Valley of the Dolls

I know, i know, this one is shooting fish in a barrel. But such pretty, brightly colored, completely fucking ridiculous fish!

Valley of the Dolls is based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann which, 57 years after publication still remains the best trashy beach/airplane/hospital read of all time. I have given away many copies of this book. Valley of the Dolls the movie manages to be even more trashy and absurd than the novel. No mean feat. This movie is completely terrible and absorbingly watchable -- silly plotlines, ludicrous dialogue, bad casting -- but fabulous outfits and funny as shit. Valley of the Dolls is the tale of three special ladies and their lives in this biz we call show.

Our main character, theoretically, is Anne Welles. At the opening of our story, Anne is a boring, small-town girl in Connecticut. She moves to New York City where she becomes a boring secretary and then to L.A. where she becomes a boring supermodel. Whether she's got some sort of brown suede turd on her head or a four-foot, thirty-pound ponytail, she remains expressionless and monotone. Anne is played by Barbara Parkins, who was also in Peyton Place. That she was in two of the most overblown hokey sleazefests of the decade should tell you what kind of actress she is.

Next up, the lovely and fairly untalented Jennifer North, played by future Polanski wife and Manson victim Sharon Tate. Sharon is about as good an actress as Barbara, but she's beautiful enough that you don't mind. Also, Jennifer is supposed to be a lousy actress.

Finally, Neely O'Hara, singer, dancer, actress, trainwreck. Neely's crazy, "booze and dope," endless diva-fit lifestyle should clue you in that she's based on Judy Garland, although she is played by Miss "A hot dog makes her lose control!" herself, Patty Duke. Neely is an awe-inspiring disaster of a character, going from perky Broadway ingenue to jaded, washed-up addict who spends a lot of time shouting "I'm Neely O'Hara" at husbands, friends, bosses, flunkies, mirrors, empty rooms, glasses of bourbon, bumpy rocks, throw pillows, small lizards...

Interestingly, Judy herself was originally cast as slightly faded Broadway diva Helen Lawson but, being Judy Garland, got into the vodka and the pills and the drama and wound up being replaced by Susan Hayward.

 Jackie and Judy at a press conference. No further comment necessary.

So, Anne comes to New York, where she office-jobs for an entertainment lawyer and meets some beefy schlub in an undersized suit named Lyon Burke. She immediately and inexplicably falls hopelessly in love with him. At Helen Lawson's new Broadway show, she meets singer Neely and showgirl Jennifer. Neely gets fired because she lip-synchs so damn well -- Susan Hayward is stressed enough having to mouth someone else's voice while wearing one of those damn ponytail wigs and trying not to get knocked on her ass by some damn oversized Calder mobile knockoff. Next time tell the damn grips to wipe their fingerprints off the acrylic before we shoot! And get that mouthy little bitch out of here!

Neely is consoled with a telethon appearance. Then she gets some kind of cabaret gig, unleashing the first of Valley of the Dolls' incredible montage sequences, a parade of weird contrasting colors, wacky wipes and absurd outfits. Oh, and she marries her boyfriend.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, everyone goes to a tacky nightclub, where they watch some clown with too much hair and a tight red suit croon about shacking up. He focuses his song on Jennifer. She immediately and inexplicably falls hopelessly in love with him. The two lack chemistry but, well, Jennifer is supposed to be a lousy actress and Tony is supposed to be an idiot. No, really, like he's an official, medically-designated idiot. Maybe i should have spoilered that, but it comes as no surprise and all of this happened fifty years ago. In a movie, two books and three TV shows. Deal.

Lyon bangs Anne and ditches her. Tony bangs Jennifer and marries her. (Odd, as boring marries boring more easily than idiot marries beautiful.) All three women eventually wind up out in L.A. in glorious mid-century homes, reclining on the Hollywood Regency decor or sitting by the giant-sized pool. They're overworked or underemployed and griping about it either way.

