morrison-dylan-fan With my Russ Meyer marathon having unintentionally stopped in its tracks after viewing writer/directing auteur Russ Meyer's over looked title Black Snake for the IMDb boards Horror Challenge last year,I decided to celebrate my 9th year of being on IMDb,by taking a look at Meyer's ample epic.The plot:Visiting her aunt Susan Lake after manager Harris Allsworth has sent fledging all-girl Rock band The Kelly Affair up to LA,lead singer Kelly MacNamara is shocked to discover that Lake is planning to give her a third of her inheritance in a will.Fearing that he is about to lose out on a huge piece of cash,Lake's financial adviser Porter Hall attempts to stop Lake's plans by calling MacNamara and her band a bunch of 'dirty hippies'.Ignoring Hall's less than helpful advice,Lake tells MacNamara that along with the inheritance,she is also going to try and get The Kelly Affair to reach the top of LA's Rock scene.Getting introduced to a wild and extremely flamboyant manager/Rock producer called Ronnie 'Z-Man' Barzell,the band dump Allsworth as they set out to use all of Barzell's links in the industry.Renaming themselves The Carrie Nations,the band find their rise to fame to be matched by an increasing prescience of 'hangers-on' which leads to the group finding out how low the highs can go,as they go beyond the valley of the dolls.View on the film:Making his major studio debut,co-writer/ (along with Roger Ebert)director Russ Meyer shows an amazing determination to not soften his distinctive style for a major studio.For the film's eye-catching appearance,Meyer creates an irresistible fizzy atmosphere,with Meyer making the surprisingly good Rock songs (written by Stu Philips) scatter across the screen as Meyer brilliantly using dazzling colours,whip-pans and razor sharp editing to show the dizzy good times that the band experience.Bringing The Carrie Nation down to earth,Meyer uses muted colours to show the darkening of the bands lives,with Meyer entering into some unexpected proto-Slasher regions,which are met by Meyer breaking a large number of taboo's during the Nation's down with large dollops of overly- exaggerated charm .Whilst he appeared to be far too up-tight in his reviews for other movies which took a wonderful overly exaggerated approach to serious subjects,writers Roger Ebert and Russ Meyer reveal themselves to be a winning combo who are able to perfectly mix super sweet melodrama with off-beat 'women's pictures' shavings and delightfully bonkers slices of Slasher Horror. Making very good thumb nail impressions of each of the band members,the writers take a great kaleidoscope approach with the bands rise to fame,as Meyer & Ebert showing all of the wild and deranged frolics to be something which leads the band dazed,and very confused.Crashing down to earth,Meyer and Ebert pair up The Carrie Nations moments of doom with hilarious whip-smart one liners,which gives even the title's most dramatic moments a real Pop sensation.Shown as a group who has travelled up and down every dusty road,each of the beautiful Carrie Nations members give superb performances which compliments each of the different elements the other band members bring to the film.Taking on lead singer duties, the very pretty Dolly Reed gives a tantalising performance as MacNamara,with Reed giving hitting high-kicks as the band reach their heights,which are countered by Reed showing MacNamara's real unease at how to pull the band out of the doom that they are sinking into.Joining Reed,the stunning Marcia McBroom gives a fantastic performance as Petronella 'Pet' Danforth,with McBroom showing the joy fade away from 'Pet's' face,as the band start to relies the valley that they have entered.

appealing_talent This piece of awful tripe is not only the most cheap, tawdry, seedy and sordid mess I've ever had the misfortune to waste my time viewing, but it serves the added disgrace of discrediting, for me, every critique ever written by Roger Ebert. After seeing this mind numbing pile of trash, penned by him, how can anyone with any common sense, or even a modicum of good taste, consider his reviews remotely credible? I mean anyone responsible for writing such an unappealing and worthless script cannot possibly be qualified to pass judgment on other screenplays or on the filmed presentations of such. Furthermore, The actors, uniformly, suffer from the worst make-up and hairstyles of any movie I've seen and the costumes, as well as the production values weren't much better. The trite and overblown "message" at the end of the show literally made me shake my head in wonder. The bottom line is that this is the raspberry of all time, or the turkey of all turkeys...

jlomax28 This is not a sequel and there has never been anything like it. It is a shame that Russ Meyer didn't make more films like this at 20th Century Fox. All of his films has a professional look to them but Beyond looks polished and perfect. Russ Meyer called this film one of his, "most important." As far as editing and cinematography, the film is beautiful. Roger Ebert's script is funny and the tone is curious at times. I am a firm believer that Russ Meyer's films were funnier and more unique before Roger Ebert's influence of self parody. With that said, I still think Beyond is one of his best films and is the one he is most known for. The tone of the film totally changes by the end and plays out almost like a serious horror film. I think it is amusing that Roger Ebert and RM changed the ending after the murder of Sharon Tate by the Mason family. John Waters (who pays many homages to RM) changed the ending to his film Multiple Maniacs 1970 based on the Manson murders as well. Great minds think alike I guess... The film has so many endings that it is hard to remember how many exactly. One of them has a narrator reciting a moral road map for the audience. Hilarious. Especially the part about Susan Lake, "Perhaps TOO pure." And how even, "excessive goodness," in itself can be a bad thing. Russ Meyer only made one more film at 20th, The Seven Minutes, a film I like but most people, even the director, dismiss. After seeing the end of 'Dolls' and the bathtub scene in 'Supervixens,' I really wish RM would have made an entry into the horror genre. His violence and gore is always so extreme. This is a great introduction to RM's style. Better with multiple viewings. Erica Gavin is in the film without her weird Vixen eyebrows. I wish she was in the film more but her scenes with Cynthia Myers are some of the most memorable.

toddowen2000 There are points in this movie that I believe no one can proceed any further without discarding any thought of taking seriously. I'm reminded of a my first viewing of "This Is Spinal Tap" and how one of the audience members I knew got up right in the middle of the film and left with his girlfriend because it attacked the lifestyle they embraced.WELL...Stay and watch.Can you imagine the filming of this movie? The Z-Man party scenes? I'm going to collapse a lung laughing about Russ Myer domineering the circus that must have taken place while getting this all down on film. Filming scenes has a personality of its own. Imagine what happened here in 1970 with the scenes of decadence and debauchery for the age it was in. Just try and imagine this set up of camera and sound people and the rest of the production crew watching this unfold in the background. Perhaps no filming event before or since has been such a ridiculous stage of campy carnal depravity. It's a good thing that the music was turned up- to drown out the laughter and giggling of the production crew.Yeah...these actors thought they were filming a serious movie.