MULTIPLE MANIACS (Waters, 1970)
Criterion Collection, Blu-ray, Release Date Mar 21, 2017
Review by Christopher S. Long
(Listen, there are some plot spoilers
below. That's the least fucking offensive thing you're going to have
to worry about.)
From puke eating to hairy-armpit
licking to lobster rape (see below), “Multiple Maniacs” (1970)
epaters the unholy shit out of le bourgeois in every sacrilegious
(and sacrilicious) manner imaginable – and when the controlling
imagination belongs to writer-director
(producer-editor-cinematographer) John Waters, you can be sure that
no taboo will leave unviolated. Viewers may wind up feeling equally
violated; consider it a freebie included with the price of admission.
The film opens with Lady Divine's
Cavalcade of Perversions, a makeshift circus pitched by low-rent
carnival barker Mr. David (David Lochary) as “the sleaziest show on
earth” and guaranteed to feature performers who are “not actors,
not paid impostors, but real, actual filth!” The hapless local
rubes who can't resist a free show before lunch get treated to a show
starring the aforementioned puke eater and armpit lickers along with
a real heroin junkie going through withdrawal, and a particularly
delicate performance that induces the lucky onlookers to say, “Look
at her cunt... I can smell it all the way from over here.” It's
like “The Sound of Music” all over again. For the final act, the
attendees get robbed and murdered by the freaks – yet another
freebie. After that, the film starts to get a little gross,
eventually requiring the national guard to clean up the mess.
Waters most certainly pursued shock for
the sake of shock (what nobler goal?), but the film never feels like
a phony exercise in cheap provocation precisely because the cast is
populated with “real, actual filth.” Waters' Dreamland Players (a
sobriquet designated by fans many years later) may not have been
actual murderers or lobster fuckers (see below), but there was no
mistaking them for professional actors playing at being junkies and
freaks after months of careful field study – these were genuinely
devout perverts who congregated at the church of the Pope of Trash.
Most of the beloved players are here already in this pre-Flamingos
phase, the great David Lochary in his finest role (his delivery of
the line “I love you so fucking much, I could shit” is without
peer) with plenty of room left for Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pierce,
and Cookie Mueller to shine, by which I mean wallow in the sewer.
Plus the legendary Edith Massey makes her big screen debut.
Of course, the glorious, zaftig Lady
Divine presides over all of the filth. Introduced as a Rubenesque
nude in classic repose, clad only in a Liz Taylor wig, she will
slowly but most assuredly transform into a genuine movie monster, the
maniac of all maniacs. Divine snarls and threatens her way through
every encounter (though as a doting mom she couldn't be any prouder
of her slutty, drug-dealing daughter), inspiring either fanatical
devotion or abject terror in everyone who crosses her exceedingly
wide path, but universally acknowledged for her undeniable beauty and
elegance even by her mortal enemies.
In this feature-length cavalcade of
perversions, no spectacle is more morally repugnant than the sequence
in which a man is stripped, beaten with whips and chains, repeatedly
spat upon, then nailed to a crucifix and left to die. This grotesque
display, of course, is familiar to Catholics like John Waters and
yours truly as a Good Friday at Church, and his graphic staging of
the Stations of the Cross (with Edith Massey as the Virgin Mary,
natch) is a reminder that even the Pope of Trash can't outgross the
Holy Church. They tell this blood-spattered story to kids – every
damn year! The fact that Divine imagines said Stations while getting
an energetic rosary job from Mink Stole is, well, it's just the kind
of thing you have to see for yourself.
Divine's swath of pure rage, cut across
the sparsely-populated streets of Waters' beloved hometown of
Baltimore, can, as I'm sure you've already figured out, only lead to
one logical and inevitable endpoint - being raped by a giant
papier-mache lobster. The true genius of this magnificent scene, one
of the very greatest moments in all of American cinema, is that
Divine actually knows the name of her attacker and cries it out
during the throes of passion, “Lobstora!!!” Does this mean
they've dated before? It's almost inconceivable that John Waters had
to wait until 2017 to receive a career achievement award from the
Writer's Guild of America.
Thanks to the real, actual filth both
in front of and behind the camera, “Multiple Maniacs” traffics in
a brand of authenticity that speaks directly to the receptive viewer
and spills over the bounds of the safe, traditional narrative cinema.
But beyond the blasphemy (which sounds like a cable show John Waters
should host), “Multiple Maniacs” ultimately succeeds because it
is so clearly a labor of love, a film made by a group of friends
giddy at the prospect of making a movie together, eager to share
their world and maybe disrupt a few other worlds along the way. In
other words, they sure as shit look like they're having a lot of fun.
Still, you have to wonder about the
choice of a title. With the puke eating, lobster fucking (see above),
rosary insertions, Edith Massey, off-screen gerontophilia, heroin
shooting, and gang rape, it seems obvious that John Waters should
have called it... The Aristocrats!
Video:
Seriously, who the fuck ever expected
this to get a full digital restoration courtesy of Criterion? Waters
actually kept the original reversal of the 16mm film in his attic for
over twenty years – somehow it survived intact enough to wind up
looking pretty damn good after a restoration. In one scene, a
prominent bit of dirt couldn't be cleaned off, but does it really
matter? I don't recall being able to see the décor of Divine's home
in such detail before, including making out all the movie posters on
the wall. The film is presented in John Waters' preferred 1.66:1
aspect ratio.
Audio:
The LPCM mono track is reasonably
clear, at least relative to the limitations of the original
recording. Waters shot in a format that recorded the audio directly
onto the film, which leads to some abrupt audio cuts and also to some
audio dead space. It's all just fine. The eclectic music track sounds
a bit tinny but, again, seriously, I mean – this is getting a damn
Criterion release! Optional English subtitles support the English
audio.
Extras:
When “Multiple Maniacs” was first
announced for Criterion release, I hoped we would get some of Waters'
earlier films like “Eat Your Makeup” or “Mondo Trasho” as
extras. No dice. Perhaps the music clearance rights still render any
“official” releases unfeasible.
Fortunately, we get the most important
of all possible extras, a newly recorded (2016) commentary track by
John Waters. There are times when he clearly can't believe he
actually made certain choices, and at least one moment where he says
“Thank God my mother never saw this.” It's a wonderful
commentary, as you would expect.
We also get a collection of interviews
with some of the surviving Dreamland actors, including Mink Stole,
Pat Moran, Susan Lowe, Vincent Peranio, and George Figgs. This
32-minute collection, recorded in 2016 in Baltimore, includes fond
reminiscences about some of the departed Dreamlanders as well as
insider accounts of what it was like to work for John Waters, who is
generally depicted a rather exacting perfectionist on set. Lobstora's
budget is quoted at $37.50 by designer Peranio.
“The Stations of Filth” (10 min.)
is a short video essay by scholar Gary Needham, which combines
analysis with some trivia (Waters recently described this film as
“Rancid Strawberries” a la Bergman) and argues most persuasively
that the film should be understood as surreal rather than primarily
as camp, which is spot on.
The slim fold-out insert booklet
includes an essay by critic Linda Yablonsky.
Film Value:
I am proud of myself for resisting the
obvious line, “I love this movie so fucking much, I could shit.”
That would be way too on the nose. Which is why I would never write
it.
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