Top 5 Camp Classics!

It's the 60th Anniversary of The Ten Commandments and TCM Big Screen Classics is celebrating by releasing the film in theaters March 20th and 23rd. I'm going to celebrate by including the movie on my Top 5 Camp Classics List!

Camp movies, it might be said, are all in the eye of the beholder. The films included can be everything from drag farce, to epic misfires, to schlocky horror. Not everyone agrees that certain films are camp, and definitions can be a little hazy. But I'm going to take a crack at it anyway.

Successful camp often comes from a film that was produced very seriously- overly so to the point that it feels like "too much." This results in films that are failing so badly at their intended reactions that we find ourselves laughing at them. For me, true camp (with the exception of genre genius John Waters) is not made on purpose. It's the product of a director and/or actors who are not aware how their film is being received by the audience. In other words, camp is one of the most rare of genres because these gems of thwarted expectations are totally accidental.

Here are my Top 5 Camp Classics:

1. The Ten Commandments (1956)

Cecil B. DeMille made EPICS! From as early as the silent era, DeMille made big budget films that included casts of thousands and massive sets- some of which were so large, they were just left in the desert where they were built. DeMille's great ability was to create films that were so extravagant, they had to be seen to be believed. The studios were happy to indulge his cinematic flamboyance because in the '50's, a DeMille film was an event that could compete with the television- the biggest threat to the movie business at that time. And there was no bigger story for DeMille to tell than the story of Moses.

DeMille pulled out all the stops. He spent $13 million dollars on the production (that's $130 mill in today's dollars), shot on location in the Sinai, and a cast a vast army of actors led by: Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, Nina Foch, Cedric Hardwicke, Judith Anderson, and Vincent Price.

One look at the cast, and you can see why this serious epic has become a delightful piece of high camp. It's a who's-who of scenery chewers, each one greater at hamming it up than the next. And the bible-inspired dialogue thuds deliciously off of their tongues.

"You will be king of Egypt, and I will be your footstool!"

"Where's your Moses now?"

"Oh Moses, Moses, why of all men did I fall in love with a prince of fools?"

The lines can't be delivered with a straight face- but they are- desperately so. With its eye-popping costumes, sets, and special effects, the film is like a fabulous biblical theme park- it's so ridiculously gaudy, we can't wait to ride it again and again.
The Ten Commandments was a huge hit at the box office, currently ranking 6th in all-time box office receipts (adjusted for inflation). Ironically, Hollywood wised-up and sold its movies to television, and The Ten Commandments became an Easter staple in living rooms around the country. But nothing beats watching hirsute Chuck Heston part the Red Sea on the big screen.

Oh The Ten Commandments, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!

2. Female Trouble (1974)

As mentioned in my intro, John Waters is one of those rare directors who makes camp films on purpose. Much of this stems from The Pope of Trash's desire to poke convention in the eye with a handheld camera. With his muse Divine (Harris Glen Milstead's mascara-ed alter ego) Waters became the king of a whole new genre of underground cinema. His first shot at filthy stardom came with 1972's Pink Flamingos where he shocked viewers with a singing a-hole (no, not Ted Nugent- an actual a-hole that lip-synced)  and Divine eating dog crap on camera. Two years later, Waters applied his special brand of perversity to the story of juvenile delinquent Dawn Davenport (Divine).

From the first moment we see Dawn tramping around the Christmas tree hollering about cha-cha heels we know this girl is no good. So it comes as no surprise that Dawn rebels against marriage and motherhood by becoming a famous murder artist. Along with Divine, Waters' cast of regulars includes Mink Stole as Divine's obnoxiously twitchy daughter Taffy, porcine Edith Massey as the loud-mouthed-crammed-into-her-costume Aunt Ida, and David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pierce as fashionista perverts The Dashers.

Waters has no interest in conforming to film standards in order to tell a story or draw us into a make-believe world. The five cent budget, dialogue improvisation, handheld camerawork, and performers who don't look or act like actors leave the audience not with the idea that we've seen a film- but the most fucked-up home movie ever made. Waters would later clean-up his filmmaking and score a mainstream hit with Hairspray (1988), but I prefer my Waters dirty.

3. Lady in a Cage (1964)

Olivia de Havilland is one of the most memorable actresses of the studio system who starred in such great films as Gone With the Wind (1939), and The Heiress (1949). But by 1964, de Havilland did what many older actresses like Bette David and Joan Crawford did to make a quick buck- she starred in a low-budget horror movie. 

