Cinema: On the Old Camp Ground

"You know what the sheriff's doing back there?" asks a range hand as he watches the lawman dress in drag. "He thinks he's Mary Poppins." In addition to listening to such finely honed dialogue, interested moviegoers can watch Andy Warhol's merry band of junkies, faggots, transvestites and nymphomaniacs disporting themselves in the master's newest effort, Lonesome Cowboys. The idea was a camped-up Romeo and Juliet out West. Unfortunately, things get sort of confused, as they have a way of doing with Andy, and the result is a series of dreary, druggy improvisational harangues by such luminaries as Tom Hompertz, Joe Dallesandro and Viva!, the superest Warhol superstar of them all. Now that Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi have passed on, Viva! stands unrivaled as the screen's foremost purveyor of horror. By the simple expedient of removing her clothing, she can produce a sense of primordial terror several nightmares removed from any mad doctor's laboratory.