Camp is a pretty broad term. Apart from its skewered tastes and manners, it conveys various genres in film, whether it's outdated political situations (Cold War propaganda films like Atomic Cafe), overripe, overacted melodrama (The Oscar with Stephen Boyd), woefully misguided musicals (Grease 2), or just plain technical ineptitude (Plan Nine From Outer Space).
So why this list? Camp films are a dime a dozen—why does the backdrop of Vegas make these stand out? Because Vegas could sell the image of unapologetic indulgence. Floating craps tables by the pool, permanent sunshine, long-legged showgirls and neon art on Fremont Street that just oozed character (as exemplified by Vegas Vic's welcoming arm)—it offered ready-made, jazzy set pieces for the cheap and/or novice filmmaker.
As for The Amazing Colossal Man, let me just say that for as much as I enjoy seeing a romantically jaded behemoth lurching around Downtown kicking over casino signs, this movie has been so over-referenced on so many cult-film lists over the years that I just had to pull the plug. Besides, the movies I've listed for you are buried a bit deeper in the sand and deserve at least a glimpse of daylight.
Release date: June 18, 1955
Directed by: Sidney Salkow
Starring: Dennis O'Keefe, Coleen Grey, Charles Winneger, Thomas Gomez
Locality: El Rancho Vegas (later the El Rancho Hotel)
The Plot: Joe Barnes (Dennis O'Keefe) is an honest casino operator, who has to fend off a gangster (Thomas Gomez) who wants a piece of the action, and who'll resort to violence to get his way. Meanwhile, he has to deal with pretty schoolteacher Julia (Colleen Gray), who happens to be writing a thesis on the futility of gambling!
The Skinny: The beauty of this film is that despite the perfunctory script and second-rate cast (save for the always dependable Gomez), this film was one of the earliest examples of the sleek allure Vegas had to offer the uninitiated public. Although not the first film to be shot entirely here—The Las Vegas Story and The Girl Rush had already done so—Shakedown made much better use of the city's locality, complete with motels (the Glass Pool Inn never looked lovelier), classic nightclubs and some neat outdoor shots that mix an arid desert breeze with some buzzing neon lights that are every bit as colorful as they are authentic.
Availability: www.somethingweird.com, $15 (VHS only)
Release date: November 15, 1957
Directed by: Joe Parker
Starring: William Campbell, Mary Webster, Yvonne Craig and Jim Backus
Locality: The Dunes Hotel
The Plot: Judy (Mary Webster), a young lady who is "18 and anxious," falls for a drag racer and soon discovers she's pregnant. They marry secretly, but her husband is tragically killed in a race. She falls for a trumpet player (William Campbell), who takes her to "the bright lights of Vegas, baby!" to get married—but oh no! He just wants a one-night stand and has no intention of being her hubby. What will Judy do?
The Skinny: It's hard to resist a film with the tagline: "Parents may be shocked, but youth will understand!" Indeed, this alone should tell you that you've come across a prototypical drive-in flick from the "youth gone wild" genre. In this case, heading to Las Vegas is all one needs to do to corrupt the morality of the young. The most appealing moments in Eighteen have our heroine arriving in Vegas and being overwhelmed by the swirling lights of the casino and the sound of one-arm bandits disbursing coins to the patrons.
Availability: www.videobeat.com, $29 (DVD), $25 (VHS)
Release date: August 5, 1959
Directed by: David Lowell Rich
Starring: Louis Prima & Keely Smith
Locality: New Frontier hotel and an east side neighborhood
The Plot: Dorothy (Keely Smith) happens to be the cutest and most talented vocalist in her church choir, and she is approached by Mr. Louis Prima himself to be the lead singer for his band. Dorothy will do it, but there's a catch—he must perform at a church benefit to raise money for a summer camp for underprivileged kids in Las Vegas.
The Skinny: The plot is incidental; it's just an excuse to revel in Prima's terrific synthesis of pop, jazz and big band—and on that level it's a blast! Just listen to Prima and Smith tear into a slew of their hits: "Banana Split For My Baby," "Oh, Marie!," "You Are My Love" and the title cut. There's also some neat location footage of Prima and Smith driving around in some Downtown neighborhoods and passing by some charming cottages between Charleston and Bonneville that are now occupied by attorneys. Oh, and you'll love Keely's fringe hairstyle.
