TOP 25 CAMP FILMS OF ALL TIME - 20

THE DAMNED DON'T CRY

The Damned Don't Cry is Joan Crawford's first entry in this top 25 - it's her first entry but certainly not her last. Joan plays downtrodden Ethel Whitehead. She lives in a boring town with a boring family - luck comes her way when her son is run over and killed (I kid you not) so this is her perfect excuse to disappear out of town. She suddenly grows shoulder pads and street smarts to rival a New York gangster with enough clawing ambition to put Anna Wintour to shame. She works in a shop then as a clothes model. Ethel latches onto an accountant who is very poorly paid but she manages to get him a job in a crime ring and this is where Ethel really changes.

Poor Ethel was a tough bird from the wrong side of the tracks, almost a cheap gangster's moll - then after meeting George Castleman, the head of the said crime ring, she ditches the accountant and takes up with the big man - he realises that Ethel needs some refinement so Ethel turns into Lorna Hansen Forbes, an heiress socialite who hosts fabulous parties around the world. Lorna is fabulous in chiffon and with a new hairdo, camps it up big style - all the while playing a double agent in California to help George Castleman snare a dodgy gangster. Confused?? Not at all, this is a Joan Crawford movie so suffering in mink is the way forward - we always know that there will be trouble but Joan should pull through!

It all goes tits up and Lorna gets slapped about a bit and retreats back to her family home she left - the police and reporters ensue, shots are fired and Lorna is revealed to be Ethel. Although she's back in the relative safety of her home, the audience realises she'll be out of there quick smart and crawling up the ladder of life again before long.

This is a wild film from Joan. Made in 1949/1950, Joan goes through countless costumes and furs and worried looks. It's a gay man's wet dream to see - although in her forties, she can still play a woman in her twenties who can snare the younger men with her killer legs and excellent bone structure. Joan revels in her role of Lorna Hansen Forbes and the scene where she returns to her parent's home exhausted and literally suffering in a huge mink coat has to be seen to be believes. Although it revolves around gangsters and the underworld - this is a Joan Crawford show. She features in every scene, the audience is desperate for her to pull off this other act and also to see her return to her inevitable humble beginnings and scratch her way from housewife to gangsters moll again.

The men in the film are completely irrelevant as Joan parades around in her high as hell fuck me pumps that she was famed for. That doesn't detract from the crazy plot, the severe slapping of Joan and the quick changes of the character that we're all rooting for.... I'd have loved to have seen the sequel if they had made one as Joan makes Ethel and then Lorna a fabulous creature to watch.