Mondo Trasho (John Waters, 1969)

I'm currently having one of them inner conflicts with myself. Now, it's not exactly your classic battle between good and evil. It mostly has to do with how much I should share about my Mondo Trasho experience. On the one hand, I want to dive straight into the fishnet pantyhose that contain Mary Vivian Pearce's legs and feet, and swoosh around in them until I hit her overly buttered crumpet with a resounding thud. On the other–hand, that is–I would like to come across as somewhat normal for a change. You see, my imaginary psychiatrist has been telling me over the past couple of years to tone down the weirdness–embrace my inner square, if you will. Well, it's obvious that I haven't been listening to their advice, as my behaviour has only gotten stranger over the past couple of years. Hey, would you excuse me for a second? Yeah, I've gotta go do something... All right, now that that's taken care of, let's get down to brass fishnets, I mean, brass tacks. Oh, you wanna know what I did while I was away? Why aren't we nosy today. Well, if you must know, I just murdered my imaginary psychiatrist with a pair of scissors (for added drama, they were rustier than Jenna Elfman's unoiled foreskin). Don't worry, though, like I said, my shrink is imaginary; in other words, they didn't feel a thing. What can I say? I was getting tired of the way they kept making me feel guilty about my aesthetic point of view, so I eliminated them. Anyway, you heard right earlier when I uttered two of the sweetest words in the English language, "fishnet pantyhose." Just think, the tightly woven, diamond-shaped material is not only clinging against Mary Vivian Pearce's legs and feet, it's pressing against her consecrated lady parts right as we speak. Okay, maybe not "as we speak," as the movie was made some forty plus years ago. However, since time is irrelevant, her fishnet pantyhose, as far I'm concerned, will always be pushing firmly against her labia. Either way, my corporeal essence already feels like it has spent an eternity living inside her net of leggy desire.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, the first ten minutes of John Waters's feature length debut are as perfect as anything that has ever been created in the history of human existence.

High praise. But can you think of anything that can top the sight of Mary Vivian Pearce waiting for a bus in Baltimore while wearing fishnet pantyhose? You can't, can you? And you wanna know why? Because there is nothing that can top the sight of Mary Vivian Pearce waiting for a bus in Baltimore while wearing fishnet pantyhose. Add a foot fetishist, or was he a shoe fetishist? Add a properly motivated foot/shoe fetishist, a nondescript park bench, and the world's most seductively implemented leg cross to the mix, and we're talking titillation served up on a salty cracker.

Forgive me in advance if I fail to touch on any of the scenes that don't involve Mary Vivian Pearce sitting crossed-legged on a park bench. Though, you can't really blame me. I mean, nothing else tops the sight of the underrated Dreamlander wandering, or, in most cases, being dragged unconscious around Baltimore. Oh, and the less that is said about the film's opening scene, the better. If you must know, a man dressed as a medieval executioner clumsily hacks at chickens with an axe while "Jack The Ripper" by Link Wray and His Ray Men plays on the soundtrack.

Leaving her house wearing a pair of strappy heels, white satin short shorts, a black and white cowboy shirt (tucked in, clean and neat), and, of course, a not yet stained pair of fishnet pantyhose, Mary Vivian Pearce walks over to the bus stop. Exuding an electrifying brand of feminine energy, Mary Vivian, who's credited as "The Bombshell," lights a cigarette and straightens out the seams on the back of her fishnet pantyhose as she waits.

This, I thought to myself as she stood there waiting for her bus to arrive, should have been the whole movie. In fact, the marquee should have simply read: Mary Vivian Pearce Waits for a Bus, starring Mary Vivian Pearce. Seriously, what else could you possibly want in a movie? It's got drama (is her bus ever going to come?), it's got action (did I mention that she straightens out the seams on her fishnet pantyhose?), it's got fashion (I love tucked in cowboy shirts), it's sexy (hello? Mary Vivian Pearce is wearing hot pants in the middle of the day), it's got everything.

Unfortunately, that movie quickly ends when her bus finally decides to show up. But get this, an even better movie is about to start. As she is riding along, reading her book–which I'm sure was a real page turner–I kept thinking about the weather. Of course, I don't mean the weather outside. No, dummy, I'm talking about the weather inside Mary Vivian Pearce, 'cause damn, she looked hot. Later on, as she's walking through the park, you can't help but notice that someone or something is lurking in the trees. While their identity is shrouded in mystery, I can already tell that the person hiding in the woods represents off-kilter heterosexuality in its purest, most honest form.

