BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Russ Meyer Goes Criterion!!!

THIS IS MY HAPPENING!!!
AND IT FREAKS ME OUT!!!

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Dir. Russ Meyer
Scr. Roger Ebert
Starring: Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, Edy Williams,
John LaZar, Henry Rowland, David Gurian, Charles Napier, Pam Grier

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"This is my happening and it freaks me out," declares rock impresario Ronnie ‘Z-Man’ Barzell (John LaZar) during his berserker Hollywood party replete with live performances by The Strawberry Alarm Clark, a bevy of boobilicious babes, all manner of fornication and bucket-loads of booze/drug consumption.

Z-Man wasn’t the only one freaking out. When Russ Meyer (Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, Motor Psycho, Supervixens, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens, Up!), the king of big-boob cinema extravaganzas, unleashed his first major studio picture Beyond the Valley of the Dolls upon an unsuspecting public, audiences, critics and the film’s major backer, Twentieth Century Fox, were freaked out to the max.

For good reason.

The opening few minutes of Meyer’s Roger Ebert-scripted dive into L.A. sleaze pits proceed to bash us in the face with Z-Man and Martin Bormann (Henry Rowland), Z’s loyal bartender, right-hand man and resident Nazi (nom-de-plumed as "Otto"), whilst the nutty pair malevolently chase scantily clad babes within a seaside mansion estate. In a climactic moment to end all climactic moments, we cut to a Luger sensually stroking the supple lips of a beauteous-sleeping-big-bosomed-babe until the deadly firearm is inserted erect-penis-like into her mouth, the wet maw eagerly – nay, greedily – accepting the cold-steel schwance-of-death as our dozing dame proceeds to suck it dry. Under the circumstances, who wouldn’t? Be freaked out to the max, that is.

(Oh, okay, and suck it dry, too.)

When Meyer and young film critic Ebert were hired by Fox to concoct a vague semi-sequel reboot to Mark Robson’s through-the-roof sex-and-soap-suds adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s bestselling novel Valley of the Dolls, the artistic pursuits of these perfectly matched reprobates flew under the radar of studio executives during the delightful beginnings of the oft-envied, late lamented and much-revered "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" days of American Cinema. The film was so low-budget by studio standards, nobody in the front office paid it much mind, but for Meyer, the budget might as well have been as large as Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra.

He did not waste one cent.

The Carrie Nations are united in SIN!!!

Plot wise, things are relatively simple and perfectly in keeping with Susann’s moronically simplistic rags-to-riches-to-rags soap opera. However, the incorrigible lads dole out a cinematic masterpiece of flagrant filth that’s anything but moronic and in its own strangely perverse way is rooted (so to speak) in a queer miasma of morality. If anything the film celebrates perversion to such a deliciously over-the-top degree that the tale cannot help but become a morality play. (That said, the film brilliantly manages to make the morality seem as old-fashioned as it deserves to be – it’s even vaguely derisive.)

So, the film focuses on the buxom Carrie Nations, an all-girl rock band comprised of Kelly MacNamara (Dolly Read), Casey Anderson (Cynthia Myers) and Petronella "Pet" Danforth (Marcia McBroom). At first they’re infused with the down-home, corn-fed morals of the mid-western US of A, but in no time, they’re turfing their regular squeezes for a series of libidinous adventures with a variety of partners. One of the cuckolded beaus (David Gurian) even takes up with a porn starlet (Edy Williams) who drains him to such a degree that he eventually can’t even get it up.

Fun and games, for one and all – especially the audience – but as this epic of sin continues, the freedom of youth increasingly morphs beyond the "summer of love" antics, and the evils of both L.A. and show business in general give way to an unholy Walpurgisnacht that unravels during the film’s deeply dark finale.

The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten proclaimed that the film was "true to life".

Who are we to argue with this?

Well, you don't see something like this everyday.

Ebert and Meyer created a work that’s drenched in lurid colour and the colours of sleaze, slime and scum, and we’re allowed to revel in the kaleidoscopic picture with all the giddy laughs it wrenches from us from beginning to end, along with the trademark Meyer montages of rapid-fire cuts – a chiaroscuro of madness and freakishness at its finest. This is sheer sex-drenched melodrama; as a director, Meyer might as well be Douglas Sirk on crack cocaine.

Besides, what other movie features (again, from the highly quotable Z-Man) one of the greatest lines of dialogue in movie history: ‘You will drink the black sperm of my vengeance!’

Black sperm, indeed.

Years ago, I met Ebert as a young lad and proceeded to geek him out with my love for the film. He took me for donuts and we spent an hour together talking about it. His final words to me were thus: "Never, ever feel ashamed to admit how much you love Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

And if you’re listening up there, Mr Ebert, I am not ashamed.

I’m infused with pride to declare my utter, deep passion.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** Five Stars

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls gets the full Criterion Collection treatment on Blu-Ray and (if you must) DVD with a high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, 2003 audio commentary featuring screenwriter Roger Ebert, 2006 audio commentary featuring actors Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Harrison Page, John LaZar, and Erica Gavin, a new interview with filmmaker John Waters, 1988 episode from "The Incredibly Strange Film Show" on director Russ Meyer, a Q&A about the film from 1992 featuring Meyer, Ebert, LaZar, Read and actors David Gurian, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, and Edy Williams, a 2005 interview with cast members, five 2006 about the making of the film, featuring the cast and crew, screen tests, trailers, a booklet featuring an essay by film critic Glenn Kenny and excerpts from a 1970 account in the UCLA Daily Bruin of a visit to the film’s set, plus gorgeous new cover art by Jim Rugg.

