Think Russ Meyer and you think of one thing. Well, two, actually – pendulous and busting out somewhere due south of his leading lady’s chin. Russ may be many things but subtle isn’t one of them. The question is, is he a tragic, clammy-palmed perv or worse, a cackling misogynist? The debate still rages, but if any one of his films is going to make Meyer-haters think twice, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls is it.

Like most Meyer movies, it’s a work that defies categorisation: the frank Making Of goes for ‘musical-horror-sex-comedy’, which is about as concise as it’ll get. Co-written by critic Roger Ebert and pastiching a fluffy romance novel of the mid-’60s, it follows a band of enorma-knockered Motown rockers (The Carrie Nations) as they totter toward stardom amid a cauterie of clawing, leering hedonists.

As Ebert contends, Meyer “works in the skinflick genre, but is not of it... he wasn’t as interested in sex as melodrama or comedy.” Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls certainly backs up the claim; oddly tame by the Jugga-man’s standards, it’s actually a ham-fisted riff on female empowerment, ripe with Meyer’s trademark finger-wagging and overblown pomp.

One thing it isn’t, however – as shown by the mini-doc featurette – is culturally bereft titilation. Released in June 1970, it foretells the last days of hippy naivety with all the acid-fried hysteria of the Manson Family slaughter just 10 months earlier. Meyer’s certainly got his knockers, but he’s no giggling bimbo.

DVD Extras:

Introduction by John Lazar
Four featurettes
Screen tests