From Arrow Video comes Russ Meyer’s 1970 cult camp classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in a limited special edition release (3000 copies only) on Blu-ray and DVD from tomorrow (Monday 18 January).
When Easy Rider proved offbeat movies could be box-office success, all the major studios scrambled to catch up – including 20th Century Fox, who decided to hedge their bets on giving sexploitation filmmaker Russ Meyer the chance for mainstream success. The result was this bizarre black comedy about an all-female rock band trying to make it big in Hollywood with the help of their Phil Spector-styled manager.
Co-scripted by film critic Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a merciless satire of Hollywood and the music business, a no-holds-barred psychedelic thrill-ride that gleefully stirs sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, fashion, lesbianism, transvestism and Nazis into one of the most demented and gloriously OTT films ever made.
Arrow's special edition includes a host of bonus features, but also the rarely seen The Seven Minutes (1971), Russ Meyer's adaptation of Irving Wallace’s novel about the absurdities of American obscenity laws. Rarely-seen, it became his Hollywood swansong.
