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A triple fowl decapitation inaugurates John Waters' 16mm freak pageant, with an eye for splendiferous decay in Baltimore circa '68-'69. ("A Dreamland Production," the titles announce over a garbage pail.) Mary Vivian Pearce bleached and leaning against a bus stop sign is from Warhol, Cinderella as Jean Harlow impersonator, at the park she delights in the attention of "The Shrimper" (John Leisenring). Divine arrives in a flurry of Mae West and Little Richard, post-Tashlin and post-Fellini in her brassiness, and runs over Pearce while ogling a bare-assed hitchhiker. Miracle at the laundromat, a smear of Titicut Follies. Margie Skidmore as the Virgin Mary with tin halo and Mink Stole doing a topless tap-dance are just two of the specialty acts along the way, though the great gambit remains the spastic aural design, an Anger-style jukebox churning with everything from Beethoven to Judy Garland to Chuck Berry. A free-floating, assaultive beast (the alarm siren and machine-gun rattle which kick off The Robins' "Riot in Cell Block #9" provide the motif), the soundtrack gradually incorporates slurping, barfing, oinking, and Divine's operatic timbre ("Oh Mary! Oh Holy Trinity! Oh God!"). The heroines flee the asylum and reach the office of Dr. Coathanger (David Lochary), the nurse in the blood-splattered apron ushers them in—Divine poses for tabloid cameras, Pearce has her ankles sawed off and replaced with oversized chicken feet, which she clicks for the Wizard of Oz punchline. Dyke? Hippie? Communist? Prostitute? Drag queen? "Some sort of intellectual. Probably a rimmer." A dry run for Waters' subsequent outlaw salvos, a healthy dose of excruciation. With Bob Skidmore, Berenica Cipcus, Mark Isherwood, and Susan Lowe. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |