John Waters’s fledgling
full-length feature effort, 1969’s MONDO TRASHO, is a very odd duck of a movie
that even the writer/director’s fans may find a daunting work to sit through in one
straight shot, and I can totally understand why. It’s very crudely crafted — in
terms of artistic quality and realization, not just in terms of questionable
content — needs several editing and pacing problems addressed, and possesses
other aspects that irritate, but I have a very soft spot in my heart for it.
Simply put, it’s a bizarre head-on collision of film school-style pseudo-artsy
narrative and aural collage with the look and feel of a squalid fever dream.
Opening with a sequence of a
medieval executioner beheading a live chicken with an axe — a bit that, as far
as I can figure, has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual story — the
narrative proper (such as it is) commences with a tawdry-looking bleached blond
in fishnets and short-shorts (Mary Vivian Pearce, identified in the credits as
“the Bombshell”) strolls to the bus stop and rides the public conveyance to the
strains of the incongruously-employed “Pomp and Circumstance,” a tune that lets
the audience know it’s gazing upon a late-20th century avatar of
Venus-like beauty and regality. (Yeah, right. Sure, she’s kinda/sorta cute in a
trashy way, but come on…) Our heroine makes her way to a local Baltimore park
bench, where she feeds raw hamburger to scampering cockroaches (to the
accompaniment of Billy Stewart’s 1965 hit “Sitting in the Park”) while a
scurvy-looking longhair (Danny Mills) observes and stalks her from the nearby
bushes.
Seduction in the park.
Initially startled by the hippie’s attentions, the Bombshell soon finds
herself quite taken by the fellow’s dubious charms and apparently aphrodisiacal
foot-fetishism, allowing him to lead her deep into the woods near the park for
privacy, where she ends up on her back on the ground as she is seduced by the
hippie while he sensually kisses and sucks her feet. For her part in all of this,
the Bombshell is clearly transported upon the wings of pedally-induced sexual
ecstasy, moaning like a rusty door hinge as she fantasizes about being
Cinderella (complete with the cunty step-sisters and the hippie cast in the
role of Prince Charming).
But all good things must
eventually come to an end and the hippie, after having satisfied his own
selfish foot-related needs, fucks off into the unknown (to the tune of “See You
Later, Alligator”), leaving our heroine heartbroken and in a confused daze. She
staggers out of the woods, straight into the path of a joyriding Divine (the
now-legendary drag performer in her first feature film role) who, distracted by
her fantasy of a nude hitchhiker, backs her car over the Bombshell. Divine
throws the seriously injured Bombshell into the back seat of her convertible
and the pair embarks upon a trashy odyssey of petty larceny, a highly
questionable mental institution (after they are forcibly abducted off the
street by the institution’s staff), foot-replacement surgery performed by the
heroin-addicted “Doctor Coathanger” (David Lochary), religious visions and
visitations from the Virgin Mary (Margie Skidmore), death in a pig sty, and an
ending that absurdly harks back to Dorothy’s “there’s no place like home” bit
from THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Filmed on a budget that
probably wouldn’t get you a decent cheese sandwich even back when it was shot, the
grainy, black-and-white MONDO TRASHO reads like what would have happened if
David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD had been made as a comedy, only with no mutants and
monsters (unless one counts damned near the entire human cast). There’s
virtually no dialogue and the film relies on its imagery and soundtrack of
illegally appropriated music segments to tell its story. The soundtrack is the
key reason why the film is unlikely to ever again be released in a legitimate
home video format, thanks to Waters re-purposing snippets from dozens of old
pop songs — ranging from the 1930’s through the mid/late-1960’s — to serve as
the movie’s Greek chorus. The resulting effect is akin to being stuck in a room
with one’s demented grandfather as the old geezer incessantly plays around with
the dial on his battered radio, unsatisfied with any song he encounters and
changing the station after only a taste of any given tune is heard. That aspect
is one of the “flaws” that prevent less-hardy movie fans (I call them
“pussies”) from making it all the way through MONDO TRASHO without being driven
hopelessly mad.
Other sanity and
patience-shredding elements include the at times dodgy editing (several scenes
go on for far too long), often murky/terrible lighting, an idiotic and
aimlessly rambling plot, and an aesthetic/cinematic feel that makes the
audience feel like it’s been on a three-day binge involving heavy-duty Jamaican
cough syrup and Everclear, while chain-smoking one’s way through an entire
carton of unfiltered Marlboros. All of that is as it may be, but to me it all
adds up to an engrossing and occasionally hilarious live-action cartoon
nonsense odyssey that gene-splices a fairytale quest with an ultra-sleazy,
doped-up late-1960’s Baltimore hillbilly sensibility that just holds me
mesmerized.
Every filmmaker has to start
somewhere and it’s surprising to see so many of John Waters’s signature tropes
and themes already in place so early in his filmography. All would soon be
refined and perfected into what is now one of the most singular directorial
voices in American (and world) cinema, but the rough and messy birth of his oeuvre can be traced straight back to this scabrous little first feature-length flick.
And several of Waters’s soon-to-be-familiar repertory players are on hand for
this journey into aggressive weirdness/absurdity, including:
- Mary Vivian Pearce as our hapless heroine.
- Mink Stole as a tutued, topless, and merrily tap-dancing funny farm inmate.
- David Lochary as the most questionable of bargain basement surgeons.
- And the one and only Divine, who is of course at the epicenter of the narrative’s shitstorm, pitching overwrought histrionics and generally being as fat and delinquent as she wants to be. (Hey, the girl can’t help it.)
The one and only Divine, vamping it up.
Unavailable on DVD —
legally, that is — MONDO TRASHO is worth seeking out on VHS or via whatever
shady means you can obtain a hard copy (it’s available in its entirety on
YouTube) and it’s a must-see for students of Waters’s career, especially those
who are fucked-up out of their minds at Jesus o’clock in the morning and need
something to hold their attention in an effort to stave off imminent death via
alcohol and drug-related misadventure. That said, though possessing damned near
everything one could ask for from a movie — drama, romance/sex (sort of),
adventure, nudity, transvestites — it’s definitely not for all tastes and
certainly way tamer than the majority of the director’s subsequent efforts. A
wholly worthwhile curiosity.
Poster/flier from the original release.
