MONDO TRASHO (1969)

This early John Waters' outing finds Mary Vivian Pearce getting her toes sucked in a public park while she dreams about Cinderella.  Afterwards, she's hit by a car driven by Divine.  Divine tosses the unconscious Pearce in her backseat and drives around town.  All kinds of crazy stuff happens including seeing the Virgin Mary in a pig pen, them being committed to an insane asylum and Pearce's feet being amputated and replaced with some kind of chicken feet that when clicked together give her the ability to teleport to different places around town.  The End.

I liked MONDO TRASHO, but at 95 minutes it's way too long.  It would have been much better at just half that time.  Wacky, off-the-wall stories like this are much better told quickly and without giving the audience a chance to think too much about what's going on.  With MONDO TRASHO the viewer has plenty of time to daydream.  Simple scenes go on and on without reason.  Example: the scenes showing Mary Vivian Pearce leaving her residence, waiting on the bus and then riding the bus before arriving at the park take from 2:45 to 7:23.  That's over 4 minutes of literally nothing!  No dialogue, no forward movement.  Nothing.  It's the opening scene of the movie (post-opening credits), so why not just start the film at the park!?  There's many unneeded scenes like this.  That said, I love early John Waters' stuff, so even watching Dreamlanders running around doing nothing is still interesting.

Crude B&W photography, Divine briefly out of drag, slow as molasses pace, crazy story that doesn't make a lick of sense, chickens murdered, a ridiculous amount of songs snipped and spliced together.  Worth a watch for fans of Waters, but most other people would probably be bored to tears. I would love to one day see a proper release with a John Waters audio commentary.

DESPERATE LIVING (1977)

"Men are such cunts."

Fresh out of the sanitarium, Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) keeps herself busy by running around wrecking her house and screaming down at the neighborhood kids with such timeless classics as "Go home to your mother! Doesn't she ever watch you? Tell her this isn't some communist day care center! Tell your mother I hate her! Tell your mother I hate you!!!" The insanity finally gets out of hand when Mink and her maid (Jean Hill) accidentally kill Mink's husband.  They go on the run and after being sexually assaulted by a cross dressing motorcycle cop (he was the highlight of the movie) they end up in Mortville, a disgusting shantytown ran by the psychotic Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey).  At the same time, Queen Carlotta is angry at her daughter Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce) for falling in love with the janitor of the local nudity colony.  Lots of other crazy shit happens including a disgusting sex change operation, backwards day, cannibalism, wrestling and little person fucking.

DESPERATE LIVING was the first feature-length film that John Waters did without Divine (due to scheduling issues) and, to me, that's just horrible.  My favorite thing about John Waters movies is the combination of Waters' skills as a filmmaker/writer and Divine's performances.  I love all of the other Dreamlanders (Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce, Cookie Mueller, etc.), but Divine is my favorite and his absence here is too much for me.  David Lochary's absence hurt also.

Even without Divine and David, DESPERATE LIVING is still a fun time.  Mink Stole's performance is amazing and main reason I occasionally revisit the film.  Tons of unattractive nudity, lots of insane screaming, sleazy looking sets (except for John Waters' parents house which is beautiful), a great starting pace that runs out of steam during the last act, an infant in a refrigerator and some hilarious quotable lines.  Recommended, but not required.

If you need me, I'll be sleeping in the room next to you...nakeeeedd!