Taking a break on a park bench, Mary Vivian Pearce rests her right leg on top of her left leg to form a cross-shaped mass of legginess, and begins to feed the insects that have started to congregate on the ground near her feet. After she's finished feeding the bugs, she starts to feed herself candy, when, all of a sudden, the Shrimper strikes! The what? The Shrimper (John Leisenring), a highly motivated foot and shoe fetishist. Grabbing her right foot–which makes sense, as it's the appendage doing the majority of the dangling, and, as most people know, a dangling appendage is a delicious appendage–the Shrimper begins to lavish her foot with a justifiably egregious amount of tongue-based praise. Recoiling in horror almost immediately, Mary Vivian Pearce quickly sizes up her new-found foot admirer and decides to let him have it.

Spooked by a judgmental passerby in pigtails pushing a baby carriage (licking a stranger's foot in public is perverted, yet squeezing an eight pound baby out of your vagina is considered normal?!?), Mary Vivian Pearce and the Shrimper relocate to a more secluded area to restart their foot and mouth affair in private. Lying down on a patch of leaves, the Shrimper gets reacquainted with the delicate contours of Mary Vivian Pearce's exquisite feet. As he's laying waste to her toes with a steady bombardment of gentle kisses and subtle caresses, Miss MVP imagines herself as Cinderella, which is a folk tale about a princely shoe fetishist who gets off on putting designer slippers on shrewish women with mannish feet.

Removing the leaves from her hair after the Shrimper is done with her feet (he just wanders off without saying a word), Mary Vivian Pearce staggers from the scene. Dazed and confused (the shrimper's saliva has no doubt started to congeal around her ankles), she wanders onto the road where she hit by a car being driven by none other than Divine (who was distracted by a naked man hitchhiking). Bloodied and badly injured, the blonde bombshell lies motionless in a ditch. What's this? The fabulous Divine is helping her? I'm sorry, but I'm just not used to the sight of Divine helping other people. At any rate, sporting a belly revealing, gold lame toreador outfit, Divine drags the wounded dame into the back seat of her convertible.

Get used to the sight of Divine carrying Mary's sexy body from place to place, because for the next forty minutes or so, that pretty much describes Mondo Trasho in one of them nutshell thingies.

I know what you're thinking: Where the hell is Mink Stole?!? I won't lie, spending time with Mary Vivian Pearce and her fishnet pantyhose-adorned legs and feet has been a real treat. However, as most people know, I'm a Mink Stole man. So where is she? Well, don't fret Mink fans. She plays three characters in the Mondo Trasho universe. Her first appearance occurs when Divine is trying to find some new duds for Miss Pearce to wear. Playing a homeless woman with dainty wrists, Mink Stole lies unconscious in an alleyway while Divine steals her shoes (I loved the way her body twitches ever so slightly as each shoe is forcibly removed from her feet).

Her second character is a fugitive mental patient who inadvertently gets Divine and Mary Vivian Pearce sent to an insane asylum. If you thought Mary Vivian Pearce looked yummy in fishnet pantyhose, you should see Mink Stole's topless, pantyhose-friendly, flapper-inspired loony bin dance number, it will melt your dog's face. The third Mink character is a gossipy woman who makes fun of Miss MVP and her mutant feet while waiting for a bus with another woman.

Mutant feet?!? Don't ask. You can ask me if I cried when Divine removes Mary Vivian Pearce's fishnet pantyhose in a laundromat. Well, did you? Yeah, I did. It was hard for me to watch Divine forcibly yank them off her lithe frame with little to no regard for how it might affect the deviants wallowing in the audience. The thought that there's virtually nothing pressing snugly against her uncrumpled clit caused me to curl up in a ball and start rocking back and forth like a lunatic who drools a lot. It didn't help matters that I began to mumble the fishnet pantyhose credo: "constriction mixed with ventilation" over and over again in the wonkiest German accent this side of Kaiserslautern as I swayed. The same thing would have happened to me had Susan Berman been forced to remove her fishnet pantyhose in Smithereens, a film that was way more punchy when it came to depicting a pair of fishnet pantyhose under duress in an urban environment.

While dragging you know who's lifeless corpse across Charm City, Divine is periodically visited by The Virgin Mary (Margie Skidmore). Appearing to Divine whenever she's in trouble, the virginal robe enthusiast helps Divine get out of a few jams here and there. These particular scenes are the noteworthy in that they're the only one's that feature audible dialogue. Yep, I'm afraid the film, for the most part, is dialogue-free. Which is weird, since John Waters' movies are usually famous for their outrageous dialogue (you'll have to wait until the end of the film to hear anything that matches the verbal wit of his later films).

