Short Takes: 'Covergirl' (1984) ★ ½

Covergirl is not an overlooked camp
classic; it’s a tonal clusterfuck.

On the surface, the Canadian-made Covergirl, about model Kit Paget (Irena Ferris) naively entrusting her career to fast-talking entrepreneur T.C. Sloan (the late Jeff Conaway) who vows to make her a supermodel and his bedmate, 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 to success. But the makers of 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 sense 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 some entertainment value. For starters, it’s ’80s as fuck, featuring plenty of over-the-top—and just plain godawful—fashions. Although the whole movie has the glossy/tacky production design of a European softcore film, sex and nudity are scant, though you do get a full-frontal flash from Conaway, which I certainly wasn't expecting (I don’t think the Taxi star was expecting so much exposure in the final cut, either). The acting, for the most part, never falls below OK, though several actors sound as if they were dubbed post-production. 

But the movie can’t overcome being a tonal clusterfuck. It’s 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.