Review of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) by Blind P — 10 Jan 2011

It's hard to believe that famous US movie critic Roger Ebert penned Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. It's basically a spoof of the 1967 movie Valley Of The Dolls which I haven't seen. The plot of this movie revolves around a female rock group that pursues their dreams of stardom in the Hollywood jungle of ambitious hopefuls. All the characters are beautiful looking particularly the drop-dead gorgeous women in the band. They do have an old toothless woman in the movie who hangs-out at a party with the beautiful people. She's the comic relief in an already hilariously campy movie.

There's lots of sleazy, over-the-top sex, ravenous opportunists and drug addicts. The humour in all of this works throughout most of the movie. But when the movie veers towards bloody violence in the latter part of it, it's very jarring to the viewer. The brutal violence winds-up spoiling the fun, comic tone of this movie. This movie would've worked much better, if the brutal, gory violence had been left out of it. Having seen this movie only once I don't know how it would hold up after repeated viewings but I can say it is worth seeing at least once.