May

27

The Critic as Writer: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

May 27, 2007 |

I’ve never understood the whole Russ Meyer thing. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has eluded me since college… maybe it’s a matter of my just not having been “there” in the moment this was set in, maybe it’s something else… maybe it’s just that there’s no there there.  Other than breasts, that is.

Would people still be talking about this film if:

  • …if Russ Meyer hadn’t actually gone on to make so many others that amounted to soft-core porn at a time when that was daring?
  • …if it weren’t soft-core hippie weirdness in its own right (though certainly not real porn)?
  • …if it didn’t have Roger Ebert as a writer, who later went on to weild the imperial Thumb up/down over hollywood’s life and death?

For me nothing about this one came together. Is Roger Ebert’s script– the source of my title-hook–the problem? Yes… but not the only one.

It’s hard to take as either parody or “the real thing” (whatever the real thing here would be). And it’s not even decent porn– it’s far too scattered. So … cheese, halfmelted, mildly-pleasing first impression, unexpected toughness/sharpness. Utlimately only satifying if you really like the sort of thing that it was– whatever the hell that was.

His IMDB bio, however, ends with a great line that sounds like it could have come straight out of Oscar Wilde: “Nothing is obscene providing it is done in bad taste.” (Ah, the reasonably literate allusion– one last opportunity to pretend this post is highbrow.)

As for a cheese: Pick your own. Alpine Lace’s Variety Pack cheese offering seems to run the gamut: Cheese, all different kinds, getting ever-riper as the evening wears on.


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