Saturday, November 3, 2007

Multiple Maniacs

     This is John Waters's second full-length feature film. It has much more of a story than his first film Mondo Trasho, but so do most TV commercials. Even John Waters himself admits that Mondo Trasho should have been one of his short films instead of a full-length movie.  

     Multiple Maniacs is the story of Lady Divine who runs Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversion. A freak show where one can enjoy puke-eaters, queers actually kissing on the lips, and a heroin addict going through withdrawal. Before the show is over, the people who run the cavalcade trap the customers in a net and rob them blind. All in a day's work for the always glamorous Lady Divine. Most of the actors used their real names (or their well-known pseudonyms) for the movie so it's not hard to guess who plays Lady Divine.

      Soon she gets bored with running the Cavalcade of Perversion and wants to kill people just for the hell of it. She finds out that her boyfriend Mr. David (David Lochary) is cheating with a Jean Harlow lookalike (Mary Vivian Pearce) and sets out to kill them both but gets raped by a few members of the Cavalcade that are high on inhalants.  During the rape, she has a religious vision and afterward is led into a church by a child (who the hell lent their child to be used in this kind of a movie?!?!) and gets fucked while there by a lesbian (Mink Stole) using her rosary beads as a means of sexual pleasure. After the rosary job, we see someone actually shooting heroin at the church altar.  John Waters always adored true shock value.  According to many sources, a crew member kept the priest occupied in the back office while all this blasphemy was being filmed in the church.

      Mr. David and Jean Harlow have now decided that the only way they can be together is to kill Lady Divine.  Jean Harlow (I don't even remember the character's name, but it wasn't important anyway) accidentally kills Divine's daughter Cookie and botches the whole thing. Eventually, everyone dies except Divine who has now been reduced to sheer insanity. 

      Just when things can't look any rosier, a giant lobster comes out of nowhere and rapes Divine. And I am not freaking kidding, an actual giant puppeteered lobster comes out of absolutely nowhere and rapes her.  This is definitely the last straw for Lady Divine and she takes to the streets like Godzilla in drag, destroying everything she sees. She's eventually hunted down by the military and gunned down in a hail of bullets. A completely shocking movie, but that's what makes it so totally awesome!

No comments: