Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
When executives at Fox found out that an independent filmmaker named Russ Meyer grossed over six million dollars with Vixen, a film he made for roughly seventy five thousand dollars, all of a sudden they started paying attention to the man who had made a name for himself in the early sixties with The Immoral Mister Teas. Meyer was signed to a three picture deal with Fox, who gave him a budget of a million dollars per picture – not much by big studio standards, but a massive sum to someone used to working with budgets under a hundred grand or, more often than not, under fifty grand! Though the third film would never materialize and the second film, the poorly received The Seven Minutes failed to find the audience studio execs and Meyer himself had hoped for, the first picture Meyer made for the studio, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, was definitely a success.
Here's two parts featurettes on this cult film. The first is Above, Beneath, And Beyond The Valley: The Making Of A Musical-Horror-Sex-Comedy. This extensive piece starts with a few people who were close to the picture talking it up over clips from the movie and from there it gives us a quick overview of who Russ Meyer was and how he got into movies courtesy of some interview clips with Meyer's production assistant, Stan Berkowitz. Roger Ebert explains how Meyer was trained during his time in the army how to use a camera and how that experience worked for him once he got out of the service. Manny Diez, Meyer's assistant, talks about how he was assigned to General Patton and was responsible for shooting some of WWII's most famous footage. Biographer Jimmy McDonaugh, author of Big Bosoms, Square Jaws details how Meyer met Ernest Hemmingway and in turn go laid by a whore. From here we learn how Meyer got into making industrial films, and from there went on to be a glamour photographer for Playboy Magazine. Dahn Cann, Meyer's editor, talks about the impact of Meyer's pin up work, and from here we learn how the success of The Immoral Mister Teas kicked the door down for Meyer to make feature films and in turn created 'the skin flick.'
John La Zar talks about Meyer's directorial style on set, and his enthusiasm for most of his projects, while David Ansen of Newsweek talks about how Meyer did so much of the work on his films from the cinematography to the editing to the casting to the writing. We get a nice overview of his career and learn of his aesthetic, his talent for editing and cinematography, and how his movies were a cut above other films in the genre. Ebert attests to Russ' popularity not only with film critics but also with the ladies, and how his films were taken seriously as often as they were dismissed as schlock. We learn how the popularity of Faster, Pussycat… Kill! Kill! and Vixen brought him to the attention of 20th Century Fox, who figured Meyer was the right man to bring in a low budget movie at a big profit for them and how ended up initially working on what the studio thought would be a sequel to Valley Of The Dolls. Ebert tells us how Meyer had him write the screenplay and the approach he took to the script he eventually turned out, while Nathan Rabin, of The Onion, covers how Meyer and Ebert were outsiders now working at the big studio and the irony of it all. Michael Musto of The Village Voice lends his thoughts on the project, while Ebert talks about how the suits at Fox were 'aghast' at the script. The documentary closes out by talking about Meyer's post production efficiency and how the film ended up getting slapped with an X-rating and how Fox ended up releasing it anyway and how it played as a comedy as Meyer intended. Ebert covers how black audiences embraced the movie, and McBroom and Page back him up on this. This is a great look back at the movie and the man behind it all, a loving tribute to Meyer (the end scroll dedicates this piece to his memory) that doesn't skimp on pre or post production details and that does a fine job of giving us the history of the film and an explanation of its origins.
The second featurette is Look On Up At The Bottom: The Music Of The Dolls. Ebert talks about how they wanted a three-piece female band for the film, which was ahead of its time, and here we learn of how the Carrie Nations came to be and the influence they would later have on bands like The Go-Go's. McBroom, Myers and Read talk about how they had to learn to lip-synch and play real chords on their guitars even though it wasn't them actually playing the music. Jeff McDonald of Red Cross attests to McBroom's realism during the scenes where she's seen drumming, and Paul Marshall of the Strawberry Alarm Clock (who have a cameo in the film and contributed some music to it) talks about how Dolly Read's lip-synching of Lynn Carey's voice was dead on. Composer Stu Phillips shows up quite a bit to talk about how he enjoyed working with three gorgeous girls on the project and how Meyer took the musical parts of the film so deadly seriously. Christopher Freeman, bassist for the queer-core pop punk outfit Pansy Division even appears here, attesting to the catchiness of the track Candy Man that his band covered. At ten minutes and fifty four seconds in length, this piece, also presented in 1.85.1 anamorphic widecreen, is a fun and factual examination of one of the most important aspects of the movie, and Phillips' input in this piece is invaluable. It's a nice blend of factual information from those involved and details on how it influenced musicians in later years. -Dvd talk.
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