Film

Multiple Maniacs

Name: Multiple Maniacs
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Released: 1970
Cast: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Cookie Mueller

Crime
Strange

John Waters' 1970 debut is a gleefully transgressive assault of bad taste disguised as cinema. Shot in grainy black-and-white on Baltimore streets, it's less a narrative than a succession of obscene provocations: murder, sacrilege, bodily chaos. Divine—the 300-pound drag queen with the voice of a truck driver—is magnetic as a woman unraveling into violence. It's for people who think transgression can be funny, and who've never seen a film quite this unashamed.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like your transgressive comedy deliberately amateur, delighting in gross-out set pieces staged with a straight face and a cheerfully homemade sense of anarchy.

Skip it if you need polished production values or a tight story, since the budget shows in every frame and the plot is more excuse than engine for the excess.

What it asks of you: Expect a loose, episodic ride of about ninety-seven minutes, with scenes that lurch from crude to gleefully absurd and little interest in building suspense.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Hairspray1988

Waters' own masterpiece: all the transgressive joy with actual structure, heart, and Ricki Lake. A genuine musical about integration and teenage rebellion that somehow became a family film.

But If you're expecting Divine to carry the whole thing, she's here but not central. Also it's genuinely wholesome in places, which might feel like a betrayal.

Pink Flamingos1972

Waters at maximum provocation: Divine in a chicken-wire house, a famous coprophagia scene, and a plot about who's the filthiest person alive. Essential trash cinema that somehow became a cult classic.

But It's actively revolting. The final act involves real animals and things that will lodge in your brain forever. Not for the squeamish or the easily offended.

Pecker1998

Waters mellowing slightly but not much: a Baltimore art photographer whose trash-art wins galleries and critics. Funny, touching, with Edward Furlong at peak weirdness and Christina Ricci in drag.

But By Waters standards it's almost conventional. The heart is genuine, which some fans find suspicious. The family dynamics drag a bit.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Multiple Maniacs

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom1976

Both films believe that obscenity is a form of truth-telling, that good taste is complicity. But where Waters is gleeful, Pasolini is furious.

Pasolini's final film: transgression taken to the absolute limit, a philosophical argument about desire and power conducted through maximalist obscenity. It will change what you thought cinema could do or say.

But It's pornographic, scatological, and depicts real humiliation. Not controversial because it's edgy; controversial because it means it. Some things can't be unseen.

Cry-Baby1990

Waters remixes '50s melodrama and delinquent camp with Johnny Depp as a hilariously sultry bad boy, Ricki Lake again, and genuine affection for the era he's mocking. Hugely entertaining.

But It's his most mainstream movie by miles—almost a real musical. If you want transgression, it's been sanded down significantly.

Serial Mom1994

Kathleen Turner as a suburban psychopath who murders people for etiquette violations. Black comedy that gets genuinely vicious about American morality and the violence lurking in domesticity.

But The satire is pretty obvious. It builds to a thriller climax that mostly works but doesn't have the anarchic energy of Waters' earlier films.

A Dirty Shame2004

Waters' swansong as an agitator: a sex-comedy about a Baltimore neighborhood in permanent sexual awakening. Tracee Lords, Selma Blair, and a genuinely joyful attitude toward desire that's almost radical.

But It's often ugly and badly made. The gags don't always land and the structure is near-invisible. Waters was turning into an archivist by then.

Lust in the Dust1985

Divine in a Western parody with Tab Hunter, trying to find buried treasure in the desert. Less about plot than Divine's sheer presence—a movie where she gets to be glamorous and ridiculous simultaneously.

But It's technically not a Waters film (directed by Paul Bartel), and it shows—less vicious, more cute. The production values are actually too high.

Trash1970

Both find their subject matter in society's outcasts and shoot them with a love that society couldn't manage. Woodlawn and Divine were the same archetype: unwelcome, magnificent, irreplaceable.

Warhol's film of Holly Woodlawn in a garbage-filled apartment, shot in real time, doing almost nothing. It's heroin-addict cinema made by an addict, with tenderness underneath the degradation—art made from the people society had thrown away.

But It's nearly unwatchable: 110 minutes of a trans woman in squalor with minimal plot. Warhol's camera doesn't rescue or judge, it just watches. Some see that as honesty; others see indifference.