Reassessing "Blunders" in Cinema
A love letter to films unjustly burned at the stake because of Camp.
In 1870, the crossdresser Frederick Park referred to his "campish undertakings" in a letter produced in evidence at his examination before a magistrate at Bow-street, London, on suspicion of illegal homosexual acts; the letter does not make clear what these were.[6] In 1909, the Oxford English Dictionary gave the first print citation of camp as
ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; . So as a noun, 'camp' behaviour, mannerisms, et cetera. (cf. quot. 1909); a man exhibiting such behaviour.
Susan Sontag's definition that “the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”
I must admit maybe I was swayed by reviews to stay away from some films but I now find brilliant in their own quirky way. What makes a film bad? I’m surprisingly not a defender of the ‘The Room’ and think Tommy Wiseau is just a tool, but I do have certain films, mostly blockbusters that sit firmly in my bastion of love that almost everyone else hates, except some are starting to be appreciated as of late, the cult turning is beginning and I love that. I think a lot of what makes a film “bad” quote on quote is when it has a theme it doesn’t connect to so as an audience we feel out of sync like when you get a vibe off of someone, we know something is up deep in our gut but cant put our finger on it. A film that tries too hard and feels disingenuous about what its trying to get across feels bad or flat as well. But what if their were films where people, Americans/Critics lets say in particular, just didn’t get, the cultural connection wasn’t there or they mis understood the artists intent because of the virtue of Camp.
So these are just personal opinions of mine, of why I find these films camp, brilliant, and necessary viewing. with each film I go through I’ll tell you what I think is camp in them and some of you will be surprised some are even on this list as camp but I will try to explain from my point of view. You may be surprised to not see Pink Flamingos, Serial Mom, Spy who shagged me, Spice world, Josie and the pussy cat dolls, Barbarella, Hairspray, Scooby Doo, Evil Dead, Batman Show, But I’m a Cheerleader, Clue, Clueless, Cabaret, Mommie Dearest, Rocky Horror Picture Show, or Who framed Roger rabbit, just to name a few, not on this list but those I think all are regarded well now, and I was looking more for big budget blockbuster films not always thought of as camp even though one on here is the crown jewel that nothing can ever beat! There are so many campy interesting lovely films to explore more on your own but here are some of my odd weirdly beloved favorites. I also believe their is much more camp whether done on purpose or not in action films than people want to let on about. Also all superhero movies Marvel or DC are off this list except for the 2 masterpieces I talk about here because most of the time they are trying to make jokes or references wink wink, that isn’t camp for me. I also will put in the best camp moment for me in each film. Also obviously I’m talking about each of these because the “they” I use is that they all were critically panned. I’ll give each rotten tomato score for each film too as a plus.
Spoilers Ahead lets begin.
Speed Racer- 41%
I’ve talked so much about this film but here we go again just a bit more. What is created here is the only true live action anime ever put to film. This broke boundaries of art not seen again until the Superverse films and even then that is animation. They challenged themselves on an artist frenetic scale that still as I watch it I cant comprehend. In doing all of that they still make a film about family and love and not selling out. The Wachowski sisters used millions of dollars of Warner Brothers money to make a fuck you corporation film on their dime, while also making a passion project from an anime cartoon they loved as kids. If you cant feel the love oozing off the screen here then you are fucking heartless sorry to say. I’m not a car guy but I’ve never felt more like wanting to get into cars and racing as this film makes me feel. It grabs you with color and ferocity to challenge what you know about filmmaking in general, while also being silly camp so at any age you could love it. The editing alone is a masterclass. The campiness here is where the cute love of family lays, pulling more emotion out of melodrama than I’ve seen done before, the lightheartedness of camp gives you a way into a loving goofy family. When dad jokes work right along side greedy monsters destroying your family you know something special is happening.
high camp moment when the most serious part of the movie is happening, as the bad guy yells at our hero that he is nothing and we then cut to the youngest brother and a chimp riding a golf cart, high on candy speeding through the facility while ‘free bird’ blasts! Are you kidding me, nope just pure ecstasy.
