Not a poll for the worst movie ever made – more of a rhetorical question, really. IFC ran “Beyond Valley of the Dolls” tonight and I cannot believe I watched the whole thing. It was like one of those bad dreams where you watch a plane crash – you can’t do anything to stop it, but you can’t stop watching. How bad was it? Well, Charles Napier was the only actor I remember seeing in any movie other than that one.
IMDB lists it as comedy/drama/thriller – not sure which one it was intended to be in, but the heavy-handed symbolism at the end was a funny coding of social mores at the time. I’m not gonna’ list any spoilers yet because some may want to go ahead and code 'em. I say let’s not – we’ve already had one thread almost completely spoiler coded this week. Besides, could you really spoil the ending of this 1970 stinker?
What say y’all – can we have some fun with this without the spoiler codes, or is this just a really short thread?
Well, it may have been intended as satire, but they didn’t quite bring it off. It just comes off as badly-written, badly-directed and badly-acted. For real satire, you need MASH * or *Catch 22 * or *Apocalypse Now * or even *Barbarella * or Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Meyer and Ebert may have been shooting for satire, but they missed.
I had no idea about Ebert’s involvement when I saw it. My main thought after it was over was “this was written by a couple of repressed 40-year-olds reading Hollywood gossip magazines and trying to imagine what those wild and crazy rock n’ roll kids are up to.”
Probably not the worst movie ever made, but it’s on my top 3 most despised movies list. I’d rather watch Manos on a 24 hour loop, than revisit BtVotD for fifteen minutes. Haven’t seen it in what, 35 years? My rage, though, is white hot and brand new. Hate.
The humor was quite intentional. My wife loves it’s raunchy campiness. I don’t think it is the worst movie ever made, I just think it is too heavy handed in it’s attempt to be satric and campy at the same time.