Tony isn't working enough and his sister is a total uptight buzzkill bitch. Neely is working too much and is a total, raging, pill-gobbling, booze-huffing, screaming like a maniac, loads o' fun bitch. She swaps one husband for another, get fired from a few movies, wins a Grammy, gets fired again...

None of this is nearly as trashy as it is in the book: They took out the homosexuality and the anal sex. Which, for the record, were two separate storylines. Also some more adultery was left out. And the whole "lesbians in Europe" sequence...

Tony has some kind of retard-related seizure, gets put away and Jennifer makes softcore porn in France to pay the tab at the nuthouse. Anne becomes a supermodel as "the Gillian Girl." Oh, and she marries her boyfriend. Who is the head of Gillian Cosmetics, not that tedious sad-sack Lyon Burke. For whom Anne still holds a torch. Until he comes back and bangs her again. Regardless, Anne's cosmetics commercials are things of beauty and hilarity...

Ah, fashion! The outfit inspirations one can take from this film are endless and even if you aren't up to a mod shift or chiffon gown, you can at least stick on some false eyelashes. However, those fucking hairdos are beyond anyone's reckoning. Valley of the Dolls must have deployed hundreds of thousands of dollars in wigs and falls and hairspray.

Speaking of wigs, Valley of the Dolls has one of the most legendary wig scenes in all of cinema, even beating out Debbie Harry's exploding beehive at the end of Hairspray. I speak of the ladies' room catfight between Helen Lawson and Neely O'Hara. Cruel things are said about husbands and children, faces slapped and, yes, wigs torn off!

Woo hoo! Too much fun. Yeah, time to take that down a notch. So, Jennifer gets her own montage (finally) when she -- What else? -- od's on pills. Because she gets the boob cancer. And, well, as she herself explains it....

In the meantime, Neely hits a delightfully stereotyped bottom, plenty of staggering around spotless Tenderloin streets, swilling cheap drinks and waking up next to rough trade.

This leads to a stint in some kind of mental hospital/rehab which leads to our most ridiculous scene yet. For this is the same hospital in which 'Tarded Tony has been stashed and, on in-patient talent show night, the subnorm in the wheelchair and the sociopathic junkie lip-synch a touching duet.

Lyon bangs Neely. Neely makes a comeback. Neely is still a total psychotic, raging bitch.

... and to prove it, on the opening night of the huge Broadway show in which I am starring,
I am going to chug down a bottle of quaaludes and a dozen whiskeys.
And then I am going out into the alley to shout at a dumpster.

And Anne goes back to her hometown. Like anyone gives a shit.

Valley of the Dolls was scorned upon its release but has since become a shining light of demented inspiration. There was Russ Meyer's amazing un-sequel, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Then there was a 1981 TV miniseries remake and a 1994 TV series. And several theatrical versions, both musical and not, females biological and not. It's been used as fashion inspiration many times, but also for interior design ideas, party ideas, cupcake recipes...

And, remember, if anyone asks: “Who’s stoned? I am merely traveling incognito.”

Perfect Blue

Do not let the pretty face fool you. This is not the anime you think it is. Perfect Blue owes far more to David Lynch than Disney.

The plot of Perfect Blue can best be summed up in one word: Mindfuck. It is a story in which the idea of being unsure what is real and what is fantasy is the story. The main character becomes entangled in the different worlds she inhabits: Her real life, her online life, her memories, her dreams, a character she plays on TV, someone else's imitation of her, who her fans think she is. And then people start dying...

Our heroine is Mima Kirigoe, who sings in Cham, a B-grade J-pop group. She does meticulously choreographed arm-waving and twirling in a pink tutu, crooning sugary tunes about love and angels to little girls and fixated fanboys, three of whom serve as a kind of Greek Chorus throughout the film.

Mima isn't satisfied with the low-grade, malls-and-fairs fame of her singing group. We open with her last show before she quits for a new and hopefully more glamorous and lucrative career as an actress. She's been offered a role on a sordid, sex-and-violence police procedural -- there is much debate about her pop idol image vs. actress image, how hard it is to become famous and stay famous.

