Synopsis
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) is a camp musical melodrama you can watch online on iFILM — directed by Russ Meyer and, in one of cinema's stranger pairings, scripted by a 22-year-old Roger Ebert, years before he became America's most famous film critic.
Three women in an all-girl rock band leave provincial America for Hollywood, chasing fame under the wing of flamboyant promoter Ronnie "Z-Man" Kassar. The parties are spectacular. The crash landing is worse. Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, and Marcia McBroom play it straight while the film around them tilts toward gleeful excess — sex, pills, fur coats, and a finale that genre fans quote to this day.
Fox released it with an X rating and it still turned a profit. Calling it a guilty pleasure sells it short: Meyer and Ebert built a machine that simultaneously spoofs the Hollywood melodrama and fully commits to it. Stream Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) online on iFILM.
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