This week I thought I would do something a little bit different than maybe what I’ve done before, kind of steering away from the superhero type stuff. Although, not entirely, because this is also on this list, but you’ll get what I mean. Recently we interviewed a man named Thunder Levin who is the writer behind the first four Sharknado films, and he gets writing credits on the additional three or four after the first four anyway. But our conversation with him got me thinking, “What are some of the best campy movies of all time?” So why not talk about the top five campy movies in my opinion ,and of course, these are subject to opinion. It’s perfectly fine if your opinion may be different than mine, and if you disagree with any of the five that I share here. There’s a comment section down below and I encourage you to share your thoughts down there. Let get into it ….
Number 5
The Batman movie. No, not that one. The other one. The other, other one. This one was made in 1966. The TV show was incredibly & wonderfully campy. It was a lot of fun that no one took that seriously. I don’t even think the actors themselves took it seriously because it was silly. It was fun, it was made to be entertaining. It was something different than what everything else was doing superhero-wise. Clearly, it was different from the comic books. But there’s also the whole surf-off between Batman and Joker, and then there’s the shark. Batman just happens to have shark repellent spray on his utility belt? I mean, he’s Batman, why wouldn’t he have shark repellent spray on his utility belt? But there’s just a whole lot of things we could talk about from both the TV show and the Batman movie from 1966. It is a tremendous amount of campy fun, and if you haven’t watched the TV series that the Batman movie was spawning from then you’ve really missed out on a whole lot, and I strongly suggest you go back and watch that. Make some popcorn, get comfy, and and enjoy all the bams, pows, oofs, whiffs, zips, zops, and zams that come along with Batman from the 1960s.
NUMBER 4
I mentioned his name already, but we talked with Thunder Levin, and number 4 is the Sharknado series. I’m not going to just say one Sharknado movie because they progressively get better as they go because they’ve begun to steer into the camp, they’ve enjoyed the camp, and you know they have so many homages, nods to other movies. There’s nods to Jaws, of there is, why wouldn’t there be a nod to Jaws? It’s a shark movie, it kind of has to happen. There are things that are done for obvious humor, things that are designed to make you laugh. Thunder Levin talks about this in our interview with him, which will be coming out in a few weeks. So I’m not going to spoil it for you, but there’s a reason why if you go back and watch these movies from this perspective that Thunder shares in the interview, it makes it even better and much more enjoyable. But Sharknado is silly, it’s campy, it’s just all kinds of not serious, but in the best way possible. It’s seriously not serious, and I think that’s probably the best way to describe Sharknado.
Because you may have thought about it and thought who would ever greenlit this project? Or why did it get greenlit? And who puts sharks in a tornado? Thunder. Thunder Levin puts sharks in tornadoes and he does it because that’s the movie he was assigned with Asylum Pictures and they came to him and knew that he could do it. Thank goodness for that, because Thunder did a heck of a job writing those first four movies. So we strongly suggest you check those out and check out our interview with Thunder Levin coming soon.
NUMBER 3
It was 1985, the movie was known as Clue based off the board game. Starring Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Michael McKeon, and just a whole bunch of people. It’s kind of like a who’s who of 80s stars. There’s campy humor, there’s silly humor, there’s obvious outright things that are done for shtick. My favorite part of this movie though is towards the end when Tim Curry is running all over the house to explain how the murders were happened, who did it, how, and then just when you think the movie is done and they’ve solved it, up pops, or “it could have happened this way” here’s an alternate ending and then Tim Curry takes off running all over the house again explaining how the murders were done. They find the murderer and that’s how it was done, and then, it pops up on the screen, but here’s how it really happened. And I love that, it’s fantastic, so very well written. Tim Curry is clearly, in my opinion, the star of this show, and he holds this movie together. Clue is held together by Tim Curry. It would have been a good movie without him. It’s fantastic because of Tim Curry. So Clue is the number three of my top five best campy movies of all time
Number 2
Honestly this could have been also called Clue, is a movie with Don Knotts and Tim Conway, who by the way are one of my favorite comedic duos ever to happen in Hollywood history. Don Knotts and Tim Conway together are just pure, absolute comedy gold, and I absolutely love love the two of them. But they did a movie called Private Eyes, which was very similar in nature to Clue. Like, I’m surprised somebody didn’t get sued for it. How the murders got solved, everything. The humor between Tim Conway and Don Knotts, it’s over the top at times, it’s silly. Tim Conway absolutely just makes me belly laugh in this movie. If you haven’t watched a Tim Conway movie, you need to start by the way. But start with Private Eyes. His humor is very expressive. It could be physical humor at times. He can just be silly, goofy, and his delivery, his pitch is perfect. And Don Knotts, he’s more than Barney Fife. He’s way more than Barney Fife. But, if all you know of Don Knotts is Barney Fife then yeah Definitely go watch Private Eyes because it’s all about these two men who get brought in by Scotland Yard to set to solve a murder and they’re very American and very goofy and it’s fantastic. So anyway, Private Eyes is number 2.
number 1
My number one is one of those movies I could just put on and let it play. And again, it’s another movie that I don’t know if it was intentionally made to be campy, but it certainly is, and that’s fine. Flash Gordon, starring Sam Jones and Max Van Sydow and Brian Blessed. And Timothy Dalton, the man who would later become Bond, James Bond. Anyway, Flash Gordon is a fantastic movie. It’s silly, it’s campy, outright humor, not so outright humor, bad practical effects, the whole nine yards. But for its era, it was probably fantastic. But looking back at the movie with the modern eye in the age of quality CGI and all these other things, you look at it and you go, boy, that was really kind of rough. But Flash Gordon is a fantastic movie. Very well told. It’s got a great story. I would have loved to have seen a sequel to Flash Gordon because of the way it ends. And if you’ve never seen it, I’m not gonna spoil it from you, but you probably should watch it because the ending of Flash Gordon is great. It makes you think that there should definitely and positively could be a sequel. I think Flash Gordon is one of those things that if Hollywood is looking for a reboot, this is prime territory for a reboot, but it has to be done the right way. Not by the CW, I think Flash Gordon could be a box office smash hit. Not a bomb, but a very good smash hit as far as moviegoers are concerned. But yes, Flash Gordon is a whole lot of campy fun.
In conclusion
We’ve got Batman, we’ve got Sharknado, we’ve got Clue, we’ve got Private Eyes, and we’ve got Flash Gordon at number one. If you like campy movies and you like my list, go ahead and throw some comments down below. If you think I missed one, put the comment in down below because I know that there’s going to be one that most people are going to think that I missed, which is obviously a camp movie and it’s very popular. It has a lot of memes made about it. I’m not going to say the name because I’m pretty sure we’re going to see it in the comments down below. Let me know what you think.
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