She lives in a tiny, cluttered apartment, shops for groceries, feeds her fish, rides the train, lives a pretty ordinary life aside from the occasional fan letter... but then she begins getting odd hang-up calls, peculiar faxes, strange notes and then there's the website. Someone has set up an intensely detailed "fan site" for Mima, all in first person and accurate down to the brand of milk she buys. And then there's an accident with an exploding letter...

Things accelerate when Mima's role on the TV show is expanded -- via a graphic gang-rape scene. (This sequence is especially disturbing and disorienting.) Her pretty, pure, pink-clad pop idol self haunts her, taunting her in the window of a passing subway car, cursing her from a mirror's reflection, mocking her from "her" website about being a "filthy slut" with a "tarnished image."

Then the show's writer is murdered. Mima does a nude photo shoot. The photographer is butchered. And much as Mima doesn't know where she is, neither do we. A murder turns out to be a TV show episode that is actually a dream but is really a murder after all. The turn of the millennium brought a number of "what is real" movies, like Fight Club and Memento and Perfect Blue may be the most multi-layered example of the "tumble down the rabbit hole" genre.

 Darren Aronofsky was a fan of Perfect Blue and contemplated doing a remake ( I, uh, knew somebody who was in a position to know and let's leave it at that.), but i do not see how it could possibly be done live action. (Also, there are some movies that are done so right the first time, there's no point in a remake. I wish more filmmakers would realize that.) One doesn't have to pay a whole lot of attention to see the inspiration of Perfect Blue in Black Swan -- the idea of a young woman trying to move from mid-level fame to stardom by exploiting her sexuality and haunted by an alternate version of herself.

Perfect Blue is prescient on a number of counts: Stalkers, creepy fans, people tormenting others by pretending to be them on the internet, the never-ending amping-up of sex and violence for TV ratings, how teenybop starlets go "adult" via scandalous photo shoots and cameo roles. At least the bizarre fate of Mima Kirigoe isn't any any more twisted and self-destructive than Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan or Amanda Bynes....

Cleopatra Jones

Back in the 60's and 70's, several attempts were made at a "female James Bond." Honey West and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. went heavy on gadgetry. There was the Ginger pictures (in which our heroine was most Bondlike in her skill at fucking her enemies into submission) and the Brits tried a lady spy series called Go Girl! (Bondlike for accents and ripoff credits).

But as far as embodying the deadly glamour and "I own this room" charisma of Bond, the closest you'll come is Cleopatra Jones. As portrayed by the 6'2" Tamara Dobson, Cleo is a couture-wearing, karate-kicking high-level CIA agent whose movies combined fashion and feminism, blaxploitation and martial arts, spy movie thrills and social consciousness.

 Cleopatra Jones opens with one of the best badass hero introductions in the movies: Landing by helicopter in the middle  of the desert, with dignitaries of all nations lined up to meet you. Then you give the signal for the RAF to wipe out "$30 million on the street" worth of poppies -- not a hand wave, but a Avedon/Verushka for Vogue-style flourish of your fox-trimmed cloak.

Dobson's wardrobe throughout is by Giorgio di Sant'Angelo. The designer went nuts on furs, hat, turbans, boots, capes and statement jewelry. If this sounds slightly impractical, dig her maxidresses with breakaway skirts for fight scenes. Probably 99% of humanity would look ridiculous in at least one, if not all of these outfits, but Tamara Dobson carries every one them off like the supermodel she was.

 

 

Immediately after the explosions, we meet Mommy aka Shelley Winters. She's a drug lord (drug lady?) and that was her poppy field Cleo wiped out. She's hanging around one of those big paneled & draped offices every top villain in the 70's had. We will only see Shelley Winters on this set -- until the very last scene, and i imagine that they needed a pair of muscleboys in hot pants carrying a plate of spaghetti and a couple of pints to lead her there.

