Test your knowledge of the camp aesthetic with our pop (culture) quiz.

By Christopher Cappiello and Jeremy Kinser

How would you describe camp? What makes a camp film campy? Like pornography, camp is often something that defies easy definition, but you know it when you see it.

In 1964 Susan Sontag famously wrote her “Notes on Camp” essay, focusing her considerable intellect on the task of defining “camp” with no fewer than 58 numbered theses. Among Sontag's notable observations: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a 'lamp'; not a woman, but a 'woman.'” “Pure camp is almost always naïve. Camp that knows itself to be camp ('camping') is usually less satisfying.” And, perhaps most definitively: “The ultimate camp statement: It's good because it's awful.” Camp doesn't have to be bad, though. Sometimes a picture or performance is self-consciously over the top (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane), attaining both quality and camp status.

With those oh-so-scientific notions in mind, IN Los Angeles set out to test our readers' camp sensibility and knowledge. The following Hollywood camp quiz skips over some of the more obvious favorites (Mommie Dearest), and really puts your camp know-how to the test.

1. On a mutual dare, these two famously and promiscuously heterosexual English actors played a gay couple in Stanley Donen's 1969 film Staircase, about two aging barbers sharing a dreary life in London.

a. Rex Harrison and Albert Finney
b. Rex Harrison and Richard Harris
c. Rex Harrison and Richard Burton
d. Rex Harrison and Peter O'Toole

2. This Oscar-winning actress, who’s career began in silent films and spanned nearly fifty years, made her cinematic swan song opposite a boy in a monkey suit in the sci-fi clunker Trog.

a. Helen Hayes
b. Norma Shearer
c. Joan Crawford
d. Janet Gaynor

3. She had rhythm. She had music. But when this legendary Broadway performer tried to appeal to a more youthful audience by releasing a disco album, she had a huge flop.

a. Mary Martin
b. Ethel Merman
c. Elaine Stritch
d. Chita Rivera

4. With some of the most divinely overwrought acting ever captured on celluloid, The Bad Seed is a chilling camp classic with a pigtailed murderess who gets her comeuppance in which of the following ways:

a. Run over by a car
b. Killed by a vengeful parent
c. Zapped by lightning
d. Forced to watch the film

5. This author’s best-selling books have been turned into some of the looniest films of all time, including The Betsy, The Carpetbaggers, The Lonely Lady, and Where Love Has Gone.

a. Harold Robbins
b. Jackie Collins
c. Judith Krantz
d. Sidney Sheldon

6. Tallulah Bankhead's hard living and voracious sexual appetites made the formidable stage star too hot to handle for most film studios. After an ill-fated attempt to play Blanche DuBois at 53, what final 1967 television appearance certified her camp credentials?

a. Bewitched
b. Gilligan's Island
c. Batman
d. I Dream of Jeannie

7. Valley of the Dolls is inarguably a high water mark in Hollywood camp. While most know that Judy Garland and Ethel Merman inspired two characters, which tragic Hollywood starlet was supposedly the model for Sharon Tate's character?

a. Carole Landis
b. Natalie Wood
c. Marilyn Monroe
d. Jayne Mansfield

8. In the wildly overwrought follow-up to her acclaimed film debut in a musical bio-pic, this singer-turned-actress not only played an aspiring fashion model, she even designed her own costumes!

a. Barbra Streisand
b. Diana Ross
c. Olivia Newton-John
d. Cher

9. Of all of Cecil B. DeMille's often laughingly homoerotic epics—with armies of buff slaves or biblical-era soldiers—The Ten Commandments may be the hottest. Which co-star, upon learning he was playing (mostly shirtless) opposite Charlton Heston, went on a strict exercise regimen to get commandingly cut?

a. John Derek
b. Yul Brynner
c. Edward G. Robinson
d. John Carradine

10. This comedy followed the misadventures of two straight men who avoid the Vietnam war by pretending to be gay and are forced to live a “homosexual lifestyle” when their recruiting officer becomes suspicious.

a. The Day the Fish Came Out
b. The Adventurers
c. The Gay Deceivers
d. The Boys in the Band

