Mary Vivian Pearce Movies
America's leading titan of bad taste, John Waters, returns to X-rated territory (well, actually NC-17-rated territory, but you get the idea) for this wildly over-the-top comedy. Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman) is a wife and mother living in Baltimore who, along with her husband Vaughn (Chris Isaak) and mother Big Ethel (Suzanne Shepherd), operates a local convenience store. One day, Sylvia receives a sharp blow to the head, which leaves her with a concussion. However, the concussion comes with an unexpected side effect -- Sylvia has suddenly become a sex addict, and is soon attended to by the perverse and lascivious sexual evangelist Ray-Ray (Johnny Knoxville). When it becomes evident that Vaughn can't keep up with her sensual appetites, Sylvia throws herself into the strange netherworld of Baltimore's community of erotic overachievers, which includes her daughter Caprice (Selma Blair), who is living a double life as über-buxom exotic entertainer Ursula Udders. A Dirty Shame also features supporting performances from Waters regulars Patricia Hearst, Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce, Channing Wilroy, and Jean Hill. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville, (more)
Iconoclastic satirist John Waters bites the hand that (periodically) feeds him in this humorous look at the underside of the film industry. Self-styled guerrilla filmmaker Cecil (Stephen Dorff) leads a Baltimore movie-making collective/street gang called the Sprocket Holes, which includes Cecil's girlfriend and frequent leading lady, a low-rent porn actress named Cherish Oh Lordy (Alicia Witt). Desperate for attention, they kidnap famous Hollywood actress Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith) during a Baltimore publicity stop and force her at gunpoint to star in their latest production, Raving Beauty. Before long, Honey comes down with a severe case of Stockholm syndrome and joins the Sprocket Holes in their bid to destroy the mainstream film industry. Waters regulars Ricki Lake, Patty Hearst, and Mink Stole highlight the supporting cast, and techno star Moby contributes to the soundtrack. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorff, (more)
A documentary profile of filmmaker John Waters, Divine Trash focuses on the bad-taste pioneer's early years, especially his 1972 breakthrough Pink Flamingos, which turned the director of Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs into the king of midnight movies thanks to word of mouth about the film's gleeful taboo-bashing -- and a distribution deal with the fledgling New Line Cinema. Interviews with filmmakers who both influenced Waters (Paul Morrissey, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Mike Kuchar, George Kuchar) and were influenced by him (Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch, David O. Russell, Hal Hartley) are interspersed with copious behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Pink Flamingos, including the infamous doggy-doo scene. Through it all, the witty Waters provides commentary, recollections, and one-line quips. Pete Garey, owner of the film lab where Waters learned the technical side of moviemaking, recalls his first meetings with the youthful auteur. Mink Stole and other Dreamland Studios superstars reminisce about growing up in suburban Baltimore with Waters, who as a youngster loved car crashes, puppets, and clowns. The director's strait-laced parents reminisce about the financial support they provided for Pink Flamingos, which they have never seen. Neither has Frances Milstead, who looks back on the career of her late son, drag terrorist and Waters muse Divine. Divine and late "egg lady" Edith Massey crop up in various archival interviews and film clips. The man who played the "talking asshole" in Pink Flamingos also appears, albeit anonymously and disguised. Various film theorists and critics debate the merits and meaning of the Waters oeuvre, while Baltimore critic Don Walls and former Maryland film censor Mary Avara express their incredulity about the director's success. Divine Trash won the Filmmakers Trophy for Best Documentary at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Director Steve Yeager, a longtime friend of Waters, would go on to direct In Bad Taste: The John Waters Story and help Milstead write a book about her son. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Waters, Jeanine Basinger, (more)
Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) is the perfect suburban housewife and mother. She likes to cook, her home is immaculately clean, she's always well-groomed and cheerful, and she loves her husband Eugene (Sam Waterston) and her two children, Misty (Ricki Lake) and Chip (Matthew Lillard). There's just one problem with Beverly -- if you do anything to make someone in her family feel bad, you're dead meat on a stick. While she does a great job of hiding it, Beverly has a vicious and vengeful streak, and when she's not making obscene prank calls to the neighbors or bribing her garbagemen to save embarrassing items from her neighbors' trash, she's mowing down whoever would be so rude as to make her husband go into his office on a Saturday, break up with her daughter, or suggest that her son watches too many horror movies. Taking John Waters back to R-rated territory after the relatively sedate Hairspray and Cry Baby, Serial Mom captures a comfortable middle ground between Hollywood professionalism and Waters' subversive sense of humor, and Kathleen Turner has a field day as the sweet-on-the-outside, evil-on-the-inside Beverly. The supporting cast includes such Waters favorites as Patty Hearst, Traci Lords, Mink Stole, and Susan Lowe; Joan Rivers and Suzanne Somers appear as themselves, and all-female grunge-metal band L7 plays the all-female grunge-metal band Camel Toe. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterston, (more)
