Movies that are Camp

or can be Seen as So

On the one hand, the quality of “Camp”--as most famously articulated by Susan Sontag in 1964--depends as much on the attitude of the viewer as it does on any intrinsic quality of the film. To watch ironically (though after some time has passed, this goes for almost all but the very best of movies more than 30 or 40 years old, with the obvious exception of Screwball Comedies & Film Noir) is possible for a brand-new film, if you have a mind to. And on the other hand, a pure mismatch between intentions & results, while found at every level of budget, becomes blatant in the most pretentious. Which isn’t necessarily enjoyable.

Sometimes parts of a good movie age less well than the rest: Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, some of Phantom of the Paradise—making it a matter of personal taste whether this is Camp or simply a mistake.

Complicated, as well, by the tradition of looking at some things as campy which are simply good (The Wizard of Oz, Sunset Boulevard, The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Others i’d put on my own list anyway: Valley of the Dolls, Mommie Dearest, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (notwithstanding its genuine bit of creepiness & pathos)…& perhaps slightly lesser known, Boom! (which used to be unobtainable) & the sublime Johnny Guitar. These are the pillars of Camp.

The Best of Everything (1959) & The Cobweb (1955) i single out, for the delectable combination of excellent production values, & the awkwardness of trying to deal with adult subjects under a censorious regime. (Suddenly Last Summer, though not as enjoyable, also falls under this rubric.) Night of the Iguana (1964) is like Boom! but much more fun.

Satan in High Heels (1962) stands out, among lower-budget & borderline exploitation films, for its great song number & terrific cast. The Shanghai Gesture (1941)—though all of Von Sternberg partakes of Camp—combines the maximum of innuendo with the minimum of actual onscreen depravity.

Lair of the White Worm (1988): just as Touch of Evil can be considered the last Film Noir, this Ken Russell romp might be seen as a limit beyond which Camp becomes too self-conscious to be accidental anymore. It wants to be Camp so bad, you start to see the director as having a kind of stunted pubescent sincerity, which taken a little farther, becomes the morbidity of Coffin Joe.

The Garden of Allah (1936)--like Black Narcissus (1947), with which it has a lot in common—is extravagantly beautiful & extravagantly silly. The Garden of Allah is perhaps the only representation we have of what a genuine Ronald Firbank film would be like. As Graham Greene wrote at the time: "...the great abstractions come whistling hoarsely out in Miss Dietrich's stylized, weary, and monotonous whisper, among the hideous Technicolor flowers, the yellow cratered desert like Gruyère cheese, the beige faces. ...(the Surrealism of this film is really magnificent)... Alas! my poor church, so picturesque, so noble, so inhumanly pious, so intensely dramatic. I really prefer the New Statesman's view, shabby priests counting pesetas on their fingers in dingy cafes before blessing tanks."