Lady in a Cage starts off with a strange, Saul Bass-esque montage of images- a young black girl rolling her roller skate over a passed out drunk, a dead dog lying in the street, people necking while an evangelist preaches over the radio about an anti-Satan missile. Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard (de Havilland) lives in a house along a busy street. But the calm and quiet of her "looks bigger-on-the-inside" home screens out the noisy outside world. Corny (that's what I like to call her) broke a hip recently and now has to get around with a cane, and an elevator. Yes, you heard right, an elevator.

To go from her bedroom to the living room, Corny has to get into an elevator that feels like it takes 20 minutes to go down one floor. She doesn't mind. She takes along her transistor radio and patiently waits to descend. But today is a bad day for Corny. Her gay son who lives with her has left for the weekend to commit suicide and due to a freak accident with a garbage truck out back, the power to Corny's house is knocked out- while she's suspended over the ground floor in her elevator.

And if that isn't bad enough, a group of drug-addled hippies (led by a young and very hairy James Caan) find out she's trapped and come to rob her home and create general mayhem. The plot is ludicrous, and for a good portion of the film you have to keep yourself from screaming, "JUST JUMP!!!" at the screen- but there's de Havilland. The poise and stature of this regal lady rises above the film and endows it with a gravitas it doesn't truly deserve.

When Corny decides to fight back with a war cry of, "Welcome to the Stone Age!" you abandon all logic and go along with her. I think this film is trying to make a commentary on how the chaos of the Sixties was invading our personal lives- but you'll be too busy watching De Havilland try to knock a phone off the hook with a homemade Grab-It to care.

4. Mommie Dearest (1981)

I have a love/hate relationship with Mommie Dearest. I mean, it's the film that effectively destroyed Joan Crawford's cinematic image forever, and I can't forgive it for that. But God it's fun to watch.

Faye Dunaway stars as Joan Crawford- or at least Dunaway's version of Joan Crawford. In Dunaway's hands, Crawford becomes a glamorous gorgon- a woman who is meticulously in control of everything around her- including her image. Whether she's jogging, putting on elbow cream, or chopping down rose bushes, Dunaway uses the dramatic gestures and voice of an ACTRESS to depict Crawford. Dunaway was obsessed with this role- to the point she felt that Crawford was haunting her. The line between actress and role feels frayed, as if Dunaway didn't just play Crawford but became her.

But is this what Crawford was really like? Even Christina Crawford whose book started this whole mess announced after seeing the movie, "That's not my mother." While Crawford had major difficulty differentiating between public and private, the idea that she was Mildred Pierce behind closed doors is hard to swallow- no matter how enthralling it might be to imagine. Whether Dunaway captures the real Crawford is hardly the point, though. What she does is create a fascinating caricature that is endlessly entertaining in its rejection of reality for grand explosions of love and anger and wire hanger frustration.

This film is a perfect example of accidental camp. The film was released as a serious drama addressing child abuse. But the crowds of gay men cackling at Dunaway's every line soon made it apparent that the audience was seeing it as something else.

5. Valley of the Dolls (1967)

What could possibly happen to three, attractive young women who meet in New York on their way to fame and fortune in the entertainment biz? In the hands of writer Jacqueline Susann, plenty. Based on the wildly successful novel, the film version of Valley of the Dolls follows Anne (Barbara Parkins), Neely (Patty Duke), and Jennifer (the late Sharon Tate) as they attempt to make it in this biz we call show. Successes and failures both professional and private abound and no one makes it out without substance abuse issues.

Along the way Broadway legend Helen Lawson (played by Queen of the scenery-chewers Susan Hayward) stands as a bitchy moral compass, a survivor who turns wig catastrophes into victory laps.

Valley of the Dolls has always been over-the-top, and it is that quality that turns this cinematic soap opera into camp. Over time, the film's desire to shock its audience has only increased that campiness. The sensationalism of drug abuse, sex scandals, homosexuality, and naked pictures turns into laughs as the culture we live in now accepts these aspects of the Hollywood story as de rigeur. The recently reported re-make seems silly to me. What are these girls going to do to shock a modern audience? Get an abortion on live television... on the moon? Part of the joy of this film is the kitsch of the Sixties, that like a fine wine will continue to improve with age. There's no need to make any new bottles of it.

So those are my favorite camp films. What are yours?