Barbara Crampton
I just wanted to bitch about "Robot Wars." Then this happened.
I don't like the term "actress." Yes, yes, it distinguishes between actors with penises and actors without. But that's "the rub," isn't it? Both men and women and those who identify as neither are acting, but only the men who do so are "actors." The women are "actresses." And how about those who identify as neither? I assume the politically correct who dominate discussion of sensitive issues like these would rightfully allow them entry to the "actors" category. Well, why not everybody else while we're at it?
If you have to distinguish between male actors and female actors, why not do it like that? Then again, why should you have to, except, perhaps, for list-making purposes — i.e. "My favorite male actors," "My favorite female actors."
I'm afraid if I were to make the second list, it wouldn't just be short, but limp. This being hardly the time for a dick joke, I'm going to move on.
Plenty of female actors have enchanted me, excited me, and engaged me, and I'm happy to say I'm actively watching for such femmes, particularly in older Hollywood movies, when, more often than not, women had more to do, more to say, more of a chance to shine. Or maybe it seems that way to me because the movies themselves did more, said more, shone more. Not to knock what's coming out today, but I think if you ran through every picture released within the 10 years from 1930 to 1940, you'd come out invigorated in a way you wouldn't if you ran through every movie put out from 2009 to 2019. We're leaving out 2020, since it left us out as well.
Nevertheless, despite the number of screen women who have struck me, from Myrna Loy in The Thin Man (1934) to Julie Adams in The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) to Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only (1981) and even, most recently, Elizabeth Debicki in Tenet (2020), there are few female actors whose filmography I'd sit through with the same eagerness I'd devote to any of my favorite male actors. I'm ready to admit this could be some failing of mine and change for the better. But I suspect the true explanation is that women haven't been allowed very good roles in movies — which is, naturally and obviously, a consequence of the fact that women haven't been allowed very good roles in our society.
I'm optimistic that digital video's democratization of filmmaking allows women to speak, direct, act, write, and produce for themselves the way the Hollywood system has not, and I hope that, consequently, my "favorite female actors" list grows (although I'm also concerned that, without the instantaneous cultural impact of Hollywood productions, these new stars won't shine as bright).
And yet, given all this, there is still one actor who easily tops my hypothetical "favorite female actors" list — one female actor whose filmography I am already sifting through with at least as much fervor as I'd give any of my male actor favorites.
Barbara Crampton.
Barbara Crampton is the woman who brought this expedition together.
Prior to meeting Ben, when a person asked my favorite actress, and I responded "Barbara Crampton," they invariably replied: "Who?"
The simplest answer to the question of "Who's Barbara Crampton?" would be to say "She's a B-movie actress. Did some soap operas, some cult classic horror films." She's played parts on The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless, but she's known among horror fans for her roles in Stuart Gordon's H. P. Lovecraft adaptations Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986). Her career's having something of a resurgence since she "came back" in the popular 2011 indie slasher movie You're Next.
But the answer to the question "Who's Barbara Crampton?" I always hear in my head is this: We don't quite know, and we probably never will. Which is to say Barbara Crampton has a classic Hollywood screen magic, a flexibly livid realism, that's never gotten closer to mainstream Hollywood than a brief appearance — as a cheating wife caught mid-cheat — in Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984). We'll never quite know what could have set her apart from her fellow stars, because she's never been offered good enough roles, let alone mainstream exposure.
Certainly she's had good roles. Stuart Gordon never let her down. She played Meg, the picture of a college sweetheart, in Re-Animator, but she really shines in From Beyond as a maniacally ambitious young psychologist whose ambitions are nightmarishly — and erotically — exploited. Mr. Gordon gave her another good role in their third Lovecraft adaptation, Castle Freak (1995), in which she plays a bitter woman who blames her husband for the death of their five-year-old son.
If you're moved to investigate any of Ms. Crampton's work, investigate those three films, all excellent even beyond her contributions. (Re-Animator and From Beyond are the rare indie horror movies that were critical darlings upon their release, particularly the former. Pauline Kael's piece on Re-Animator is particularly delightful. Castle Freak, conversely, was unceremoniously dispatched direct-to-video by Full Moon Features, the direct-to-video pioneers behind the likes of Puppet Master, Trancers, and similar genre entertainment that used to stand out in dusty corners of '90s video stores.)
