Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Awful! -"Nudies, that's all they are! Nudies!"
Review: Saw it on the Independent Film Channel & thought it was Mysoginist, & offensive. Too much graphic sex & naked females pollute the movie. There was 5 minutes worth of violence, and it looked fake. Cuss words & big breasts were the only plot/story. The only connection with "Valley of the Dolls" this movie has, is the title, and the copy-cat plot of three career girls trying to make it big. They do mention taking some "dolls" though, during the drug scenes.Porno movie plotting. The movie first shows the "Carrie Nations" (what kind of a name is that?) at a high school, and performing. Then they go to California. The only way we find out that they have become famous, is by one character mentioning it. The movie was supposed to show how the 3 girls get messed up with the hollywood lifestyle, but it doesn't. In fact, throughout the whole movie the 3 girls seem to be having a good time. The end of the movie seemed like the writers just wrote it up in 5 seconds, just to end a movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic 60's
Review: This film has just about every element of the social situation of the late 1960's: free love, drugs, rock and roll, etc., but there are other elements easily missed, one of which is that drinking alcohol was considered "square" by the hippie generation. Another is the legal signifigance of this film -- it was arguably a criminal act in it's time. By the rules of the Supreme Court at the time of the film's release, a movie appealing to "prurient interest" had to demonstrate "redeeming social value" to avoid being considered pornography. Hence, the rediculous drawn out narrative at the end was needed to keep Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert (yes, the now famous film critic, who wrote the screenplay for this film!) out of prison. Kids today don't even realize how different it was back then. A great thing about this film is the brilliant camera work and lighting, which makes the scenes seem almost 3-dimensional. Sometimes you feel you can step right into the screen.
Rating:
Summary: Dig It, The Greatest Hunk Of Cheese Ever.
Review: As mentioned practically every genre in film is expressed in this movie. Drama, comedy, love story, mystery, slasher-horror, psychological mind bender, and soft porn (straight, gay, bi, lesbian). In other words the greatest and cheesiest soap opera ever made. The plot? Well if its important it deals with a girl band, who become The Carrie Nations, moving to L.A. to try to 'make it' following them as they get stepped on and abused along the way. The usual story of the manipulation of people, especially women, in Hollywood or the World in general by those who have already 'made it' or think they have materially but not spiritually. The narrator sums it up at the end. 'There can be no beginning or ending that does not in some way touch another. For our actions affect the lives and destinies of the many.' This is just one example of the self-righteous cheesy, but truthful, moralizing in the film. There are outrageous parties and bizarre incidents which convey ideologies of the time, psychedelic imagery, chromatic sets, early mtv style editing, soap operatic clichés, drug-use, a sword wielding psudeo-Shakesperian spouting crazy, a bartending Nazi, a Liston/Tyson type boxer and a bloodbath. It's not the plot but how it unfolds that makes this a true original and unique film. I agree with others below. This is a postmodern classic. A panoptic view of the world formation of new subjectivity in reality that occurred in the '60's, of hybrid selves blurring mores and forming beyond the binary dualisms of a hegemonic and phallocratic culture. However, like the real Carrie Nation the film has a message of temperance and how the enjoyments in finding oneself through over indulgence in anything can lead to evil. The irony in the name of the group is interesting. Carrie Nation was pretty much a formidable self-empowered woman who carried an ax. Something none of these exploited women are. Don't take all this too seriously. Spread this cheese on a cracker and enjoy. Just one question where's the DVD with Ebert and Meyer's commentary?
Rating:
Summary: A post modern Classic
Review: This is a film with a unique visual vocabulary, and an incredible eye for detail. Its a wonderful montage of glossy surfaces - a tribute to the Pop Art of the late sixties and the culture that gave birth to the psychedelic era. Meyer captures the 60's zeitgeist, and feeds it back to the audience with consummate skill. Meyer's genius lies in his sense of irony, and his ability to blend the boundary between medium and message - the narrative is articulated through the marketing idioms of the late 60.'s, this reaches a high point when sexual ecstasy is spliced with images of a Bentley automobile. It certainly add's a new dimension to the auto-erotic. Eventually Meyer leads us into his High Castle, a transdimensional wonderland where German high camp and the psychedelic aesthetic fuse into a greater synthesis! Here we witness the birth of the new man, beyond good and evil. Can conventional reality/morality contain his Promethean fire? Watch and learn...
