Lackluster movie from Jacqueline Susann’s popular trash
novel, the follow-up to her infamous Valley of the Dolls. Here, an amoral rake named Robin Stone (John
Phillip Law) is a TV host who climbs the ranks of power at his network, locking
horns with the likes of Jackie Cooper and Robert Ryan, and bedding several
beautiful women in the process, including a world-famous model who can’t get
over him. As camp, it’s not quite as
satisfying as Mark Robson’s adaptation of Dolls (1967) and certainly not
Russ Meyer’s “sequel” Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), but it has
a silly earnestness to it that’s hard not to enjoy too, especially what with
Robin remaining deadpan through all manner of melodramatic crises, including
having a jilted lover set fire to his bedroom while he's in the shower with two
other girls in the next room. Of
everyone in the cast, David Hemmings comes off best; playing a fashion
photographer obviously written as a flaming queen but which is nevertheless
turned by Hemmings into less of a mean cliché and more a character of depth and
subtlety. As a piercing expose of
corporate concerns in television, it doesn’t hold a candle to Kazan’s A Face
in the Crowd (1957) or Lumet’s Network (1976), of course, but this
was not likely the intention of either Susann or director Haley. It’s much more interesting as an early
attempt to acknowledge the sexual underworld of show business, and indeed it’s
most potent scenes are those of Robin dealing with prostitutes, homosexuals,
and his inexplicable predilection for violence towards women.
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