Thursday, May 26, 2011

COMING ATTRACTIONS: BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

In case there’s still some of you out there who weren’t aware, I take requests for reviews, many of which come in the form of challenges. Of course, that can result in something of a mixed bag. Requests have brought us everything from Santa Claus Conquers The Martians to Satisfaction to I Spit On Your Grave. That’s a pretty wide range of (questionable?) tastes. But even so, there’s still lots of different kinds of movies out there I’ve never touched on. So it was no surprise a few weeks back when an email arrived suggesting that perhaps I was playing it safe and avoiding some of the darker corners of the cult movie universe, that maybe it was time I dealt with… Russ Meyer.

Fair enough, but which one of his movies to review? Obviously, about 80% of Meyer’s oeuvre is automatically disqualified for being nothing more than soft porn. I got some standards, after all. So after going through the list, I narrowed it down to three. Now while Mudhoney contains every theme typically associated with Meyer, there’s really not much to it, so I passed. Trashmeister John Waters called Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! the best movie ever made, and it is the very definition of a cult movie, but after watching it again, I actually found it pretty tame compared to the rest of the director’s output and I don’t think that’s what the requester was going for. So that pretty much left me with Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, the first collaboration between Russ and Roger Ebert.

It goes without saying this is one review that won’t be for the kiddies. Wish me luck.

5 comments:

Michelle Obama's Left Nut said...

This ought to be interesting...

This is my happening and it freaks me out

Anonymous said...

I am going to get some of those Han Solo frozen in carbonite ice cubes ready as well as some Almighty Sarlacc smelling salts for when I get a case of the vapours whilst reading this upcoming review!

Oooh la la!

EegahInc said...

"This is my happening and it freaks me out"

I was gonna link to your site in the post, but I wasn't sure you wanted credit for this one :)

"I am going to get some of those Han Solo frozen in carbonite ice cubes ready"

Can you believe someone is just now coming up with those trays? It's such an obvious idea when you think about it.

Anonymous said...

As long as Ebert gets plenty of skewering, have at it.

EegahInc said...

Hmmm, sounds like perhaps you're not completely buying into Mr. Ebert's later day efforts to become some kind of wise old sage?