Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Much as i love Valley of the Dolls -- and i do, enough that i've shown it at screenings and based Oscar parties on it -- i love Beyond the Valley of the Dolls even more.

Largely because it is like the original but more. More bodacious ta-tas, more big hair, more fabulous outfits, more ridiculous dialogue, more bad acting, more drunk scenes, more kinky melodrama. And you read that right: Roger Ebert, beloved film critic co-wrote this masterpiece. And, trust me, it is a fucking masterpiece. If you have not seen this movie, your life is poorer for it.

In the fashion of the original Valley of the Dolls -- as well as other girl-power masterpieces such as How to Marry a Millionaire, The Heroic Trio and Sleater-Kinney, not to mention Charlie's Angels -- it's the story of three women and a shared goal.

This is Kelly, lead singer and guitarist. Like all lead singers/lead guitarists, she is narcissistic and unreliable and preoccupied with getting laid. She also has an inexplicable British accent that comes and goes. Kelly is played by Dolly Read, better known to Playboy readers as Miss May of 1966. She later married (and divorced and then married and divorced again) Dick Martin, of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

This is Casey, the bass player. Like all bass players, she was hired for aesthetics/backstory rather than musicianship and digs whatever kind of downers you can give her, man. Casey is played by Cynthia Myers, best-known as Playboy's Miss December of 1967. I saw her on a Russ Meyer TV show several years ago and damn if she has not changed. Well-preserved and/or i want the name of her plastic surgeon.

 This is Petronella, aka Pet, the drummer. Like all drummers, she doesn't understand the concept of consequences and is mostly interested in getting high. Pet is played by Marcia McBroom. McBroom was the daughter of prominent Civil Rights activists, Stokely Carmichael was her cousin and Katherine Dunham and Duke Ellington were family friends. She was also in Jesus Christ Superstar, got over this shit and is now a history teacher in New York City.

At the opening of the movie, the ladies and their band, the Kelly Affair are playing some kind of school dance. For those of you who wonder how a Russ Meyer film passes the Bechdel test, it happens right here, where the girls spend about three minutes talking about hauling equipment and scoring dope.

But enough of that, time for the traveling across the map montage! The Kelly Affair and their manager, Harris, a sad sack who is also Kelly's boyfriend, head out for Los Angeles. Apparently Kelly's aunt is there and she owes Kelly some inheritance. Also L.A. is where it's at for musicians, man. Remember, this was before the internet, so people had relatives they hadn't communicated with in over a decade and there still was a music industry.

Kelly finds her Aunt Susan in her over-the-top 70's fashion studio -- an appropriate profession, given the series of sensational outfits in this flick. Despite the "This is not a sequel. There has never been anything like it" billing, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was originally intended as a sequel to Valley of the Dolls. The Aunt Susan character was actually Anne Welles and Barbara Parkins originally signed up to play her. Then things went south. I think someone read the script...

Anyway, Aunt Susan whisks Kelly off to a party thrown by music producer and Hollywood it-boy Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell, a sort of Phil Spector figure with a pseudo-Shakespearian line of patter. This party scene stands out as one of the best party scenes ever filmed.

 

Yup, you read that right. The second Austin Powers movie stole a good half-dozen lines from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls verbatim. I guess they figured Ebert wouldn't get noisy about asserting ownership. I would have though: That shit is timeless! Another steal? Look closely at Kelly's palazzo-pant jumpsuit. It's the same one worn by Sharon Tate in the original Valley of the Dolls.

So, the rest of the girls (and boy) show up, the band plays a song (with some help from the Strawberry Alarm Clock), Z-Man decides to sign them after changing their name to the Carrie Nations. Sad Sack is kind of upset, but is also easily distracted by porn star Ashley St. Ives, played by Edy Williams, aka Mrs. Russ Meyer.

Yup, another steal.

Also, if you have not yet adapted yourself to the unique rhythms and editing of a Russ Meyer film, please do so quickly. Everyone just sort of recites their dialogue and the camera cuts as quickly as possible from person to person to object to person to boobs to person to object to person to boobs to boobs to boobs. Meyer had a thing about actors blinking, so he would cut away every time anyone's eyes shut for even a fraction of a second.

So, the Carrie Nations' careers kick off in a big way. Kelly tosses Sad Sack aside professionally for Z-Man and personally for vapid gigolo Lance Rocke. Sad Sack takes up with  Porn Star. Casey is the victim of some really heavy-handed pickup attempts and takes up with predatory fashion designer Roxanne. Pet hooks up with a waiter/law student who knows where she can score some weed.

