Edith Massey Movies
Even among John Waters' legendary cluster of freaks, misfits, pervs, and assorted miscreants, Edith Massey managed to stand out as a true original. Whether sucking eggs in a playpen in Pink Flamingos (1972), brandishing a whip as the vile Queen Carlotta in Desperate Living (1977), or teaming up with Divine as gal pals in Polyester (1981), Massey squished her own snaggle-toothed, benignly (and un-self-consciously) outrageous persona into each role she played, giving hope and inspiration to obsessive-compulsive grandmotherly fetishists everywhere.Born in 1918, Massey had already spent over five decades plying her wares as a B-girl, tap dancer, thrift store owner, and barmaid by the time she made the acquaintance of John Waters. According to legend, Waters met Massey when she was working as both a Baltimore barmaid and the owner of the thrift shop Edith's Shopping Bag, and was taken in by her particular brand of charm. He subsequently cast her in his 1970 Multiple Maniacs as (naturally) a barmaid and (perhaps not as naturally) Jesus Christ's mother. True cult celebrity followed for the portly actress in Waters' Pink Flamingos two years later. Revered and reviled as the most disgusting movie ever made, Flamingos featured Massey in fine and unforgettable form as Mama Edie the Egg Lady, Divine's playpen-bound, egg-sucking mother, a characterization made even more endearing by Massey's reported inability to remember her lines.
Further notoriety greeted Massey with her work in Waters' Female Trouble (1975) and Desperate Living (1977). The former saw her play Ida, a neighbor of Divine's who longs for her nephew to be gay and then disfigures Divine with acid when she marries the nephew, while the latter featured her as Queen Carlotta, the cretinous ruler of Mortville. Between the release of the two films, Massey was the star of her very own documentary, the aptly titled Love Letter to Edie (1975). A 15-minute short featuring reenactments of the actress' life and appearances by the likes of Waters and Mink Stole, it provided an appropriate prologue to Massey's subsequent stint as a singer. Following Desperate Living, she embarked on a nationwide tour, mainly performing covers of the likes of "Big Girls Don't Cry" and "Punks! Get Off the Grass!", with occasional back-up support by fellow Dreamland star Cookie Mueller. Although Massey's singing career didn't exactly blossom, it did land one of her covers on volume one of Rhino Records' The World's Worst Records. Following Desperate Living, Massey made her final Waters appearance in Polyester (1981), playing Cuddles Kovinsky, the sweet-natured and utterly oblivious best friend of hapless Baltimore housewife Francine Fishpaw (Divine). Before her death in 1984, the actress lent her talents to the virtually unseen Mutants in Paradise, a film whose title perfectly summed up Massey's distinctive career. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- 1988
A human test subject suffers a series of unfortunate accidents while trying to live his life. The film was released in 1988 but shot in 1984 -- hence the presence of John Waters mainstay Edith Massey, who died that year. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brad Greenquist, Anna Nicholas, (more)
After making a name for himself with such underground gross-out epics as Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living, director John Waters made a bid for somewhat wider acceptance with this black comedy, which is sedate only by the standards of his previous work. Francine Fishpaw (Divine) is a housewife whose life has become a living hell. Her husband Elmer (David Samson) runs a porno theater (currently showing the classic My Burning Bush) and is having an affair with secretary Sandra (Mink Stole), a vision of sleaze in Bo Derek-style cornrow braids who informs Elmer, "Children would only get in the way of our erotic lifestyle!" Francine has two teenage children, Dexter (Ken King), who likes to sniff glue and stomp on women's feet, and Lulu (Mary Garlington), a brazen slut who hangs out with overage juvenile delinquent Bobo (Stiv Bators) and gleefully anticipates her next abortion. Francine's best friend, Cuddles (Edith Massey), is a slightly insane heiress who is somehow convinced she's a debutante. Francine's life has become so miserable that her dog commits suicide rather than witness it, but a light appears on the horizon -- Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter), the handsome and dashing owner of a local drive-in specializing in art films (their current bill is a Margurerite Duras triple feature), with whom Dawn enters into a torrid affair. Subversive on all fronts, Polyester was originally shown in "Odorama" (patrons were given a card with ten scratch-and-sniff patches, to be smelled at key points in the action) and featured a romantic theme song sung by that new hitmaking duo, Deborah Harry and Bill Murray. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Divine, Tab Hunter, (more)
