Many people don't have an appetite for campy movies. I grew up watching them, since my dad loves all forms of strange, campy movies. I don't know many people who watched
The Abominable Dr. Phibes when they were 13 or 14, aside from myself. For some reason, in a film noir class in college, my professor screened
Phibes for us. He asked us if anyone had seen it before, and as I expected, I was the only person with their hand up. He started the movie and sat down next to me. "How in hell did you see this?" he asked me. "It's one of my dad's favorite movies, and I watched it with him a while ago," I told him. He smiled and said, "Your dad has great taste in movies!" While that may be a debatable fact, I have him to thank for my love for stupid campy movies. And today, I got to watch one that Ebert enjoys -
Beat the Devil, directed in 1953 by John Huston. It was, oddly enough, written by Huston and Truman Capote. It's a strange film, with a stupid nonsense plot. It's mostly fun to watch to just see all of the characters, and to see how the actors can barely take it seriously while filming it.
