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.

THREADS (1984)

Well, if you're looking to get completely bummed out then look no further than THREADS. Originally aired on Sept. 23rd, 1984 on BBC Two, the first 40 minutes or so lulls the viewer in with the everyday life stories of a few people in Sheffield, England. Behind their stories, you see news reports and people talking about the growing hostilities between the US and Russia. Before long it's all people can talk about and there's a rush on stores.  Tensions flare. Known dissidents are rounded up by the police and jets fly constantly overhead. Then the bombs start falling and all Hell breaks loose.  Even though I knew it was coming I still found the nuclear destruction scenes to be very emotional.

Some of the main characters die or disappear during the chaos and the ones that are left are completely fucked. Radiation poison, nuclear winter, no food, sickness, lawlessness.  It's Hell on Earth. I'm not going to give it all away, but the story carries on into the nuclear winter that follows the war and it's just shit on top of shit the entire way. No happy ending for these poor bastards.

Told in a very dry documentary-style THREADS is a total bummer, but you can't pulls your eyes away from the screen.  The entire thing was masterfully done.  It's an unforgettable experience.  In fact, I wish somebody would make a THREADS television series! If done properly, it would be awesome!  (Or how about a show...hour long episodes.  Each episode about a different person.  Each episode tells the last hour or two of that persons life leading up to worldwide nuclear war.  Pretty much everybody dies at the end of each episode.  No connecting stories.  No cliffhanger endings.  Just story, then death and destruction.  The End.  Countless stories.  Most of the episodes would just end with a white light.  They never even knew what happened.  Or they would be at work.  Or at home.  Fucking.  Playing Scrabble.  Playing Scrabble while fucking.)

Highly recommended.  Double-feature it with WORLD WAR III or THE DAY AFTER.  If you need me, I'll be in my fallout shelter reading Robert McCammon's "Swan Song".