Showgirls- 23%
Someone said about this film that they thought it was boring but not really bad and liked ‘Striptease” with Demi Moore, more haha, See that for me is the most American of statements. I think Showgirls being boring is its brilliance, it is blunt, over the top, boring, campy and smart. Its subject matter is elevated by the brilliant direction of Paul Verhoeven, and believe everything that he does in the film is with intent, to break down the structures of the entertainment industry he roasts here using camp as a lubricant to not burn everything to the ground even though it is a harsh cynical film as he says too. In showgirls he takes a film about naked women and Vegas and turns it on its head by making it the least sexual thing you’ve ever seen but somehow impresses still with the oddity of the dancing and true showmanship of their work. He takes a place and profession so sensationalized by Puritanical Prude Americans especially, the city of sin, turning it into just a mediocre despot in the middle of the desert, stripping away, pun intended all the glamour and exposing Americas squeamishness towards sex and ripping bare the real ugly underbelly of the entertainment industry without holding back making a explorative exploitive but empowering masterpiece. The only director to go get his Razzies in person was none other than Paul Verhoeven, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know than I don’t know what will.
high camp moment When our hero Nomi throws fries around like a child, I was so taken a back by that but was smiling, it had me jump, then to see the actress across from her play it straight just spot on camp.
Catwoman 8%
This movie is laughably camp as it should BE. Does this film understand the super hero genre more than any other iteration of superhero’s in film, maybe? Did they mean to do that I’m not sure. All these questions looming over it gives it even more mystery than a Batman comic. It seems nothing makes sense, and to be cliché, everything makes sense. It seems so stuck in the world of 2004 that it may as well have stamps of the date all over its forehead. Is it trying to critique beauty standards yes, does it succeed kind of, again I don’t know looms over this project like the cape crusaders specter in the moonlight on gangsters mansions. Does Halley Berry embody Catwoman as a cat person more akin to a hentai comic yes! But once again isn’t that more comic than any other comic book movie? Is the CGI atrocious absolutely but I can tell you it almost fits more within comic book aesthetic than Thano’s “real” look. I’ve read too many comic panels that look more like Catwoman than any other superhero iteration. Why is it that I find Nolan’s trilogy more laughable with all his prestige grounding than this absolutely exhausting quick cut edits. You would think that Nolan made the great trilogy of Batman, or of any comics but his films always lack soul because comics are inherently campy even when deep, still people in suits flying around and shit. This film whatever you want to say about it has soul out the Wazoo, insane soul but that’s the one I gravitate to anyways.
high camp moment Catwoman grabbing a guys tongue and asking, Cat got your tongue? why yes I do believe you do have his tongue, my lord perfection.
Morbius -16%
What can I say about this camp masterpiece. First off no one got it at all. Just like with Catwoamn this is breaking the 5th wall when it comes to a superhero film. In how serious it seems but being so overtly over the top with slow-motion and all, it in turn makes fun of everything annoying about the all too self serious superhero movies that preach now or the ones where its all meta joke one liners fill in for real dialog. This film sits firmly in the absolutely absurd world of what it is. It lets itself go back to a 90s style of filmmaking that takes its self all too serious while being tongue in cheek. I was amazed at how much I liked it when everyone else didn’t. The story was bland but straight forward which is exactly what I want in this type of film, don’t give me too much plot, what you have to give me is cool points, that’s all I ask does this deliver Fuck yes! Just look at the crazy flying subway slow-motion wind scene, it doesn’t get better than that for camp. To really enjoy camp you have to let your guard down, disarm yourself and come in with no expectations. This is when you can truly suck the blue blood bags.
High camp moment Main bad guy dancing around in mirror talking to self like an I’m too sexy for my shirt video, fuck yes daddy!
