Can camp be made?

[wanderarbeiter]

"It is a curious attribute of camp that it can only be found, not made".
                                                                            -Dave Kehr-

What I'm basically asking is whether you can find entertainment in a B-movie that was consciously made to be bad. I personally just find it annoying when the movie just grinds to a stop so the movie can say "We made crap and we know it! Take that fourth wall!"

[Derf]

I'm inclined to agree with the Kehr quote. If a movie sets out to be campy, it seldom works as camp. If a movie advertises itself as "campy fun," I can usually be assured that it will be poorly done crap. A movie can be silly and campy (like the '60s Batman), or it can be a movie that took itself seriously but turned out campy due to the sets or the actors or whatever. But usually a movie that sets out to be campy ends up being just tedious and poorly made. Then again, "camp" has come to basically involve a lot of humor mainly aimed at gay audiences, so I may well be ill-suited to comment, being straight and all.

[wanderarbeiter]

What I meant by "camp" was "kitsch" or "so bad its good".

[ghouck]

We'll have to hunt down John Waters and ask him if he did all that stuff on purpose or not, as he seems to be the king of camp. .

[RCMerchant]

BATMAN was about the only intentional "camp" I found amusing. Very silly...but very fun.
Waters....not a big fan,myself. I have to admit though...I have never been able to sit threw one of his movies....I just don't find them funny. Gross...yes. But not funny. Not my cup 'o' joe. (I would say "tea",but I don't want to sound gay. )

Can't stand ROCKY HORROR.  I sound very homophobic,don't I?  I don't  think a person has to be gay to enjoy so called "campy" films. I still find it diffucult understanding the definition of the term...even though it's been defined here on this board before. But to set out to make an intentionally BAD movie kinda defeats the purpose. I f  a filmaker is going to set out to make a bad movie....

Dam. I dunno. How could people like Brad Grinter of BLOOD FREAK fame not think that a turkey head pot smoking monster was not a silly premise? But he takes it so seriously. Or does he? Check out his coughing routine in the end narration....I think it may be a hint that he knew he was making an insane , bizzare pile of sh1t, but had fun with it. Ed Wood....now that guy was so clueless.....it made his  films endearing. I truly believe this guy hadda 'vision'. Warped...lost in his own dream.

[Andrew]

I think it can be made on purpose, but it takes luck, and the ability to ignore the fact that you are trying to do it intentionally.  That was a major reason that "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" did not work for me.  They were trying to hard to parody something being cheap and silly.  If they had gone at it in a completely serious manner, but with the same general plot, I think it might have worked for me.

There's Nothing Out There was intended to be a campy send-up of alien monster films, and it works.  However, everybody plays their part in a completely serious way.  Even Mike, who has some great lines.

[Jack]

I think of a campy movie as one that may not achieve its stated "goal", but is entertaining nonetheless.  For instance, a lot of '80s slashers.  They tried to make them scary, but they really weren't, however they were still very entertaining.  Questionable acting, ridiculous plots, lots of gratuitous nudity and gore, fun characters, and the under-13 crowd got a good scare out of them.  They knew they weren't making a "good" movie, but they did the best with what they had, threw in a lot of "camp" value, and made an entertainingly bad one. 

Guys like Jim Wynorski and Charles Band have a talent for that stuff, which is why they're two of my favorite film makers.  Jim's got stuff like Chopping Mall, Curse of the Komodo, Not of this Earth, Sorority House Massacre 2, and Raptor to his credit, while Charles has been involved with stuff like Breeders, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, Sorority Babes in the Slime Ball Bowl-O-Rama, Puppet Master, Robot Jox, Hideous, Shrieker, etc.  All movies I enjoy because of the camp value, yet none of them are scary or seriously dramatic.

[Psycho Circus]

I think of a campy movie as one that may not achieve its stated "goal", but is entertaining nonetheless.  For instance, a lot of '80s slashers.  They tried to make them scary, but they really weren't, however they were still very entertaining.  Questionable acting, ridiculous plots, lots of gratuitous nudity and gore, fun characters, and the under-13 crowd got a good scare out of them.  They knew they weren't making a "good" movie, but they did the best with what they had, threw in a lot of "camp" value, and made an entertainingly bad one. 