11. For her starring debut in the softcore potboiler Butterfly, this sex kitten won a controversial Golden Globe award, which many believed was bought by her multi-millionaire husband.

a. Bo Derek
b. Raquel Welch
c. Pia Zadora
d. Sharon Stone

12. This film musical—part sci-fi, part Biblical allegory, all what-were-they-thinking headscratcher—features the song "Speed," which is either an ode to amphetamines or patriotism, take your pick.

a. All That Jazz
b. Can’t Stop the Music
c. The Apple
d. Xanadu

13. Bitchy backbiting was taken to new heights in the 1939 camp fave The Women, featuring an all-star cast of leading ladies except which of the following?

a. Joan Crawford
b. Norma Shearer
c. Katherine Hepburn
d. Paulette Goddard

14. This Latin bombshell dubbed the Queen of Technicolor after starring in campy epics like Cobra Woman, died from a heart attack while bathing in scalding hot water.

a. Carmen Miranda
b. Acquanetta
c. Maria Montez
d. Delores Del Rio

15. The 1976 remake of A Star is Born paired a permed-out Barbra Streisand and boozed-up Kris Kristofferson to unintentionally comic effect. What respected writer shares a surprising screenplay credit for the corny script?

a. Joan Didion
b. John Gregory Dunne
c. Buck Henry
d. All of the above

16. This deliciously unwatchable Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton vehicle is based on a Tennessee Williams script and features none other than Noel Coward as the Witch of Capri.

a. The Sandpiper
b. Boom
c. The V.I.P.s
d. Hammersmith is Out

17. This musicalization of a classic ‘30s film based on a best-selling novel about a Utopian world hidden in the mountains starred such non-singing actors as Peter Finch, Liv Ullman, and Charles Boyer.

a. Lost Horizon
b. At Long Last Love
c. Song of Norway
d. The Music Lovers

18. This singer, famed for his high falsetto and playing the ukelele, married his wife on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1969.

a. Little Richard
b. Tiny Tim
c. Engelbert Humperdinck
d. Don Ho

19. This film musical effectively rang the death knell for the disco craze and starred a musical act very closely associated with the genre.

a. Xanadu
b. Can’t Stop the Music
c. Thank God it’s Friday
d. Roller Boogie

20. The 1995 Showgirls has become a cult camp classic, now celebrated for the qualities that earned it a record seven Razzies (Golden Raspberry Awards). With which film does Showgirls share this distinction?

a. Gigli
b. Battlefield Earth
c. Waterworld
d. Ishtar

21. After the gloriously grotesque Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Joan Crawford appeared in a series of over-the-top, often violent camp films. Which of the following wasn't one of them?

a. The Caretakers
b. Strait-Jacket
c. I Saw What You Did
d. The Nanny

22. Based on a lurid best-selling novel, the highlight of this bad movie we love featured a gorgeous young Jane Fonda on her knees playing a saxophone between Michael Caine’s thighs.

a. Period of Adjustment
b. Hurry Sundown
c. Any Wednesday
d. Walk on the Wild Side

23. Her acting debut in this kitschy musical had the misfortune to open the same week as the 9/11 tragedy and bombed (we suspect it would have anyway). Distraught, this singer-turned-actress suffered a very public nervous breakdown.

a. Janet Jackson
b. Britney Spears
c. Mariah Carey
d. Whitney Houston

24. The 1980s music sensation Duran Duran (not averse to camp themselves) took their name from a mad scientist in this camp sci-fi favorite.

a. Soylent Green
b. Dr. Strangelove
c. Planet of the Apes
d. Barbarella

25. Quentin Crisp's entire life was a fabulous exercise in camp, with everything he said living in floating quotation marks. In his surprisingly long list of film credits, what is the one character that both he and Judi Dench have played?

a. Eleanor Roosevelt
b. Queen Elizabeth I
c. Margaret Thatcher
d. Cleopatra

Answers:
1. c, 2. c, 3. b, 4. c, 5. a, 6. c, 7. a, 8. b, 9. b, 10. c, 11. c, 12. c, 13. c, 14. c, 15. d, 16. b, 17. a, 18. b, 19. b, 20. b, 21. d, 22. b, 23. c, 24. d, 25. b