Rating: 
Summary: The Big Limburger of Cheesy Movies
Review: BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS isn't just a cheesy movie: it is the Limburger of cheesy movies--a devastatingly awful flick of such horrific proportions that it completely defies every possible expectation. For the first ten minutes I sat before the screen, slack-jawed in disbelief. Then I began to laugh. And laugh and laugh and laugh until I thought I might rupture something! The story? It pretty much defies description, but in general it concerns a three-girl band and their boy-toy manager who move to Los Angeles and promptly go to pot. There are drugs, sex, some really bad rock 'n' roll, and before the credits roll we're even treated to a take-off (yes, I said take-off) on the notorious Sharon Tate murder and some of the most ridiculous moralizing in celluloid history. As leader of the band, Dolly Read looks and acts like Barbie's friend Skipper after one course of hormone treatments too many. (At times I wondered if she was Ethel Merman's long lost daughter or a maybe just a really wacked-out Grace Slick in a red-wig disguise.) Granted, Read only has about three expressions, but she plays them really big, so you can't help noticing. Band side-kicks Cynthia Myers and Marcia McBroome have a few more expressions than Read, but they aren't nearly so powerfully emphatic about it, which is probably just as well. The script is by Roger Ebert, of all people, and it tends to show that those who can do and those who can't criticize. Even so, Ebert gets off some pretty memorable licks in terms of one-liners. ("You're a groovy boy. I'd like to strap you on sometime" and "This is my happening and it freaks me out!" are probably the two most famous.) As for director Russ Meyer... It's actually difficult to tell from this film if Russ Meyer is just a really bad director or a really bad director with a sense of style. My bet is on the latter: his directorial talents make me think of what might happen if Robert Altman dropped acid, and he's very consistent about it. The camera shots are jumpy and always seem to be a couple of frames short of what you expect; the over-the-top dialogue is played even more so; and in a weird sort of way the film has an aesthetic spin that can only be described as 1970s pop-trash on a collision course with Theatre of the Absurd. Whatever the case, it seems pretty clear that everything on screen is intentional, if not perhaps done with any great sense of deliberation. Now, this is NOT going to appeal to every viewer. You have to have a really warped sense of humor to get the joke--and you're never really sure if the joke is intentional or accidental. But if you're looking for something incredibly bizarre... Oooo-weeeeeeee, baby! --GFT (Amazon.com Reviewer)--
Rating:
Summary: Cult classic on decadent LA lifestyle and human nature
Review: No, this isn't a sequel to the horrid movie adapatation of Jacqueline Susann's Valley Of The Dolls. While an in-name-only sequel, it's actually different and better as a result. No Sharon Tate giving a wooden performance, no Patty Duke overracting at the very end,... this is an interesting cult classic. Originally given an X, the revised NC-17 rating is due to the many sex scenes, including a few lesbian scenes. It's tame by today's standards, but still has some bite. So enter the story of the Kelly Affair, Kelly on lead vocals and guitar, Casey on bass, Pet on drums, and Harris their manager and Kelly's boyfriend, playing 60's hippy rock. They go to LA hoping for a break, hopefully with help from Kelly's aunt, Susan Lake, a big name in fashion advertising, who turns out to be a truly nice person, perhaps too nice. Their break comes from Ronnie Barzell, aka "Z-Man," music promoter and host of lavish parties where all the swingers and wild people come together- This is my happening and I 'm freaking out!E Barzell speaks in a dramatic Shakespearean patter: "Observe yon quiet corner. In an island of tranquility in this sea of revelry, languid Roxanne finds that pinch of feminine spice with which she often plays in her interlude." or "Beware, fair maiden, of Emerson Thorne, under that friendly mask, inside that innocent shell, lies fermenting the unholy seed of desire." Roxanne is a fashion designer and Thorne is Z-man's busboy by night, but an aspiring law student by day. And Kelly is stunned to see so many couples making out liberally in bed or in the pool. One thing for sure--changing the group's name from The Kelly Affair to The Carrie Nations was a good move on Z-Man's part and thanks to him, they become stars, but Harris gradually feels left out, driving