Trailer Camp

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1995

Trailer Camp
Jenni Olson
USA, 1995
75 minutes
Colour/Black and White/35mm

To Kill a Dead Man
Alexander Hemming
United Kingdom, 1994
11 minutes
Black and White/ 35mm

The cinema is 100 years old. While some may celebrate the Lumière Brothers and Sergei Eisenstein, others look to cinematic heroes of a different stripe. This programme lifts the veneer of high cinema culture to expose these sociological spelunkers, these filmmakers bold enough to deliver entertainment so deliriously recherché, so excessive and gaudy and fabulous, that legions of fierce supporters and a proud culture have emerged in their wake. Call them what you will—gaudy, gauche, gruesome or glorious—these purveyors of movie camp have given us some of the 20th century’s most prized cultural moments. This tribute salutes their courage, honesty, tenacity and sense of style.

By compiling the very best of camp trailers, renowned archivist Jenni Olson has at once alerted us to a parallel cinema of questionable taste and inculcated a kind of perverse nostalgia for a time when bad really did mean good. In many ways more satisfying than the complete features they promote—after all, you get the joke in five minutes rather than ninety—these trailers are a treasure trove of forgotten celluloid presented in uncut splendour.

Olson has wisely avoided TV-itis. There are no dumb voiceovers, no tasteful intertitles—just the goods. Starting with The Wizard of Oz and moving through Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, The Wiz, Thank God It’s Friday, Summer Lovers and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, among countless others, this is a Midnight Madness enthusiast’s wet dream.

Trailer Camp is Olson’s follow-up to her extremely popular queer compendia, Homo Promo, a collection of trailers from lesbian and gay features, and Camp for Boys and Girls, this work’s sister piece, which features campy television clips. Currently working on a summary of African-American film history and a Jodie Foster tribute, Olson may well be the coolest archivist alive.

To Kill a Dead Man plays with all the set pieces of the spy-movie genre, set to a lush, effects-laden, James Bond-style score by the band Portishead. Assassination, backroom double-dealing, smoky rooms and shafts of light give this film, shot at the same time as the video for Portishead’s “Nobody Loves Me,” a wealth of cool style.
—Noah Cowan