasionally informative. You can learn a lot more about the making of the movie by reading this article that he has up on his website. If you'd like to order a copy of the DVD, you can do so here…but I warn you: This is only a great movie when you see it with a big audience. Viewed alone or with a small group, it can be rough going.