The California cult classic Quentin Tarantino believed would change cinema forever: “There were promises made”
There’s no way of knowing which way the wind is preparing to blow in Hollywood, but a young Quentin Tarantino was nonetheless convinced that one movie was the key to unlocking the next era of cinema.
As the ‘Golden Age’ gave way to ‘New Hollywood’, it was clear that a seismic change was incoming. It happened, of that there’s no doubt, but it didn’t quite pan out the way the future two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker thought it would, or had been led to believe.
For someone who doesn’t write sex scenes into his films, Tarantino sure has a deep-rooted obsession with sexploitation and grimy porno theatres. Those were two of his primary ways of becoming a cinephile, so it made sense that when he saw a picture that threatened to take those two elements and usher them into the mainstream, he was hooked.
The biggest name of the subgenre’s heyday was arguably Russ Meyer, who specialised in cheap, trashy, and busty favourites like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Vixen! As far as Tarantino and the many others who enjoyed his work were concerned, his magnum opus was undoubtedly Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the only produced screenplay ever written by Roger Ebert.
The California cult classic, which was shot almost entirely in and around the 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles to minimise costs, follows The Carrie Nations, a rock band who move to the city with big dreams, only to be drawn into a world of drugs, decadence, debauchery, and hedonism after falling in with an unscrupulous producer.
It’s classic Meyer, and after making its budget back ten times over at the box office, Tarantino really believed that it would become the new standard. “There were a lot of promises made. Some of them were kept and fulfilled, and some of them weren’t,” he declared. “One of the promises that unfortunately existed that year and a couple of years after that was never fulfilled was the promise of a new, erotic cinema.”
With the Hays Code abolished in 1968, the perfect storm to bring erotic cinema to the masses was brewing, and there was only one movie that could lead the way. “Frankly, when you see this film, there has rarely ever been a studio film that looks or feels like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” Tarantino explained, but the enthusiasm was short-lived.
He noted that Fox was “horribly embarrassed” by its success, and instead of a new age of erotic cinema taking over the multiplex, the boom period “lasted, at the best, three years,” before it disappeared downward and back toward its origins in porno theatres as the preferred mode of viewing for the demographic Tarantino aptly, and not inaccurately, referred to as “the raincoat crowd.”
It can’t be denied that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a cult classic, and it’s spent more than 50 years reaffirming those credentials. And yet, the Reservoir Dogs creator believed in his heart of hearts that it could have been so much more in the grand scheme of things, but it wasn’t to be.
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.