CAMP: "A cornucopia of frivolity, incongruity, theatricality, and humour." "A deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love." "The lie that tells the truth." "Ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to or characteristic of homosexuals."
It's still very much a play in all but name - the limited cast of just four main characters, the almost farce-like plot and the limited number of location shots. All the action revolves around Mr Sloane, a hip teen played with some style (and occasional menace) by Peter McEnery. He's "adopted" by Kath (Beryl Reid), a mature woman still in mourning for her long-dead lover and despite the concerns of her "Dadda" - who believes he knows Mr Sloane as the murderer of a past acquaintance.Entertaining Mr Sloane was one of only two plays from the warped imagination of our icon Joe Orton to receive a screen adaptation (the other being Loot), and, like much of his work - on stage and off - received a mixed reception.
But there's another problem - Mr Sloane also catches the eye of Kath's brother Ed (played superbly by Harry Andrews), a slightly camp man who drives a large pink US car and has no time at all for the role of women in society. Ed wants Mr Sloane to come under his wing and follow his example - and for personal gain, Sloane is all too willing. And as the adoration for him grows, Sloane starts to play brother and sister off each other for further gain - until things start to go very wrong.
"What have you to offer? You're fat and the crow's-feet under your eyes would make you an object of terror."Monsters or no, this movie remains one of my favourites of its type, and I believe its artistry fits perfectly between the demise of the era of censorship at the end of the 60s and the smuttiness yet to come in the 70s.
"I’ve been doing my washing today and I haven’t a stitch on... except my shoes... I’m in the rude under this dress. I tell you because you’re bound to have noticed..."
"Was there anyone as glamorous as Marlene Dietrich? Indeed, the very word may have been invented for her. Perhaps she really was nothing more than a figment of our collective imaginations, an impossible creature with a husky voice, fabulous legs, astonishing eyebrows, and a way with a cigarette that could make the thing actually seem alluring.
Indeed, Dietrich may have been no more than a figment of her own imagination. As her daughter Maria Riva revealed after the legend's death, Dietrich often spoke of herself in the third person, saying things like, "Oh, Dietrich would never wear that hat," or "That is how Dietrich would do it." She worked hard all her life to cultivate that aura of perfection and glamour, playing a perpetual part any time she was in the public eye.
The contradictions in her personality seemed to confound all the laws of man and nature at once. She could look glamorous whether in a fabulous Travis Banton confection or in full male formal dress. She was at once a prima donna full of attitude, and an extremely disciplined, hard worker on the set. Though she remained married to Rudolf Sieber her entire life, the stories of her legions of lovers of both sexes are legendary. And though one might think of her as no more than a Hollywood cream puff, she spent several years of World War II in great danger in Africa and Europe entertaining the troops extremely close to the front.
"Dietrich" was not a real person at all, but a lifelong work of art cultivated by one Maria Magdalena Dietrich, born in Berlin in December, 1901, and maintained right up until her death in May, 1992. Admire not the person she was, but the illusion she created."