The film's story is mostly told via John Waters' record collection. For example, when Mary Vivian Pearce is sitting on the park bench with her legs crossed, "Sitting in the Park" by Billy Stewart can be heard on the soundtrack, and when Divine and Mary Vivian bust out of the mental hospital, we hear "Riot in Cell Block #9" by The Robins. But make no mistake, this is a John Waters film that is shot in black and white and features very little dialogue. And if those things don't sound appealing to you, than I suggest you steer clear of this film, even if you're a fan of Desperate Living and Female Trouble. However, if you're a John Waters completist or happen to have a healthy obsession with women's feet, especially when they're encased in nylons, than by all means, check this flick out.

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Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974)

The demented soliloquy that is the sound of a car aerial being repeatedly thrashed against a supple, un-violated behind was something I unfortunately never experienced as a child (I was so freaking well-behaved). However, through the magic of inelegant cinema, I have since been able to witness this alternative child rearing technique first hand. Where, you might ask, did I find such a film that showed this irregular nurturing in action? Well, I saw it in Female Trouble (a.k.a. Rotten Mind, Rotten Face), John Waters' salacious ode to crime and beauty, that's where. One of the most educational and enlightening films about parenting I have ever had the pleasure of viewing with the seeing part of my face, this moralistic adventure through the disgusting mire that is city living mirrors my life almost exactly. For example, I, too, openly ate meat ball sandwiches in class; cut my daughter's umbilical cord by using my teeth; let my hippie husband breach my vagina with needle-nose pliers; and giggled my flabby hindquarters at a go-go bar. Wait a minute, none of these things happened to me. Talk about gross. I mean, meatballs? On a sandwich? Eww! Seriously though, tantamount to staring directly at some sort of mirror-like object, to see my values shamelessly spewed across the screen like they are in Female Trouble was liked being bathed in a vat of coagulated saliva. Now, the dewy contents of people's mouths invading your clogged pores may not be the most flattering way to describe the sensation of watching a film. But if you've seen the film from beginning to end multiple times like I have, then you know that it's the highest praise one can give. It sure beats the old, "I liked the movie. It was funny" routine.

The film diligently follows the unbalanced life of one Dawn Davenport: thief, stripper, waitress, single mother, prostitute, abused wife, disfigured super-model, liquid eyeliner addict, and mass murderer.

It might be hard to believe, but the reason she became all of those things can be attributed to the lack of cha-cha heels in her life. Her friends, Concetta (Cookie Mueller) and Chicklet (Susan Walsh), were warned as to what might happen if her parents failed to bestow her with cha-cha heels on Christmas morning, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise when Dawn flipped out when she discovered they weren't under the tree. Her father tried to tell her that "Nice girls don't wear cha-cha heels," but Dawn was so dead set on cha-cha heels, that she burst from her house in nothing but a puke green nightgown and never looked back. Of course, this leads her to partaking in all the activities I listed above.

The only positive thing to happen to her after the cha-cha heel incident was her acceptance as a regular customer at the exclusive Lipstick Beauty Salon (you have to go through a rigorous audition). Run by the dictatorial Donald and Donna Dasher, Dawn experiences a brief taste of happiness at the selective salon. Brief, because the Dasher's are making plans for Dawn, sinister plans.

There are a lot of things to overly praise about Female Trouble: the unpleasant sex, the bizarre outfits, and the unsavoury posturing. However, it's the outlandish dialogue that keeps me coming back for more, as John Waters' script features some of the most clever one-liners I've ever heard said aloud in a movie. And the quintet of Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, Mary Vivian Pearce and David Lochary are more than up for the demanding task of reciting it in the most exuberant manner possible.

One of the few films that I'll watch with the subtitles switched on, the dialogue is like listening to twisted poetry as spoken by an over rehearsed gaggle of drug addicts. Take, for example, the dinner party scene: the amount of sheer funniness in this segment never fails to bring a single tear to my urethra. A classic, not only in terms of comedy, but in terms of depicting humanity in an honest and forthright manner.

The legendary Divine is spectacular as the misguided Dawn Davenport, the world's most unfit mother. Playing an insolent teen and a grotesque freak in the same movie is one thing, but engaging in a sex scene with yourself on a dingy mattress on the side of the road has to be the pinnacle of high art. Oh, and call me slightly unhinged, but I think Divine has a timelessness about him. I mean, his face is quite appealing. Don't worry, when fantasizing, I try to imagine Divine's head in on Kirstie Alley's body circa 1991 ('92, if I'm feeling extra naughty).

I loved Mary Vivian Pearce and David Lochary's possessed enthusiasm as the sex-hating, beauty-loving Mr. and Mrs. Dasher. The brief exchange they have with one another as they're walking towards Davenport's ramshackle house was priceless; especially Pierce's nervousness over the prospect of rats gnawing on her brand new nylons.

Of course, as with all of John Waters' early films, it's the gorgeous Mink Stole who shines the brightest. Playing Dawn's fourteen year old daughter, Taffy Davenport, the sexy Mink repeatedly makes Meryl Streep look like a dishevelled whore through her unblinking industriousness.