Availability: www.videobeat.com, $29 (DVD), $25 (VHS)
Release Date: April 29, 1964
Directed by: Bob Wehling
Starring: Tommy Holden, Marilyn Manning & Arch Hall Sr.
Locality: The Flamingo
The Plot: A successful door-to-door bra salesman, Homer L. Pettigrew (Tommy Holden), is in love with his boss' daughter, Cotton Candy (Marilyn Manning). He wants to propose to her, but his chief nemesis, rival bra salesman August Poe (Carmen Bonacci) has other plans for Homer.
The Skinny: Some of the most amateurish acting ever caught on film. Still, if you can look past that, you will find a deliriously dated movie with all the hilarious trappings of Rat Pack-era Vegas: gals with beehive hairdos, finger-poppin' hepcats downing martinis, a score that came straight out of a Holiday Inn promo film and best of all, an amazing collection of brasseries (one of the film's sponsors was Frederick's of Hollywood) that young, gorgeous hotties parade in throughout the film. So just sit back and absorb the period sincerity.
Availability: www.frontierliquidators.com, $13 (VHS only)
Release Date: May 11, 1966
Directed by: Arthur C. Price
Starring: Mamie Van Doren & Ferlin Husky
Locality: A brief shot with the main players driving on the Strip.
The Plot: Woody (Ferlin Husky), arrives in Las Vegas, straight from the hills of Tennessee, hoping to make a mint from the casino his uncle left him in his will. Sadly, the casino is in financial trouble, but music promoter Boots Malone (Mamie Van Doren) is determined to make Woody a country-singing sensation to salvage her career and save Woody's casino.
The Skinny: You have to tip your hat to Ms. Van Doren. When it came to finding material that was destined for the midnight-movie circuit, nobody did it better. Hillbillys (whether the misspelling was an artful conceit or a typo from the producers, I'll never know) makes the list because it's so perfectly awful that it couldn't help but achieve cult status. Consider: Van Doren made this film hot on the heels of her hit The Navy vs. The Night Monsters, in which she and Bobby Van play scientists who battle killer tree stumps in the Antarctic; the topper here is that she gets to sing tone-deaf renditions of country music. The production values are so low-rent, the casino Woody inherits is just a bare-boned sound stage with a card table, a roulette wheel and a few empty liquor bottles behind a makeshift bar. Worst of all, with a brief exception of the leads driving down the Strip in a jalopy, virtually everything else in the film is stock footage—of the 8mm, hand-held, "look what we did in art class today, Mom!" variety. It must be seen to be believed.
Availability: www.deepdiscountdvd.com, $6 (DVD only)
Release date: January 1968
Directed by: Takashi Tsuboshima
Starring: Hitoshi Ueki, Hajime Hana and KeiTani
Locality: Riviera Hotel
The Plot: In this bizarre caper comedy, three Japanese businessmen travel from Tokyo to Las Vegas to recover a deed to a gold mine, only to find greedy adversaries in the way.
The Skinny: Combining the frenetic slapstick of the Three Stooges with the off-the-wall direction of Japanese pop films of the era, like Tokyo Drifters and Branded to Kill, Free-For-All has a kinetic, loose energy. Despite making very little sense (how they inherit the gold mine is never explained, and somehow, everyone in Las Vegas is aware of their potential riches the minute they arrive) the film works because it has a skewed sensibility that moves fast enough to prevent you from being too critical of the plot. The background music, which at best can be described as sub-Martin Denny's "Exotica Sounds," pops out in the oddest moments and is hilarious.
Availability: I have a really bad copy I taped off of USA cable in 1983. If you know where I can get the VHS or DVD, let me know.
Release date: January 11, 1972
Directed by: John Llewellyn Moxey
Starring: Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland and Carol Lynley
Locality: Fremont Street and the Strip
The Plot: Ace crime reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) discovers that a beautiful Vegas showgirl is really a vampire who is responsible for a series of brutal murders in Las Vegas, but how does he prove it to his skeptical editor (Simon Oakland) and the city's sheriff (Claude Akins)?