This review of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls originally appeared at Electric Sheep.

Read my review of Valley of the Dolls HERE.

LIFE ITSELF - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Moving Doc on Ebert at TIFF Bell Lightbox & other Cdn venues via VSC

Roger Ebert to me as a very young man:
"Kid, you never, ever need to be ashamed admitting
to anyone how much you love Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

Reprobate Corner: Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert
A MATCH MADE IN BIG BOOBIE HEAVEN

Life Itself (2014) ****
Dir. Steve James

Review By Greg Klymkiw

What I loved most about Roger Ebert was not his film criticism. In 1988 I was promoting my first feature film as a producer and was afforded the happy opportunity to sit on a panel discussion at a film festival that was being moderated by my hero. Not Roger Ebert the film critic (though I always enjoyed his film reviews), but Roger Ebert the screenwriter. Yes! Screenwriter! Roger Ebert had penned one of my favourite movies of all time and I impatiently counted down every minute for the panel to end so I could corner him.

One of the most outrageous scenes in movie history
is Erica Gavin giving a blow job in her sleep,
sucking back on the cold metal of a handgun, which
provides the kind of cum shot that could
only come (so to speak) from Russ Meyer.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
Written by the late, great film critic Roger Ebert.

Ebert's script for this insane 1970 cult classic was not only perfectly suited to its phenomenal director, but as such, still holds up as one of the most brilliantly daffy and irreverent pieces of screenwriting in any American film from its period. He'd written the script for none other than Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - a film so many had trashed for all the wrong reasons and one that only the most cultured cineastes could appreciate.

So upon cornering the great man, I stammered out a few words about his great script. I wasn't embarrassed to be admitting how much I loved Meyer's movie, but I was, frankly just plain nervous. I was in my 20s, dipping my toe into the film festival world for the first time and here before me was my idol. He smiled at me and said, "Kid, you never,ever need to be ashamed admitting to anyone how much you love Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." He took me out for a coffee and over the course of an hour we talked about Russ Meyer. He even told me all about the ghost writing he did on other Meyer pictures - mostly the insanely over-the-top manly-man dialogue Russ would put in the mouths of his studs.

This, for me, was a dream come true. Over the years, I'd run into Ebert on the film festival circuits. I'd usually never have to remind him who I was. I was the fat kid who loved Beyond the Valley of the Dolls more than life itself.

* * *

Steve James's documentary portrait of Ebert, taking the same title as the Great Man's memoirs Life Itself, is a beautiful, touching and heart wrenching portrait of a man that most anyone who loves movies worshipped and/or admired. Shot primarily during the last few months of Ebert's life, James focuses on Ebert's indomitable will to live. This brave, brilliant man who loved movies - perhaps not more than life itself, but who most certainly loved life for the myriad of blessings it afforded, including the movies, takes on an aura of saintliness that seems perfectly apt.

The last years of Ebert's life produced some of his best work as a writer. He embraced social media early on, and when he was stricken with cancer and then further assaulted by the horrendous surgery that butchered his lower jaw and took away his ability to speak with that distinctly mellifluous voice, Ebert wrote with a vengeance - on FaceBook, on his Blog, his marvellous, seemingly endless Tweets and, of course, the reviews. It's odd, but in those years, I'd always turn to Ebert's reviews soon after I saw a movie and wrote about it, just to see where his own head was at with the picture. I'm probably imagining things, but it seemed to me that he entered a far more philosophical phase - not just in his personal writings, but in his film criticism as well. In any event, I at least felt like Ebert had entered into a new phase as a writer and I'm grateful to have turned to his work first during this period.

I'm also grateful this film exists.

James has made a very solid and fine picture. He hits all the biographical points one would want - childhood, university newspaper, early years as a journalist, television star, his rivalry/friendship with Gene Siskel (almost unbearably moving in Siskel's final year) and marriage to his warm, wonderful Chazz, the love of his life. And yes, though I might have preferred an entire feature film about it, James does NOT ignore Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, though I'll admit a tiny shred of disappointment that Martin Scorsese doesn't quite wax more enthusiastically about the picture's considerable virtues and instead offers that the classic sex-and-violence-drenched satire/melodrama went over his head.

The film is superbly apportioned with a treasure trove of footage (including hilarious outs from "At the Movies"), film clips, archival footage, interviews with the likes of Martin Scorsese, friends, family and finally, the sad, harrowing and yet inspirational glimpse into Ebert's last years. The film also features narration taken directly from the text of Ebert's lovely book "Life Itself" read by a really terrific Ebert sound-alike voice actor.

Life Itself is a film of great humour, warmth and tears. And yes, I shed more than a few. You'd have to be inhuman not to.

Life Itself plays theatrically via Video Services Corp. (VSC) at the following venues:

Opens July 11
Toronto – TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St. W
Montreal – Cinéma du Parc, 3575 Avenue du Parc
Ottawa – Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank St

Opens July 13
Vancouver – RIO Theatre, 1660 East Broadway St.

Opens July 25
London – Hyland Cinema, 240 Wharncliffe Rd S
Waterloo – Princess Cinema, 6 Princess St. W
Victoria – The Vic, 808 Douglas St

Opens Sept 12
Winnipeg – Cinematheque – 100 Arthur St.