him into the arms of Ashley St. Ives, a seductive, sexually insatiable blonde with a predatory smile, a "priestess of carnality" (porn star) who has a penchant for having sex other than in bed. As for the others, Pat and Emerson become a couple, as do Kelly and Lance Rock, a smug-looking pretty boy with "golden hair, bedroom eyes, the firm young body, these are the tools which he plies his trade." Casey too finds someone. Guess who, though? However, not all is sunny in this paradise. Porter Hall, Susan's slimy stuff-shirted lawyer, does not like Kelly or any part of the scene and enjoys putting people down. Indeed, a montage of scenes and a variety of voices describes the many faces of LA: noisy, classy, smog, lousy traffic, cold and cruel, cultured, phony city, ... it's all these things. When things start to go wrong, Kelly finally realizes something: "You're racing through life full steam ahead, not giving a damn, and something happens to make you stop short, and you realize it's people that count." As for the music done by the trio, it's 60's rock early on, such as "Find It" and "Come With The Gentle People," sung during their trip via Interstate 40, but the vocals seem to have been done by black artists. Kelly's speaking voice simply doesn't match. And The Strawberry Alarm Clock perform "Incense And Peppermints," "A Girl From The City", and "I'm Going Home" at Z-Man's party. Dolly Read (Kelly) resembles Rene Bond, the cute cheeks and smile. Erika Gavin (Roxanne) has also appeared in Erika's Hot Summer and also in Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat. Cynthia Myers (Casey) is simply stunning, resembling a warmer hippy version of Sophia Loren with long brown hair. John LaZar really scores as Z-Man, flashy with clothes, words, and lifestyle, but so does Phyllis Davis as the blindly kind Susan. The decadent, groovy 60's lifestyle and clothes ("Q-U-A-N-T in London"), lingo ("groovy, man!, "you dig?", don' t bogart the jointE are still evident in this era long gone. Everyone is a freak, as Casey says, depending on the crowd they hang out with, be it pot, downers, juice, pick one. But there are some pearls of wisdom to be learned, to quit living in yesterday lest one loses sight of tomorrow, that those who only take pay the highest price, and "excessive kindness blinds us to the failings of those less perfect." A sexy but heartbreaking/warming drama, love, mystery, and music movie that's one of a kind, written by Roger Ebert, yes, that one!
Rating:
Summary: infinitely horrendous
Review: probably the worst movie ever made, if that's not underrating it. lucky for roger ebert he's a good movie critic.
Rating:
Summary: bad beyond belief
Review: an incredibly horrendous and awful movie. i have never forgotten it since I snuck out to watch it at a drive-in movie in 1969. sometimes you pay for your sins. a much lower rating than one star should be used to judge this film.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite movie ever!
Review: Anyone who thinks Russ Meyer is an amateurish B-movie director just doesn't get it. He's as skilled and observant a director and editor as anyone in Hollywood. He just has utter contempt for Hollywood's gloss, and it shows in every frame of this masterpiece. How much contempt? At arguably the climactic instant of violence, you hear the 20th Century Fox theme! (20th Century Fox bankrolled the movie, his one and only flirtation with the major studios) The camera cuts, a fraction of a second too soon or too late, zooming in too close or drifting off-center, emulate the jittery look of soap-opera editing to a tee. This is completely deliberate. And the plot! No wonder Roger Ebert takes such pride in his association with this movie! It has the densest plot i have ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: A TOTAL CAMPY ROMP!
Review: Russ Meyer goes over the top with this camp cult classic.
The fact that the late great and rather staid Roger Ebert
co-wrote the screenplay will change forever your thinking
of him as a film critic! A total HOOT! Okay...so the acting
was trés far from award-winning....the girls are buxom with
gorgeous "BIG" hair and enough eye-makeup to put Maybelline
in the 'black'...literally! So what if you've never heard then of or since most of the
cast members? I *was* taken with John Lazar as "Z-Man"
who reminded me too much of the amazing Freddy Mercury
of 'Queen'! Was this typecasting? ;) Remember tho' this
was filmed in 1970 before AIDS and when free sex with anyone
and everyone was the norm.....for at least a little while!
A great and wonderful romp!
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