John Waters does a quirky spin on '50s nostalgia in Cry-Baby, his musical homage to Rebel Without a Cause and Romeo and Juliet. Set in Baltimore in 1954 at the birth of rock & roll, the film features Johnny Depp as Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker. Depp is pure charisma as a juvenile delinquent with a permanent tear slithering down his cheek, a reminder of his state-executed parents. In the depths of his despair appears goody-goody girl Allison (Amy Locane), who has a sexual crush on Cry-Baby. But Allison's Pat Boone-like boyfriend, Baldwin (Stephen E. Miller), the leader of the squares, is dead set against Cry-Baby and the rest of the juvenile delinquents and leads a revolt against them. In the resultant riot, the juvenile delinquents are blamed for the chaos, and Cry-Baby finds himself dispatched to reform school. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Johnny Depp, Amy Locane, (more)
Forever interested in the kitsch built into past eras, director John Waters chooses the TV dance show craze of the early '60s for his playful focus in Hairspray. Ricki Lake plays Tracy Turnblad, just one of several alliteratively named characters coming of age in 1962 Baltimore, where "The Corny Collins Show" is the most popular American Bandstand-type program, watched by hundreds of young dreamers each day after school. Being chosen to dance on it is the ultimate status symbol and every young girl's dream, and Tracy improbably wins a featured spot when she infiltrates a dance contest and makes a better impression than her favored rival, the catty Amber von Tussle (Colleen Fitzpatrick). Always able to have fun, even when she's being mocked by the jealous popular girls, Tracy wins the affections of Amber's boyfriend and soon begins leading a movement to integrate the dance show, which has previously featured blacks only in a once-weekly theme night. She is arrested following a demonstration at a local theme park owned by Amber's father (Sonny Bono), who subscribes to the same theory of race relations as "The Corny Collins Show." Tracy's adventures are also filtered through her loving but eccentric parents (Divine and Jerry Stiller) and involve a humorous cultural clash with pot-smoking beatniks (Ric Ocasek and Pia Zadora). ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ricki Lake, Michael St. Gerard, (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
- 1969
The first feature film directed by self-proclaimed "Prince of Puke" John Waters, this black-and-white, mostly silent comedy cost just 2000 dollars. Mondo Trasho looks its budget, but has some amusing moments as it tells the story of a woman (Mary Vivian Pearce) who has a very bad day. First, she is accosted in the park by a foot-fetishist who sucks her toes. When she runs away, she is hit by a car. The driver, played by 300-lb. transvestite Divine, lost control of the wheel while staring at a naked man (Mark Isherwood) hitch-hiking by the roadside. Divine takes Pearce along with her, shoplifting some clothes to dress her victim. Unfortunately, both women are kidnapped by a mad doctor (David Lochary) who amputates Pearce's feet, replacing them with those of a chicken. She eventually gets her feet back, gaining magical powers that let her click her heels like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz to escape her situation. Divine is not so lucky, however, and meets her doom in a muddy pigsty. Pearce materializes in downtown Baltimore, where elderly local women with beehive hairdos curse at her until she clicks her heels again and disappears. There isn't much here for casual viewers, as only die-hard Waters fans are likely to countenance the long stretches in which virtually nothing happens. A few laughs are to be had, but not enough to sustain interest, as Waters did not really hit his stride until Multiple Maniacs the following year. At its best, this very rough amateur film suggests interesting ways to tell a story without dialogue, as Waters uses evocative old trash-rock songs to advance the plot. At its worse, it's a bore, of interest to devotees and completists only. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1967
The movie with which future shock mega-star John Waters graduated to 16mm film, this third short from the "Prince of Puke" features a maniacal couple who kidnap young girls, forcing them to perform the titular duties before modeling themselves to death. Never shown commercially following it's two-evening run in a Baltimore church basement, Eat Your Make-Up remains one of the most sought-after films among Waters' die-hard fans. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 1966
The sophomore effort by John Waters and first collaboration between the director and legendary drag queen Divine, Roman Candles presents a random sampling of images relating to The Wizard of Oz, sex, drugs and religion. Set against an equally random sampling of audio bytes of radio advertisements, rock and roll music and a press conference with Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, Roman Candles was shot on black and white 8mm film and shown in public three times. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 1964
The freshman effort by future schlock and shock superstar John Waters, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket tells the bold tale of interracial romance during a time of heightened racial tensions. Shown only once in public, the black and white, seventeen-minute-long short features a surreal marriage between a white ballerina and a black man, conducted by a KKK priest and set on a rooftop with the Baltimore skyline as the backdrop. Featuring future Waters starlet Mary Vivien Pearce in her film debut. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