Sad Sack starts getting so hammered that he can't get it up anymore and Porn Star leaves him. Law Student is so busy studying that Pet starts making eyes at a Muhammad Ali knockoff. Kelly and Gigolo keep scheming to get a bigger chunk of the inheritance. Casey is popping dolls and huffing grass. What next, you ask? A lot of things. Amazing things. You'll have to watch the movie to find out, but i can promise you that all of this happens...

There's a peculiar irony that arch-chauvinist Russ Meyer wound up making a number of films that are now considered pseudo-feminist masterpieces. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is no Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, but it does have three women who write their own songs, make their own decisions and bang whoever the hell they want. Sure, they're bubbleheaded hedonists, but no more so than anyone else in the film and less than most.

 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was a critically panned flop when it came out, ending Russ Meyer's brief Hollywood majors career. However, it has since become one of the cult classics, an over the-top-piece of camp genius that must be beheld to be believed and whose influence can still be seen today.

Tokyo Gore Police

You know how the Double Down has those edited videos that blend anime porn, foreign sexploitation, horror trailers, underground cartoons and old commercials? Well, Moss can save himself some work for the next round and just throw on a copy of Tokyo Gore Police, which has most of those ingredients chopped up and ready to serve.

Chopped up indeed. Tokyo Gore Police takes blood-spewing, limb-severing grossness and slams it to the nth level. If it wasn't so ridiculous, it'd be upsetting -- ridiculous not only in the sense of a nonsensical plot, but it's also a movie that knows when you need to see that the exploding head is almost laughably (and entirely laughably, if you've had a few beers) fake. Also because sometimes they just say "Fuck it," point a hose full of red tempera paint at the camera and let 'er rip.

Tokyo Gore Police is set in a dystopian future (Is there any other kind?) where there's lots of violence and crime and it's always night. The Tokyo Police Corporation are locked in perpetual battle with "the Engineers," a mutant race of criminals that sprout weapons from their wounds. So, if you cut an engineer's hand off, it may grow a chainsaw. Hack a leg off, it might turn into a sword... and other bizarre and brutal transformations.

As you can see, the cops need a little help and that help comes in the form of Ruka, miniskirted master warrior, daughter of an assassinated police captain. Her entrance has distinct echoes of Maggie Cheung in The Heroic Trio, except the cutting part is a little more like a Lifetime movie. There's also a bit of noir in the sets and styling, but the excess of red throws it off a little...

Another feature of Tokyo Gore Police is the use of "commercials" for things like cartoon character wrist-cutter knives or PSAs against committing hara-kiri over your job, as well as "news reports" on the latest grotesque crime. It also has a very cool sort of Shonen Knife/5678s/Stereo Total Japanese garage rock soundtrack.

We've also got a brothel scene that is a triple-X mutant Mos Eisley horrorshow -- it makes the gay bar in Dinah East look like a Mormon Tupperware party and the eyeballs in the nipples bit from Gothic like something from Forest Gump.

Oh, and there's a lot of gimps in this movie. Lotta gimps. Variations on a gimp suit you never thought of before -- actually you get to see nice closeups of a number of sex toys. I'd suggest that the various Adult Emporiums and Love Stores put it on screen to encourage sales, except you know, the violence. And the blood. And the vagina dentata...

As Ruka, Eihi Shiina is blank-faced and emotionally distant but, well, that does make her a welcome bit of solidity in a film of whirling excess, as well as an example of the troubled-child-grows-up-into-implacable-killing-machine hero meme familiar from so many action flicks. And, as you can tell from these stills, the lady knows how to create a picture on screen.

Know what happens when you grab my ass on the subway?
My samurai sword makes a Bellagio fountain out of your grimy mitts.

There's some excess plot about an engineer called the Keymaker who is out to get our heroine (But why?), who is also out to get whoever killed her father (But who?) Tokyo Gore Police runs a little long and they could have done without some of the storyline. Heaven knows they weren't going to cut any of the effects. If sometimes the movie seems to stop entirely to flaunt some particularly visceral and horrible bit of construction, bear in mind that the director, Yoshihira Nishimura, is best known for his work on special effects makeup and he let himself go a bit nuts on sort of David Cronenberg/Tetsuo: The Iron Man hybrids...

 Why, yes, Todd Akin, a woman's body does "have a way of shutting that down."
Wanna see it?

Tokyo Gore Police is not everyone's cup of tea. In fact, i am pretty sure it is a cup of tea that will cause most people to make a distressed noise and immediately rush to pour it out in the sink. (And even if you're inured to fake blood and body parts, they swing around and get you with someone eating bugs on the subway.) But, if you like the gross and the black humor and the hallucinatory-level weird -- or just dig special-effects makeup --it's worth a look, although you probably will also be spending some of the running time looking away...

Jesus Christ, i thought BatRatSpiderCrab was horrible....