Yeah freddy krueger in particular went as camp as row of tents...

[inframan]

one word, TROMA 

[ghouck]

Terror Firmer comes to mind, , Fun movie IMO, , but it is what it is. . .

[Derf]

Sorry if I hijacked the thread a bit with the camp=gay comment; that's not what I meant to do. I normally equate camp and kitsch, much as you seem to. I still don't really believe that it can be done intentionally and successfully at the same time. As Andrew said, the makers have to play it straight; if they try to camp it up, it will most often turn out just plain bad. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is indeed a prime example. If they had just played it straight, without delving into parody, the movie could have been a lot of campy fun. As it is, it is a mediocre parody, mildly amusing in parts, but ultimately just not up to snuff (although I still like Animala. Dance, Animala, dance!  ). There are discussions of this already on this board, though I don't feel like searching for them right now. My opinion is that if low-budget filmmakers don't have the ability to make a good movie, they will often (erroneously) go to the opposite extreme, saying, in effect, "Look at how bad this movie is! And we know it's bad! That means it's campy! Yeah, campy, not crappy!" This is much like someone singing and missing a note, then intentionally missing every note after that, just to show they know they messed up and are trying now to make it funny. It's an amateurish response, all right in small doses, but disaster when removed from a live performance, where the performer can make a real connection with the audience (whether that audience be one person or a large group).

So, basically, I guess I agree with you that made-to-be-bad movies are annoying.

[peter johnson]

Yeah, as has been said, we did visit this topic more than once before in the past --

Trying to define "camp" is slippery indeed -- Sort of like trying to peg "Postmodernism", or other vague definitions.

Now, I find "Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" to be highly entertaining.  The wife and I laughed a lot with fond recognition as the film-makers took convention after convention from "Cat Women of The Moon", "Rocketship X-M", "It Conquered the World" and other of our beloved films from the '50's and '60's.  Yes, "Dance, Animalia, dance!" is a catch-phrase around our house.

The word "camp" does in fact come from gay theatre culture, specifically from the French "se camper", which means to put oneself in a bold, provocative pose.  This usage comes from around 1670 or so, but by 1909 had been simply shortened to "camp", which at the time meant "tasteless".  However, it wasn't until Susan Sontag codified it in 1964, in her essay "Notes on Camp", that it started to take on meaning for the non-gay general populace.  There's nothing shameful about calling it a "gay" term any more than noting that educated African-American men and women will still say "ax" instead of "ask" as a linguistic symbol of cultural belonging.  (Once upon a time I was going for my Ph.D in Anthropology & still have my Linguistics notes)  Now, of course, "camp" has drifted off into that shadowy area of "I knows it when I sees it!" that so many languages possess -- eg.  I cannot recall the word itself, but Japanese has a word that used to specifically mean only "The feeling one gets when walking in the woods and seeing a flock of cranes come to alight in a still forest pond" -- this word has now taken on broader connotations of just feeling good.

Can camp be intentional?  Sure.  Can it be successfully pulled off with intent?  Yes, but it is rare and takes a talent for bad taste -- As genuine bad taste is frequently more accidental than intentional, therein lies the tar pit.

peter denny/campy crane

[Ash]

That was a major reason that "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" did not work for me.  They were trying to hard to parody something being cheap and silly.  If they had gone at it in a completely serious manner, but with the same general plot, I think it might have worked for me.

Roger Ebert agrees with you.
He gives an amusing example in his review of the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

[Rev. Powell]

I think I'm agreeing with the majority here.  Intentional camp can work, but it's very tricky.  Most filmmakers who try it tend to overplay their hands badly.  They draw attention to the fact that they know they're making camp, and they want you to be sure you know it too.  They're far too concerned with making sure the audience is laughing with them, instead of at them, and they only end up insuring that no one laughs at all. 

Two directors that come to mind as masters at making deliberate camp are Russ Meyer and Paul Morrissey.

[Cthulhu]

Well, some of Quentin Tarantino's an Robert Rodrigez's movies are intentionally campy ( Kill Bill, From dusk 'till dawn).
I guess one can pull it off, but it's not easy.