Those three movies are certainly Ms. Crampton's best work; she was really enabled by the strength of the material and Mr. Gordon's directing. But Barbara Crampton's enchantment revolves around the vivacity of her every performance, from a few-minute cameo at the end of Mr. Gordon's undervalued sci-fi comedy Space Truckers (1996, starring Dennis Hopper) to a simple "love interest" position in Full Moon Features' Robot Wars (1993).
Robot Wars is indicative of Ms. Crampton's filmography beyond her work with Stuart Gordon. It's no classic — those who are aware of, let alone interested in, Robot Wars seem to be fans in general of Full Moon's output, the company's signature blend of wacky, weird, lighthearted direct-to-video horror.
Any Full Moon VHS in the '90s ended with "VideoZone," a sort of "video magazine" that played after each movie. Charles Band, the head of Full Moon, would introduce himself and give a little update on what was in production at Full Moon, followed by a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie, including cast and crew interviews and production footage. And after that they'd try to move some merch.
Robot Wars' VideoZone featurette is included on the Blu-ray issue of the movie (which has already gone out of print after three years). And, of course, Ms. Crampton is interviewed. What she had to say struck me:
"I think it's nice we're doing a movie where the women ... get to be more in control. We're not just the foil for the men. ... I think Full Moon does a lot of movies like that, where the women have more of a powerful position."
That struck me because I found the relationship between Ms. Crampton's character, an archaeologist named "Leida," and the ostensible protagonist — a beefcake robot pilot named "Drake" (Don Michael Paul) — revolting.
Drake might as well be Narcissus. He spends his every scene with Leida staring at her, grinning like the Big Bad Wolf, chewing on a toothpick. Now, I wouldn't blame anyone for staring at Barbara Crampton. But never once did I feel like ole Drake was really taking a look at her. He's just seeing his own reflected self-appeal, his own egoistic self-image. He's the fizz leaking out of a can packed with male privilege.
When Drake and Leida meet, it's as close to "love at first sight" as narcissists get. But it's not even the first sight of Leida's face that gets Drake's attention: it's the sight of her ass in form-contouring, "futuristic" pink pants.
He's such a personified sexual harassment suit that their first "conversation" starts like this:
Leida: "My grandmother could pilot that robot better than you. Are you suicidal? Or just incompetent?"
Drake: "Are you busy tonight?"
"Excuse me?"
"Let's go to your place. Mine's a mess."
"You do have brain damage, don't you?"
"And you ... have a great set of lips."
This exchange ends with Leida landing a punch she might as well have delivered for all of us. But Drake's smile doesn't budge. In fact, after Leida storms off, Drake tells his co-pilot, "Stumpy," that Leida's going to bear his children.
And the worst part is he's probably right. Over the course of the film, for no visible narrative purpose but the escapist gratification of the men who, I imagine, made up the bulk of the audience, Leida rapidly — having less than the movie's 72 minutes to do so — falls head-over-heels for Drake.
So I was stunned to hear Ms. Crampton's praise for Full Moon's female characters. I imagine she was speaking more about Full Moon's tendency to balance plot lines and screen time between male and female characters — genre movies, from Roger Corman-era drive-in pictures to blaxploitation to slashers, have always been better about that than your average mainstream Hollywood movie. Even so, Ms. Crampton's kind statement seemed, to me, a grim insight into the nature of the roles she's played.
There are actors who occupy a character like a crime scene corpse fills a chalk outline. There are even great actors who play a part the way James Bond plays people when he's undercover — we know we're watching the actor, first and foremost, and we like that so much the character doesn't really matter. People like Charlton Heston, or Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. (1966).
But Barbara Crampton imbues her roles with life — the sensuality of real daily moments that you can feel, and smell, and taste — in a way that reminds me more of an actor like Marlon Brando. Brando's on-screen personality and mannerisms were so unique he had to stand out — they contrasted with the momentum of any given scene like he had his own molecular charge. And that's not Barbara Crampton. But the same way Brando stops mid-scene to think a moment, raise his eyebrows, swallow, scratch an itch, Barbara Crampton has similarly charged signs of life. I think this has a lot to do with her own pacing: she doesn't throw herself into a scene so much as bloom within it, in the slow growth of a smile, the steady search of her eyes, the purposeful steps she takes — her spatial awareness.
