Some movies are made. Others are unleashed—like a tiger in a go-go cage hopped up on amphetamines and bad intentions. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is the latter: a studio picture that feels like it escaped custody, still wearing the handcuffs, flipping off the guards, and demanding another martini.
This is what happens when Russ Meyer—the patron saint of libidinal chaos—gets handed actual studio money, and Roger Ebert decides to write a screenplay like he’s double-parked outside sanity. The result isn’t just a movie; it’s a multi-car pileup of genres: satire, melodrama, rock musical, skin flick, morality play—all happening at once like a bar fight where everyone brought a different weapon.
The “story” (use that term loosely, like a bathrobe at 3 a.m.) follows an all-girl band stumbling into Hollywood and immediately getting chewed up by fame, sex, drugs, and whatever the hell Z-Man is serving at those parties. It’s the usual rise-and-fall arc, except cranked to a level where “subtlety” gets thrown out of a moving convertible somewhere on Sunset.
Meyer directs like a man who thinks restraint is a government conspiracy. The camera lunges, ogles, and practically sweats. Every frame is overlit, overstuffed, and oversexed—like the movie itself is trying to seduce you and doesn’t care if you say no. This is exploitation cinema in a tuxedo that’s already been spilled on.
But the real kicker? The tone. Nobody’s quite sure if this thing is joking—and that’s the joke. Ebert famously described it as a deliberate mashup of everything Hollywood does, smashed together until critics couldn’t tell if it “knew” it was funny. The actors play it dead serious, like they’re in a Tennessee Williams fever dream, while the dialogue sounds like it was written by a genius who just discovered camp and decided to weaponize it.
And then—because this movie refuses to stay in one lane—it veers hard into violence near the end, like someone spiked the punch with true crime. It’s jarring, ugly, and weirdly fascinating, the cinematic equivalent of laughing at a party right before someone flips a table.
The whole thing feels less like a film and more like a bad decision that somehow worked out. It’s trashy, it’s excessive, it’s morally confused, and it absolutely does not care what you think. In fact, it kind of dares you to keep up.
You don’t “watch” Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. You survive it—hair mussed, drink spilled, wondering who invited it and why you’re weirdly glad they did.
Home Video Distributor: Criterion
Available on Blu-ray - September 22, 2016
Screen Formats: 2.35:1
Subtitles: English SDH
Audio: English: LPCM Mono
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single disc
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A
In 1970, Twentieth Century-Fox, impressed by the visual zing “King of the Nudies” Russ Meyer had been bringing to bargain-basement exploitation fare, handed the director a studio budget and the title to one of its biggest hits, Valley of the Dolls. With a satirical screenplay by Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls follows three young female rockers going Hollywood, in hell-bent sixties style, under the spell of a flamboyant producer—whose decadent bashes showcase Meyer’s trademark libidinal exuberance. Transgressive and outrageous, this big-studio version of a debaucherous midnight movie is an addictively entertaining romp from one of cinema’s great outsider artists.
Video
The Criterion Collection release of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls doesn’t sanitize the madness—it spotlights it with a grin, turning what used to look like a worn-out grindhouse relic into a hyper-saturated fever dream where the reds burn hotter, the parties feel denser, and every frame of Russ Meyer’s sensory overload finally snaps into focus without losing its sleazy pulse; grain stays thick and filmic, colors practically scream, and the cleaned-up audio gives the Carrie Nations just enough punch to rattle the walls, making this less a “restoration” and more a full-on glam resurrection—same chaos, just dressed sharper and hitting harder.
Audio
The audio on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls doesn’t try to reinvent the chaos—it just amps it up and cleans the grime off the speakers; dialogue finally cuts through without that old-school mush, the Carrie Nations tracks hit with a fuller, punchier presence instead of sounding like they’re bleeding out of a drive-in radio, and the whole mix has more body and separation while still feeling like a glorified wall of sound, which is exactly what Russ Meyer wanted—loud, brash, a little overwhelming, and absolutely unconcerned with subtlety.
Supplements:
The release of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls comes stacked like a midnight movie marathon that refuses to end, anchored by a sharp high-def restoration with uncompressed mono audio and layered with archival and new extras that lean hard into the film’s cult mythology—two commentary tracks (including one with Roger Ebert), a fresh sit-down with John Waters, vintage TV coverage of Russ Meyer, a chaotic multi-person Q&A, cast interviews, and a whole slate of making-of documentaries that dissect the sex, drugs, and production insanity from every angle, plus screen tests, trailers, subtitles, and printed material featuring writing by Glenn Kenny—all wrapped in slick new art by Jim Rugg that signals exactly what you’re in for.
Commentary:
- See special fatures
Special Features:
- High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary from 2003 featuring screenwriter Roger Ebert
- Audio commentary from 2006 featuring actors Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Harrison Page, John LaZar, and Erica Gavin
- New interview with filmmaker John Waters
- Episode from 1988 of The Incredibly Strange Film Show on director Russ Meyer
- Q&A about the film from 1992 featuring Meyer, Ebert, LaZar, and Read; and actors David Gurian, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, and Edy Williams, with host Michael Dare
- Interview with cast members from 2005
- Above, Beneath, and Beyond the Valley; Look On Up at the Bottom; The Best of Beyond; Sex, Drugs, Music & Murder; and Casey & Roxanne, five documentaries from 2006 about the making of the film, featuring the cast and crew
- Screen tests
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: 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
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