Although here Shelley is a big ol' lesbian with a wardrobe of ghastly wigs that have model names like "The Buffalo Chicken" and "Pubic Hair." She's also got a taste for young stuff: As she says to whatever stretch-panted blonde, brunette or redhead is wandering around her office, "You're the only one around here who gives a shit about Mommy." I just hope she's hooking Miss Teen Poughkeepsie up with smack for services rendered. Or, better yet, before they are rendered: I can't imagine it is a muff that one is eager to dive into...

Mommy decides the thing to do is send the cops she's bought off to bust Cleo's pet charity, a narco/alco recovery house run by her dashingly turtlenecked and Afro-ed boyfriend. So there's a bust, with plenty of stereotypical nasty cracker pig cops wrecking the house and roughing people up and planting drugs on a sobbing ex-junkie.

So Ms. Cleopatra Jones packs up what i can only imagine is six Louis Vuitton trunks of her finest outfits and goes back to Cali with more chutzpah than LL Cool J and Biggie put together. A pair of thugs meet her at the airport, but lose her -- only for her to reappear sliding down the baggage chute. She uses her mad kung fu skills, but the bad guys eventually draw guns...

As the police run toward Cleo, guns drawn, she smirks and flips out her CIA I.D. One cannot help but enjoy the turning-of-the-tables as the cops now show her deference, in comparison to their behavior in the previous scene.

Works even better than a "Stand Your Ground" law, officers.
Now, I need you to do two things. One, step out of my way. Two, suck it. I'll let you pick the order.

Cleo meets with the police chief, played by that guy who was also Kojak's Chief of Police, who is nothing if not apologetic (he did not approve the bust, apparently). She's pissed about the raid on her boyfriend's halfway house and she's pissed about all the dope in her old neighborhood and she's pissed about the cops being assholes. CoP says he'll handle it, but nothing doing. As Cleo says, "My jurisdiction extends from Ankara, Turkey to Watts Tower, baby!" Why would one think it's a good idea to have this woman on your doorstep and mad as hell?

She brokers a 72-hour truce between the cops and the brothers to get to the bottom of who ordered the raid and who sent those assholes to the airport. When the bad guys put a bullet in Cleo's man, she throws down, revealing an in-car arsenal that would put Puff Daddy's to shame.

Boyfriend is now out of commission. This shoot-the-boyfriend move gets pulled a number of times in these female-centric blaxploitation movies (i.e, Sugar Hill, Foxy Brown). It leaves our heroine to TCB alone, while making sure we get her man's not a coward and rubbing off a bit of her potentially virago edges -- if he was able to save the day, he would and/or she might let him. But he's not, so....

 Hey! It's Huggy Bear! Yes, Antonio Fargas himself shows up as a flashy drug dealer who questions the intelligence of Shelley Winters' plan to poke a stick into the giant hornet's nest of fierceness and fury that is Cleopatra Jones. Legit question! In the meantime, Cleo has enlisted the Johnson Brothers, who are part cavalry, part comic relief. (And if Melvin ain't high on weed, i don't know who is.)

 Another recurring motif in Cleopatra Jones is men appreciating the awesomeness of Cleopatra Jones, either as she arrives, as she leaves or both -- seriously, it probably adds about 10 minutes to the flick. Cleo has no interest in going incognito: Her flamboyant presence is the dead opposite of the usual agent cover, but it seems to work just as well. She's not going to blend in anyway, so why not rock a turban and a T-top Corvette and let the males of the world marvel at the majesty?

The Corvette comes in handy during a ten-minute Bullit-esque car chase. This movie certainly believes in giving the people what they want: Fast cars, kung fu, one-liners, crazy fresh outfits. Did i mention the part where she wins the dirtbike race?

I'm going to assume that you can guess the outcome of the final showdown between the twentysomething 6'2" kung fu Amazon and the pudgy, sixtyish lady who drinks and screams a lot....

Cleopatra Jones has been an inspiration and an icon ever since this flick came out. It was followed up by Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, another bust-the-narcos mission with the Johnson brothers and another lady-loving Ms. Big. It also had the added thrill of being a Shaw Bros. co-production, with New! Improved! martial arts action. I wouldn't say that Cleopatra Jones could replace James Bond, but i do wish she'd had more than two movies...