Monday, April 22, 2013

Review: Human Target 4: aka In The Valley of The Teen Dolls aka: Teen Cleavage. 1971. A Lost Gem by Russ Meyer

When Russ Meyer set out to make the sequel to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which was a sequel to The Valley of The Dolls, the idea was capitalize on the "cleavage craze" of 1971. But all did not go as planned, as was the norm for Meyer's productions. Beset by problems from the start such as studio interference, budgetary cuts, incompetent and stoned production designers, general social unrest in America, a rumored spat with a transsexual lover, cloaked death threats from Roger Ebert (for refusing to use him as screenwriter again) and an order from President Nixon to cease filming, Meyer still prevailed in the end to make another sublime (and profitable) addition to his Valley saga, a land where porn is on the lips and cleavage of every hard-on speed freak with over-lit facial tones and stilted dialogue. How was he able to accomplish this? By calling on the talents and influence of Bob Hope, who by that time was known throughout Hollywood as a long-cocked swinger under his club name "Bugger Man".

 Bob Hope personally funded the film that had the working title "Teen Cleavage" in exchange for sexual dibs on all the cast. Meyer was so accustomed to these kinds of requests that he immediately agreed. Rumors from the production implicate Hope in various sexually deviant crimes that he was never successfully prosecuted for.

The screenplay was written by Meyer himself in a single night as shooting was scheduled to begin the next morning in Bob Hope's Palm Springs love shack. Naturally, the story was fragmented and incoherent but to see the Meyer magic work is one of life's great pleasures.

Earth Day? No. It's Oggy Day.

This is the first Earth Day that I celebrated by going into a blast furnace on a well head site and drinking 18 plastic bottles of self-serving water, driving hundreds of miles, and even cooking hamburgers on the grill and running the air conditioning non stop so I'm not uncomfortable for a moment. Hydro-fracturing is the new beach clean up.
Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.