John Waters came to the attention of many with his film Multiple Maniacs. Once seen, it is not a film that you can easily forget. Chock full of madness, excess and perversion it is a spectacle that you will not encounter again anytime soon. Multiple Maniacs has been around in various formats since its limited release in 1970 and is now the subject of a restoration and a Blu-Ray reissue courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
Lady Divine (Divine) is the head of the The Cavalcade of Perversion. It is a collective of the weird, the deviant and the borderline insane all found within the walls of their travelling tent show. Although perversion abounds the cavalcade is in fact a front for the gang to rip off unsuspecting customers who come to gawk at the attractions. Lady Divine finds out that her boyfriend Mr David (David Lochary) is seeing someone else behind her back. As she is planning her revenge Mr David has ideas of his own and is intent on killing Divine.
The film was made on a very tight budget of only $5000 which was borrowed from Waters parents. Interestingly they never saw the finished film as in Waters opinion it wasn’t something that his religious mother would totally approve of. The film is rough, there is no question of that . From the opening credits, which are a hand scrolled before the camera (replete with hastily added patches covering mistakes), through the first twenty minutes of the run time, the film does it’s best to disgust and alienate the audience. We are treated to the full spectacle that is the cavalcade of perversion ranging from junkies, homosexuals and freaks. The show reaches a climax with the introduction of Lady Divine herself.
Divine is a force of nature. She completely dominates the screen and is by far the most accomplished of all the actors. She has a real presence that overshadows almost everyone else. The only actors that come close are Mink Stole and David Lochary, both of whom are her love interest at some point in the film. Divine and Lochary have the best exchanges including one where they have a running argument for several minutes. The dialogue is peppered with profanities and witty asides that keep the audience entertained.
Religion plays an important part in the film. At one point Lady Divine takes refuge from the world in a church. While trying to reach dome sort of calmness she accidentally stars making out with another woman in the church (Mink Stole). As this scene plays out hit is inter-cut with Lady Divine recounting the story of the feeding of the five thousand. It is no coincidence that the man playing Jesus is the same one that is the heroin addict in the cavalcade of perversion. Add rosary beads into the mix as a sex aide and you get a sense of what John Waters thinks of Catholicism.
Waters his cast to the full effect. His regular collaborators known as The Dreamland troupe take on multiple roles in the production. Their acting skills vary wildly but you cannot fault their attitude and enthusiasm. The director uses all of his burgeoning talents to pull the whole thing together into something coherent. The opening scenes are impressive in their ambition leading to the director taking it upon himself to try to raise the bar in terms of spectacle in the rest of the film. To say that the finale is shocking is an understatement.
The Blu-ray release features a couple of very nice extras as is the norm with Criterion releases. There are several interviews with the original cast, an entertaining audio commentary from the director and an informative essays from critic Linda Yablonsky and Greg Needham.
Multiple Maniacs is out now on The Criterion Collection edition Blu-Ray.
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