Deep blue Sea -60%
Now everyone likes to say Jaws is the great shark film well I Think its distant cousin is more akin to take that crown. I don’t hate Jaws but I do hate the repercussions to shark species it consequently produced with mass killings of sharks for no reason especially Sand Tiger sharks because they have scary teeth but have never attacked a human, the fucking irony. See what fear can do y’all, always remember that. Deep Blue Sea works much better as a shark film in the sense of it is US the humans exploiting them and then we fuck around too much and get what is coming to us. The whole movie plays to subvert the shark attack genre in general using over the top camp extravaganza action to put on a thrill ride. While giving a stark warning of how we should be respectful of nature and also not to anthropomorphize animals too much. These are salient smart ideas in a campy over the top film. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to appreciate what campy films and Art can be, I think its smarter than it puts on using humor and the inherent fantasy of film to elevate things while disarming audiences as not to preach at them, which I can’t stand and has become more the norm with big blockbusters of today especially anything superhero esq. The whole point of Jaws is to see the sharks as just killing machines the whole point here is to see sharks as wanting to be free.
high camp moment When LL Cool J says you ate my bird like James Bond and proceeds to blow up a shark with a lighter while trapped in an oven, I know you were expecting Samuel L Jackson moment but come on now.
Godzilla-19%
Why don’t people love this huh? I still am besides myself on this one. It made 400 million in the box office but we skewered by critics for what? that its a big monster movie that makes Godzilla sympathetic and the real Character arc instead of the humans? And changes his form/look a bit? Are your feeling so fragile that it can be so easily broken critics? I find it funny how much hate is thrown at this one while I find it maybe the most exciting of all the Godzilla films, the action is top notch while being campy especially with the baby Zillas trying their darndest to eat people but fumbling it. I’ll be honest I’ve never rooted for the humans in all 40 of these films just never. I’m always more interested in the ‘Monster’ I just need some quirky humans running around to get me through, like every damn facial expression Mathew Broadrick makes in this film is exquisite camp, but I love the emphasis on the monsters habits and everything else way more, that’s why the new Godzilla vs Kong worked so well for me. Also I just want break neck wild action from these films and ohh do the set pieces deliver here, no one blows shit up on film like Roland Emmerich! !
high camp moment When Jean Reno and his men are chewing gum and say it makes us look more American dead pan, yes it does chief! or Matthew Broadrick singing, ‘Singing in the Rain’ while in Chernobyl, Both I have a big silly grin on my face as they say it all so straight faced.
Tron Legacy -51%
I think the cult classic status is starting to arrive for this one. One of the best soundtracks out there while also having some of the coolest stylization of world building I’ve seen. It is a film that moves at a blistering pace which is what I expect if I am in a video game world, but underneath the veneerer of action is the trauma of losing someone. That idea feels like a weighted blanket over the whole film which in turn makes its Neon’s and darkness that much more of a contrast. Inside the digital world you get characters so serious it bleeds into camp which lets you breathe but feels authentic as they aren’t human. The world seriously for me embodies what I feel a computer world would look like and behave like. Its oddly clean but dirty. They like to call films like this, style over substance, but I believe style can be substance and boy oh boy is that what we get here. I believe lines in building can speak to you and that elevators have their own personalities and every light is transforming the world around it by slight reactions of the humans to them, if that isn’t what is constantly happening here I don’t know what is.
high camp moment When Castor, double crosser, is dancing around the club swinging his cane as the beat drops and everyone is dying and chaos is ensuing but he is laughing manically, just perfect devious camp.
So there you have it. Some gems that swirl in a world of camp and all that much better for it. Camp has always been a staple in queer cinema, I think for the sake of acceptance by making it a bit humorous embracing their own “oddity” as society labels them, which I Adore but I feel it is so much bigger than just in those films. Action and horror use camp to break up the exhaustion which can come with viewing them, don’t we all need a bit of exaggeration in our all too serious lives and world? Which in reality it has swindled into so many films doesn’t that just adorn queer cinema an even bigger contributor in the pantheon of filmmaking in general? I believe so. I feel that in many ways people still don’t fully understand or accept camp’s artistic value in more “normal” so to speak types of films, seeing how critics have shamed so many films for it. If its not overtly camp for humors sake or in queer cinema then it is lambasted as a fault. That I don’t believe, I believe it a strength of taking the same troupes of film and subverting them just slightly to make something a bit more delicious. I hope by reading this you can view certain films in a new way giving them another chance to shine on you there own brand of fun. So I’ll shut the fuck up now, so You can get to watching!
photo from “Ready or Not” 2019