Also playing…

            When Susan
Sontag set out define camp in 1964, she differentiated between pure camp, which
is innocently bad, and the deliberate variety, which is ultimately a simulation
of naiveté. The latter, she rightly noted, is less likely to be as satisfying.

            Squarely
in the former category is a piece of ’60s Hollywood pulp called Valley of the Dolls, about three
troubled girls in Hollywood. The film was a hit, and it became time to do a
sequel. Somehow, “Nudie King” Russ Meyers and critic Roger Ebert were drafted
to direct and write respectively.

            Luckily,
the studio was burnt out on two previous efforts to get the ball rolling, so by
the time the odd duo came on board, all it was expected to stick with was the
title — Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. They parodied the structure of
the original, and loaded it up with as much camp as they could. (The plot,
about a girl rock band, merely provides the springboard for a tangle of
soap-opera digressions.)

            The result
was something more sophisticated and consistent than Meyer’s usual trash fare
(despite the fact that the story was made up as they went along), and far more
fun and fascinating than anything you might expect from Ebert. It was definitely
“beyond.” Beyond is not even in the
same ballpark as the original. It’s as crass and giddy as any movie with this
kind of money behind it, and it’s determined to shimmy every one of those
dollars off of the screen and into your lap.

            The filmstill works today perhaps because of
the delicate balance between naive and faux-naive that Meyer walked. All the
actors were instructed to deliver their ridiculous lines sincerely, and he had
them convinced that he was sincere as well. Even though handicapped by its
ironic intentions, the movie ends up trouncing the original in the camp
competition by a landslide. Not to mention the sleaze competition. And yet,
it’s a strange combination of exploitation and corny wholesomeness. It plays
like a Disney movie enthusiastically trying drugs for the first time… and
deciding it really, really likes them.

            Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,
screening on Wednesday, March 31, at 8 p.m., wraps up the Dryden Theatre’s
Loathsome Films series. On Thursday, March 25, University of North Texas
professor Harry M. Benshoff will give a lecture, “Rethinking the Loathsome Film
of 1970,” in the University of Rochester’s Lander Auditorium, at 6 p.m. Free.
275-7800.

This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2004.