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| Covergirl is not an overlooked camp classic; it’s a tonal clusterfuck. |
One the surface, the Canadian-made Covergirl, about model Kit Paget (Irena Ferris) trying to break out from the pack to become a supermodel, naively entrusting her career to fast-talking entrepreneur T.C. Sloan (the late Jeff Conaway), seems like it could be an undiscovered camp classic. And it might have been were it made as a melodrama about an innocent getting used and abused as she climbs the ladder of success. But the makers Covergirl—director Jean-Claude Lord (Visiting Hours) and writer Charles Dennis (Finders Keepers)—chose a different approach: instead of delivering a bad drama filled with moments of unintentional comedy, á la The Oscar or Valley of the Dolls, they decided to make a lighthearted romp with moments of jarring drama.
Among Covergirl’s “humorous” moments: Sloan’s chauffeur Raoul’s (Al Maini) malapropisms (“What do you think he is? Liver chops?”); the revelation that swishy fashion designer Alton Cockridge (William Hutt) is a “closet heterosexual”; and Sloan installing an alarm on his refrigerator that goes off when Kit tries to get a piece of cake.
But then Kit is sexually assaulted by a photographer. Sloan rescues her but tells Kit to “leave it behind. You have to.” The next morning we’re back to wackiness. “Do you want some coffee?” asks Sloan’s maid Dessie (Sandi Ross, who spends most of her scenes cackling nonstop). “Oh, love it,” replies Kit. “Me, too,” Dessie says, flopping down in a chair. “Why don’t you make us some?”
Also, there’s a robot. Though this robot really can’t do much beyond delivering Sloan trays of drinks, making it about as useless as today’s domestic robots, it does sort of make Sloan has one as his company, Leisure 80, is a Sharper Image riff. At the same time, I couldn’t help being annoyed that a robot was brought into this story about the cut-throat world of modeling before cocaine.
Covergirl does offer a few thrills for fans of trash cinema. For starters, it’s ’80s as fuck, featuring plenty of over-the-top—and just plain godawful—fashions. Sex and nudity are scant, despite the whole movie having the glossy/tacky production design of a European softcore film, though it does include a full-front flash from Conaway that may not have been intentional. Something else Covergirl has in common with Eurosex films of the day is much of its dialog sounds post-dubbed.
But this is also a
movie where a catfight inadvertently becomes a foam party, as can happen when a
five-gallon jar of bath salts gets knocked into a jacuzzi, only to have the scene’s
spontaneous frivolity doused when one of Kit’s model friends, Tessa (Cathie Shirriff),
rushes in to announce another character’s suicide. The partying crowd, wet and
covered in suds, is immediately silent. Is this dramatic, or just part of the
joke? The makers of Covergirl don’t know, either.