The Skinny: Man, what a showgirl must do to retain her beauty! The Night Stalker pulls off its mix of horror and comedy because it cleverly uses the central character of a vampire to justify an almost total nighttime shooting schedule. What better city than Vegas, where she can work the graveyard shift? And what better profession than showgirl, where she can lure men? Dark alleys, frightening stretches of desert unrelieved by any artificial source of light and harsh neon signs reflected in the street (which were clearly watered down to enhance this effect) make The Night Stalker a fun viewing experience for those with a taste for chills.
Availability: www.deepdiscountdvd.com, $9 (DVD only)
Release date: June 16, 1977
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Ron Howard, Nancy Morgan, Marion Ross and Barry Cahill
Locality: South end of Las Vegas Boulevard and the Henderson race track
The Plot: Sam and Paula (Ron Howard and Nancy Morgan) are heading to Las Vegas to get hitched, but the bride-to-be's father (Barry Cahill) offers a reward to anyone who can stop their impending marriage. In the meantime, they're being pursued by an obnoxious reporter (Don Steele) determined to get an "exclusive" with the young couple.
The Skinny: Arguably the best road picture ever to take place between Victorville, California, and Sin City. If you need to see how much development has happened on Interstate 15 between these two cities over the years, this picture is a good marker. It was nothing but arid desert without so much as a Burger King to entice you to pull over. Still, it made for a great location if your film had a lot of off-roading, which Grand Theft did. This was Ron Howard's directorial debut, and if he never made another film, at least he proved he could handle a car crash sequence with the best of 'em (the final sequence of a car barreling through and completely destroying a house at the end of Las Vegas Boulevard will confirm this). Even better, the references to Las Vegas as the great land of promise (i.e. we can get married quick and cheap) still retain a naive charm.
Availability: www.deepdiscountdvd.com, $12 (DVD); Amazon.com, $10 (VHS)
Release date: June 25, 1982
Directed by: Hal Needham
Starring: Barry Bostwick, Henry Silva
Locality: Las Vegas Country Club and Howard Hughes Executive Terminal
The Plot: A futuristic military unit, led by Ace Hunter (Barry Bostwick), must battle the evil Guerrera (Henry Silva), who can't help but drive around in his tank and blow up desert communities so he can steal their oil.
The Skinny: Boy, have we come a long way as a location city for filming since this clunker! I vividly remember the hoopla surrounding Megaforce when it was shot in the Valley. The newspapers and local television stations all reported a "major motion picture" being shot in our city, as if the film was going to be a blockbuster akin to Star Wars. And the lines people formed and waited in just to be extras! Full of hackneyed action scenes, inane dialogue (the script vacillates between Shakespearean quotations and aircraft explosions) and men in skin-tight jumpsuits who do way too much hugging. The saving grace is the ever menacing Henry Silva, providing some over-the-top, eye-rolling villainy as the evil Guerrera.
Availability: Amazon, $8-$16 (used VHS)
Release date: September 22, 1995
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Elizabeth Berkeley, Kyle MacLachlan and Gina Gershon
Locality: Stardust, Riviera, Forum Shops at Caesars and The Peppermill
The Plot: Talented but a yet-to-be-discovered nude dancer Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) will stop at nothing to become the top showgirl at a Vegas casino. But she soon discovers that a fight to the top will have some pitfalls along the way.
The Skinny: I don't care how often Paul Verhoeven claimed that this film was made with serious intentions, there's just too much knowing wit and sense of camp abandon for this film not be taken tongue-in-cheek. The clichés are lathered on so thickly (a stool is thrown and an all-out bar brawl ensues; Nomi stakes her claim to greatness while violently spewing ketchup on her French fries), that it's ludicrously funny. As for the self-righteous critics repulsed by the film's exploitation, did anyone expect Verhoeven, the man who brought us Total Recall and Basic Instinct, to make a "serious" exposé about lap dancing? Snap out of it! Yes, it's exploitation; but it's raw, stylish exploitation that's performed with gusto and pushes all the right buttons without a whit of regret. Besides, any film that has the likes of David Bowie, U2, Prince, Killing Joke and Dwight Yoakam can't be completely dismissed.
Availability: www.deepdiscountdvd.com, $9 (DVD); Amazon.com, $3-$6 (used VHS)