Plot
Three young women — Kelly MacNamara (Dolly Read), Casey Anderson (Cynthia Myers), and Petronella "Pet" Danforth (Marcia McBroom) — perform in a rock band, The Kelly Affair, managed by Harris Allsworth (David Gurian), Kelly's boyfriend. The four travel to Los Angeles to find Kelly's estranged aunt, Susan Lake (Phyllis Davis), heiress to a family fortune.
Susan welcomes Kelly and her friends, even promising a third of her inheritance to her niece, but Susan's sleazy financial advisor Porter Hall (Duncan McLeod) discredits them as "hippies" in an attempt to embezzle her fortune himself. Undeterred, Susan introduces The Kelly Affair to a flamboyant, well-connected rock producer, Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell (John LaZar), who coaxes them into an impromptu performance at one of his outrageous parties (after a set by real-life band Strawberry Alarm Clock). The band is so well-received that Z-Man becomes their Svengali-style manager, changing their name to The Carrie Nations and starting a long-simmering feud with Harris.
Kelly drifts away from Harris and takes up with Lance Rocke (Michael Blodgett), a high-priced gigolo who pursued her with designs on her inheritance. Harris fends off the aggressive attentions of porn star Ashley St. Ives (Edy Williams), but after losing Kelly weakly allows Ashley to seduce him. Ashley soon tires of his uptight nature and inability to perform sexually due to increasing drug and alcohol intake. Harris descends further into heavy drug and alcohol use, leading to a drug-addled one-night stand with Casey which results in pregnancy. Casey, distraught at getting pregnant and wary of men's foibles, has a lesbian affair with clothes designer Roxanne (Erica Gavin), who urges her to have an abortion.
Petronella has a seemingly enchanted romance with law student Emerson Thorne (Harrison Page). After a meet-cute at Z-Man's party, they are shown running slow-motion through golden fields and frolicking in a haystack. Their fairy-tale romance frays when Pet sleeps with Randy Black (James Iglehart), a violent prize fighter who beats up Emerson and tries to run him down with a car.
A drunk Harris challenges Lance to a fight. After Lance beats him severely, Kelly ends her affair with Lance. Susan Lake is reunited with her former fiancé Baxter Wolfe (Charles Napier).
The Carrie Nations release records and continue to perform successfully, despite constant touring and drug use. Upset at being pushed to the sidelines, Harris attempts suicide by leaping from the rafters of a sound stage during a television appearance by the band. Harris survives the fall but becomes paraplegic from his injuries. Kelly devotes much time to caring for him. Emerson forgives Petronella for her infidelity.
Casey and Roxanne have a steamy, intimate romance. But this idyllic existence ends when Z-Man invites Casey, Roxanne, and Lance to a psychedelic-fueled party at his house. After revealing he has female breasts and trying to seduce Lance, who spurns him, Z-Man goes on a murderous rampage: he beheads Lance with a sword (while the Twentieth-Century Fox fanfare is heard on the soundtrack), stabs his servant Otto (Henry Rowland) to death, and shoots Casey and Roxanne, killing them.
Responding to a desperate phone call Casey made shortly before her death, Kelly, Harris, Pet, and Emerson arrive at Z-Man's house and try to subdue him. Petronella is wounded in the melee, which ends in Z-Man's death. After a preachy, satirical voice-over monologue during scenes of Kelly and Harris (in crutches) hiking on a log over a creek — which Roger Ebert credits to Russ Meyer's "sick sense of humor" — the film ends with the wedding of three couples, Kelly and Harris, Pet and Emerson, and Susan and Baxter Wolfe, with Porter Hall observing from outside the court house window.
Read more about this topic: Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls
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—James Thurber (1894–1961)