There's a well-known scene in From Beyond in which Ms. Crampton, exploited by negative interdimensional erotic impulses, takes out a leather outfit from an ill-fated scientist's BDSM box and tries it on. Looking in the very mirror in which the scientist once watched himself whipping helpless one-night-stands, Ms. Crampton compares herself in leather, bare-faced and wild-haired, to herself in her creamy-coffee-colored professional psychologist suit, bespectacled, hair pulled back tight. The scene is basically the ego trying on the id.
Especially in the context of a relatively low-budget, independently produced '80s horror movie, this scene should be lurid. It is erotic, but it isn't lurid. It's almost tender because of the time Ms. Crampton takes. She doesn't cast a look and react. She takes the time to inhabit her world like a camera — like we all do, with herself out of sight, even when she's looking in the mirror. Slowly focusing, panning up and down, close-up and from farther away. There's the sense that if we just dipped the boom a bit, we could pick up her heartbeat.
Ms. Crampton has never acted like a star, even in starring roles. She's always played another person, another human being. There's a rare, connectible reality to her performances. She doesn't act like the camera is on her. She acts like there's no camera. She acts like she's the one seeing — not the audience.
Of course, we in the audience can see her just fine. And, of course, film is a visual media. I won't deny part of Ms. Crampton's appeal for me is that I simply like the way she looks.
I don't think that's distinguishable from the way she acts: one's physical mannerisms, what they do and how they do it, render watching a person different from looking at a mugshot. There's a big difference between someone I don't mind seeing like a mugshot — like, I don't know, Angelina Jolie? — and someone who is truly a pleasure to watch. I'm certain Humphrey Bogart would have been playing gun-toting sidekicks if not for the way he did what he did.
But I've never met anyone like Humphrey Bogart. Part of Ms. Crampton's magic is she feels like someone I could have bumped elbows with in a bar some late night in 1985 (if she was rocking some mega lifts, or I was impersonating a hunchback — a Google search suggests I'm almost a foot taller), someone with whom my dad might have got a good flirt going over a Miller draft. Her smile, particularly as Bruce Abbott's adorable and tragically tormented girlfriend in Re-Animator, stirs some genetic memory of women loved not out of psychological sickness, but emotional health — the kind of easy-going chick who makes you laugh, who's "one of the boys," like a Howard Hawks character. Glimpses of an enlightened society where gender is a personal trait rather than a determinator.
Alright, I'm getting a little metaphysical here. To bring it, quite literally, back home, I don't think it hurts that Ms. Crampton grew up in Vermont — that she might have gone to school with my mom, given they went to the same school at the same time in the same place. That she went on to Castleton, where so many of my friends went, where I spent at least one memorable night, a place that is still a landmark on drives to my mom's. Not long after, she found work in Re-Animator, a low-budget project that my dad — who could have grown up an hour's drive from her — excitedly showed me 17 years later. I've rarely seen my dad get the kind of giddy joy he still gets from "that scene" — in which a psychopathic doctor lowers his own severed head to attempt cunnilingus on the strapped-down, nude co-ed played by Ms. Crampton.
I feel personally connected to Ms. Crampton's work. I don't feel that way about any other female actor. I feel a similar personal connection to the male actors I love, too. But why are there so many more of those? Growing up, my dad — my gatekeeper to the world of movies — went on about female actors at least as much as the males. His knowledge of the former was twice as encyclopedic as the latter.
Regardless, I continue to eagerly devour Ms. Crampton's filmography, which, blessedly, continues to grow thanks to the reception of her "return" in You're Next. And I fill in the movie-less time appreciating her personality on Twitter, where she proves to be exactly the down-to-earth, thoughtful, compassionate, fun and funny person her acting suggests.
I'd be lying if I didn't say that casting Ms. Crampton in a movie is, probably, the ultimate goal of we expeditioners, beyond our commercial work at BENT Media. I'd love to see her in a role like the Baroness Meinster in the Hammer horror classic The Brides of Dracula (1960), a role that demands unsettlingly erratic variance between charm and terror, sternness and vulnerability, openness and distance, a character like a thread pulled so tight it could snap anytime — like Berenice Marlohe in Skyfall (2012). I think Ms. Crampton would be marvelous in that role.
But she's marvelous in any role. She's my favorite actress.