Divine was touring as a cabaret singer when director John Waters made this comedy of the grotesque, but he filled the void admirably with the equally rotund Jean Hill and burlesque-queen Liz Renay. The film tells the story of Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole), a mad housewife who kills her husband then goes on the lam with her 300-pound maid Grizelda (Hill). After being sexually accosted by a lewd, cross-dressing cop with gingivitis, the women are directed to Mortville, a shanty-town for fugitive criminals ruled by the evil Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey). Carlotta's daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce) wants to renounce the throne and marry a nudist garbageman, so the Queen has him killed and enlists Peggy's aid in infecting the kingdom with rabies. Waters uses a fairy-tale framework to indulge his penchant for nauseating set-pieces, such as a transsexual lesbian (Susan Lowe) having her new penis cut off with scissors and fed to a dog, women being fed live cockroaches, and Peggy being assaulted at a lesbian glory-hole. Massey is hilarious as the Queen, urging her leather-clad bodyguards/sex-toys to "rob my safety-deposit box!," but the oddly-named actor Turkey Joe steals the show in his brief role as a lecherous cop, spouting lines like "I love the feel of cold nylon on my big butt!" and slobbering over Grizelda's huge underpants. The pinnacle of gross-out humor, Desperate Living is Waters' strangest and funniest film. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liz Renay, Mink Stole, (more)
- 1975
A riotously funny bad-taste epic from director John Waters, Baltimore's "Prince of Puke," this sick classic tells the depraved life story of obese criminal Dawn Davenport (Divine), from her bad-girl youth as a go-go dancer on Baltimore's infamous Block to her death in the electric chair. Mink Stole is terrific as Dawn's bratty daughter Taffy, conceived following a romp on a junkyard mattress with a fat derelict in soiled underpants (also played by Divine). Mary Vivian Pearce and David Lochary co-star as crazed owners of a beauty-parlor who are convinced that "crime equals beauty," and they take Dawn under their wings, forcing her to mainline liquid eyeliner to enhance her appeal. Edith Massey steals the film as Dawn's obsessive neighbor, Ida, who wants her nephew to be gay (because heterosexuals lead "sick and boring lives") and throws acid in Dawn's face when she marries him. A hilariously appalling film, Female Trouble is just as disgusting and far funnier than Waters' previous Pink Flamingos, if not as notorious. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Divine, David Lochary, (more)
- 1972
Renegade filmmaker and noted aficionado of expressive bad taste John Waters exploded into international infamy with this darkly comic, no-budget parade of the perverse (his third feature film, and first in color), in which plus-size cross-dresser Divine stars as Babs Johnson, a flashy criminal on the lam from the FBI who is hiding out in a trailer outside of Baltimore, MD. Accompanying Babs are her mother (Edith Massey), an obese and dim-witted woman who is malignly obsessed with eggs; her degenerate son, Crackers (Danny Mills); and Cotton (Mary Vivian Pierce), Babs' duplicitous "traveling companion" and Crackers' co-conspirator in unwholesome erotic play. While Babs would prefer to be left in peace, she takes great pride in her status as "the Filthiest Person Alive" (an honor confirmed by one of America's sleazier tabloid newspapers), and when Connie and Raymond Marble (Mink Stole and David Lochary) announce their plans to take the title away from her, Babs is not about to stand idly by. The Marbles are a hateful couple who kidnap women, force their homosexual manservant, Channing (Channing Wilroy), to impregnate them, and sell the babies to lesbian couples found unfit for legal adoption; the Marbles then turn the profits back into pornography and narcotics trafficking. Impressive stuff, to be sure, but Babs is not about to take a back seat to anyone in a battle of filth, and when the Marbles throw down the gauntlet, Babs and her family retaliate in a no-holds-barred battle to determine who truly are "the Filthiest People Alive." Featuring murder, bestiality, rape, dismemberment, coprophagia, a dizzying variety of sexual perversions, and a performance of "Papa Oom Mow Mow" you will not soon forget, Pink Flamingos is nonetheless a comedy, and a surprisingly successful one; shot on a budget of only 12,000 dollars, the film has grossed close to ten million dollars around the world, and its success launched John Waters into a career as America's leading authority on poor taste. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Divine, David Lochary, (more)
- 1970
Another effort from notoriously tasteless duo John Waters and Divine, Multiple Maniacs finds heavyweight transvestite Divine as the maniacal head of a group of murderous kidnappers. Bent on ridding society of it's most boring element, suburbanites, Divine and company tour under the guise of Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversions, a not-so-elaborate ruse to lure in the most complacent element of the population and slaughter them en masse. Mesmerized by promises of "actual queers, kissing on the lips," and other such promises of lurid thrills, the plan works like a charm until a vicious love triangle leads to a risky plot to murder ringleader Divine. Despite their past, Divine's partner David (David Lochary) and scheming newcomer Mary Mary Vivian Pierce) plot to dispose of the murderous murderess just as Divine is planning to fire David. Enraged at the sudden turn of events, Divine hits the streets in anger only to find innovative uses for a rosary before being raped by a man in a dress and a giant lobster. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