Attacking Waters' dialogue like a ravenous beast, the way the refined actress hurls complaints and insults in this film was the equivalent of listening to a rogue scholar give a commencement speech on the wonders of crystal meth. The mere thought of Mink uttering her lines like a normal person makes me shudder.

Dressing Mink in little girl clothes was also a nice touch, as it causes your aroused state to doubt itself every time she'd stomp into the room. Anyway, Taffy Davenport is hands down the coolest movie character ever to be filmed rubbing Ketchup all over their chests while pretending to be in a car accident on a garbage dump-quality chesterfield.

Oh, and "I wouldn't suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls" is not only the greatest line ever to be uttered in a film, it's my new mantra.

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Desperate Living (John Waters, 1977)

The seemingly uncomplimentary worlds of feminine fascism, organized lesbianism, and hippie nudism clash like they've never clashed before in the uproarious Desperate Living, John Waters' genteel ode to societal decay and the problems that can arise while trying to muff dive in a dystopian morass of your own making. Taking the borderline distasteful banquet of tainted meat and deformed potatoes the demented writer-director severed us in his previous ventures, Baltimore's most uncontaminated resident has dipped his latest cinematic nugget in a steaming cauldron of rabid bat pus, and sprinkled it with a hint rat urine. On the threshold of engaging in a full-on giddy fit on a number of occasions, this has to be one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Sure, the characters that populate the world of Mortville, a dilapidated refuge for murders, nondescript scumbags, well-kept nudists, pie merchants, and lesbian wrestlers with excess facial moles, aren't exactly the most pleasant people to spend ninety minutes with. However, in my well-balanced mind, they represented the best and brightest the humanity have to offer.

The words and sentences these folks utter at the top of their lungs had me fumbling to retrieve the lacy contents my niminy-piminy lingerie collection and caused me to repeatedly roll around in a slimy heap of uncooked shellfish in an odd, yet rational celebration of its sheer wrongness. Yep, it was that funny. I mean, self-castration has never been rendered this humourous before.

The story of Desperate Living follows the on the lam adventures of professional neurotic Peggy Gravel and her alcoholic, Tampax-shielding housemaid Grizelda Brown after they kill Peggy's husband (Peggy knocks him unconscious, Grizelda asphyxiates him with her extremely large ass).

After a vexing run-in with a perverted motorcycle cop (the sight of the randy policeman writhing on the leafy ground while wearing both Peggy's and Grizelda's incompatible panties–along with his own panties–was strangely relatable), the fugitives find themselves in the aforementioned town of Mortville. Where they end up rooming with Mole, a surly dyke, and her bosomy girlfriend, Muffy (Liz Renay), and living under the tyrannical rule of one Queen Carlotta.

Protected by her platoon of gay bikers not on acid (leather-clad sycophants who give her sexual gratification at the drop of a hat), the pudgy monarch (played to the hilt of madness by Edith Massey) is randomly cruel and has a tight grip on the town. Nevertheless, there are signs of weakness. Specifically in the form of Princess Coo-Coo (a sexy, even with rabies, Mary Vivian Pearce), who's dating of a garbage man/nudist causes the Queen much anguish. Now, I'm no pundit, but this bit of family strife could start a revolution in Mortville.

The film is slathered in wonderfully diseased dialogue from start to finish, and who better to recite this dialogue than Mink Stole. I mean, I can't think of anyone I would rather watch go completely berserk over the simplest thing than Miss Mink. Her brazen turn as the mentally askew Peggy Gravel solidifies my opinion that she is the most accomplished actress in the history of cinematic filthiness.

Sporting an unexplained leg brace (which I constantly pictured resting atop my right shoulder as I gingerly defiled her aura) and her trademark gorgeousness (she looked like a catalogue model with stringy hair), Mink circumnavigates the bawdy and disgusting realm of Mortville with a breathtaking ease.

Seriously, the transition she makes from a puritanical housewife who hates nature to a hydrophobia producing fascist brought little bits of yellow matter custard to my eyes. Breathtaking ease aside, it was actually her pre-Mortville tirade that impressed me the most; as it's a thing of unhinged beauty.

Coming in second in the diseased dialogue department is the fearless Susan Lowe as Mole McHenry (a.k.a. Rastlin' Rita). Covered in moles and boasting an unflattering haircut (even by raging butch standards), Miss Lowe chews up Waters' unbalanced prose and spits it all over the place. An inspiration not only to tempestuous dykes the world over, but an inspiration to us all. If only everyone shared her headstrong approach to life. So here's to Mole McHenry: Trailblazing visionary with a festering Barbie-doll crotch.

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