John Waters

A talented young photographer, who enjoys snapping photos of his satirical, perverted Baltimore neighborhood and his wacky family, gets dragged into a world of pretentious artists from New York City and finds newfound fame.Read More »

Roger Ebert
August 18, 2000

My best guess is that John Waters produced the talent shows in his high school. There’s always been something cheerfully amateurish about his more personal films–a feeling that he and his friends have dreamed up a series of “skits” while hanging out together.

“Cecil B. Demented” takes this tendency to an almost unwatchable extreme, in a home movie that’s like a bunch of kids goofing off.Read More »

At the turn of the twentieth century, three Australian army lieutenants are court-martialed for alleged war crimes committed while fighting in South Africa. With no time to prepare, an Australian major, appointed as defense attorney, must prove that they were just following orders and are being made into political pawns by the British imperial command. Director Bruce Beresford garnered international acclaim for this riveting drama set during a dark period in his country’s colonial history, and featuring passionate performances by Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, and Jack Thompson; rugged cinematography by Donald McAlpine; and an Oscar-nominated script, based on true events.Read More »

A blood-stained cleaver, the hurried departure of a farm worker. A town with a lust for revenge…

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This Australian fox-and-hounds melodrama concerns an intensive manhunt for a suspected murderer. Polish immigrant Mark Gaweda is accused of killing a rancher’s wife. Heading the posse is police officer Wyn Roberts, who hopes that by catching Gaweda he’ll be able to live down an earlier tragedy caused by his negligence. John Waters, one of Roberts’ men, begins to believe in Gaweda’s innocence, and ends up defending the fugitive against his accusers.Read More »

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John Waters made bad taste perversely transcendent with the forever shocking counterculture sensation Pink Flamingos, his most infamous and daring cinematic transgression. Outré diva Divine is iconic as the wanted criminal hiding out with her family of degenerates in a trailer outside Baltimore while reveling in her tabloid notoriety as the “Filthiest Person Alive.” When a pair of sociopaths (Mink Stole and David Lochary) with a habit of kidnapping women in order to impregnate them attempt to challenge her title, Divine resolves to show them and the world the true meaning of the word “filth.” Incest, cannibalism, shrimping, and film history’s most legendary gross-out ending—Waters and his merry band of Dreamlanders leave no taboo unsmashed in this gleefully subversive ode to outsiderhood, in which camp spectacle and pitch-black satire are wielded in an all-out assault on respectability.Read More »

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A movie like Female Trouble (1974) could be most easily classified as a comedy, but that is selling it short. “Comedy” doesn’t capture the specific satiric edge, the desperate shout, the exaggerated depravity of this film. It’s a loud, abject, offensive, and joyful declaration of self-determination and identity in the face of a world that has no use for anyone outside the norm.Read More »

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Allison is a “square” good girl who has decided she wants to be bad and falls hard for Cry-Baby Walker, a Greaser (or “Drape” in John Waters parlance). Spoofing Elvis movies and Juvenile Delinquency scare films of the ’50s, this movie follows the adventures of Cry-Baby who, though he is sent to juvie, is determined to cross class (and taste) boundaries to get Allison back.Read More »

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For his first studio picture, filth maestro John Waters took advantage of his biggest budget yet to allow his muse Divine to sink his teeth into a role unlike any he had played before: Baltimore housewife Francine Fishpaw, a heroine worthy of a Douglas Sirk melodrama. Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine turns to the bottle as her life falls apart—until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow (vintage heartthrob Tab Hunter). Enhanced with Odorama™ technology that enables you to scratch and sniff along with Francine, Polyester is one of Waters’ most hilarious inventions, replete with stomach-churning smells, sadistic nuns, AA meetings, and foot stomping galore.Read More »