I never in a million years could possibly conceive the idea that there would ever be a movie out there with Divine in it that I didn't love. Well, I found one... I'm very sad about this so bear with me. The truth is, I'm not totally sure what this film was about. I watched all 120 minutes of it desperately trying to tolerate an endless parade of stupid characters doing stupid things while waiting patiently for Divine's grand entrance. This is labeled a "crime drama" (with Divine?!) and is pretty hard to find now, I stumbled across it merely by chance. Imagine my excitement! Behold my disappointment!! Anyway, it's labeled a crime drama, but I never really figured out what exactly the crime was. It stars Lori Singer who stumbles around aimlessly, doing her best "Daryl Hannah in Splash" impersonation. The only difference is that she carries a baby around with her everywhere. She has a weird boyfriend that slowly gets weirder as the movie goes on. First, he starts wearing a new stiffly sprayed pompadour hairdo. Then the hairdo has color streaks. By the end of the film, he has pierced ears and full makeup (so 1980s). Throw in Kris Kristofferson and Keith Carradine as some sort of law-enforcing agents and there you have it.
Divine's screen time was minimal at best. He plays some kind of eccentric gay mob father. Snow white hair, a huge diamond earring, and a solid black suit. He was obviously placed in the film just because of who he was and the filmmakers were just trying to cash in on Divine's notoriety. Poor Divine though, I think he really wanted to be taken seriously as an actor for once and ended up just being taken advantage of. This was after Polyester but before Hairspray when Divine was finally starting to become a well-known entertainer. His cameo is brief and in the end, he gets shot in the head.
I can't really say that this was a movie that Divine would have eventually hated as would be expected (because it sucked), but at least he attempted to be taken seriously for once, even if it was just a cameo appearance. Had he not died shortly after Hairspray was released, he probably would have seen a tremendous increase in his stardom because Hairspray was a huge hit. Oh well, those are the breaks. Even though this movie was terrible, I still savored every single second that Divine left on film. For all the reputation he'd built up as an insane drag queen, everyone has always said that he was a delightful person who loved life, loved his friends, and was a joy to be around.
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