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Desperate Living (1977)

Dir: John Waters

Opening with one of the longest, most entertaining and delightfully melodramatic rants in film history "Desperate Living" starts as it means to go on. In your face, loud, crude, bizarre, twisted, warped and very clever.
The 'rantee' is one Peggy Gravel (a truly superb turn by Water's regular Mink Stole) a neurotic, hyperactive, paranoid crazy woman with a mean streak. A seemingly 'respectable suburban psychotic' that Waters writes so well. And as Peggy rants Waters delivers some of his best ever dialogue. It starts when the neighbourhood kids accidentally kick a ball through her window…"It's like war! Don't tell me I don't know about 'Nam"!!
Things get worse when she then finds her naked young Son and Daughter innocently playing at 'Doctors'…"The children are having sex"!! "Sodomites"!!! "You could be pregnant Beth"!

(Trivia Break: The boy playing Peggy's Son grew up to marry the Trash Princess herself Traci Lords!)

Peggy's coloured Maid, Grizelda (the titanic Jean Hill), tries to calm her down. But when Peggy's stuffy Husband, Bosley, catches Grizelda stealing the household booze, he tells her she is sacked and goes to calm Peggy down himself. Bad move!
As Bosley reaches out for her Peggy explodes again…"My skin crawls when you touch it! I could rip your lips off"! "You touched it, now my flesh is rotting! The touch of scum"!!
Fighting against her Husband Peggy calls out to Grizelda who promptly storms in and clonks Bosley on the head with a broom before smothering him to death with her 'plentiful' arse!
As Peggy shrieks at her Grizelda tells her how things are going to be…"I ain't your Maid anymore bitch! I'm your Sister in crime". A terrified Peggy simply whimpers "Oh please…don't sit on me".
And with that…they are on the run!

Driving out into the Country (which gives us a wonderfully paranoid speech by Peggy; "Look at these trees!! Stealing my oxygen"!!) they are stopped by a Cop (played by the fantastically monikered 'Turkey Joe') who proceeds to show them the red stockings and suspenders he's wearing!
In between feeling himself up, he tells them about 'Mortville' the town full of criminals, perverts, psychos and all those on society's edge. But he will only let them go if they shed their knickers, so he can wear them, and give him a kiss! A very wet and sloppy kiss!
It's a classic moment of warped Water's genius. And as the Cop writhes in pleasure on the ground, happily wearing their underwear, Peggy and Grizelda flee to 'Mortville'.

They discover that 'Mortville' is an amazingly ramshackle shantytown where the houses are made of bits of scrap wood, corrugated iron and cardboard! All around them is the underbelly of a fucked up society and Peggy's suburbanite skin is crawling!
At the far end of this garbage created village of the weird is the castle of Queen Carlotta (the ever wonderful and entertaining Edith Massey in one of her best ever roles) who rules over the denizens of 'Mortville' with a tyrannical fist with the help of her '70's Leather Boy' goons who double as her sexual slaves!

Carlotta also has a Daughter, Princess Coo-Coo, (another long term Water's player Mary Vivian Pearce) who does not want any part of he Mothers evil ways and instead wants to marry (against her Mother's wishes) her true love, the local Garbage Man ("Every piece of trash I had to pick up reminded me of you").

Peggy and Grizelda rent, with Peggy's lottery ticket, an outhouse room from rough, tough, butch Lesbian Mole (a delightfully hard as nails performance by another Waters constant Susan Lowe) and her trashily glamorous, bi-sexual girlfriend Muffy (the buxom and fun loving Liz 'Blackenstein' Renay. One time Hollywood player, gangsters Moll, stripper and prison resident whose life story would be perfect for a Waters movie itself!)

When the evil Queen Carlotta plans to spread rabies through the town (via a broth of rabid bat puss and rat piss!) and stop her wayward Daughter's attempt at happiness, all the players in this soap opera of grime come together to decide the fate of 'Mortville'………

By "Desperate Living" things were changing for the Waters's movie family.
The wonderful David Lochary, who just as much as Divine had become a mainstay of John Waters films and as vital a part to their success, had died from complications after taking 'Angel Dust' and it has to be said that his amazing presence and flamboyance are missed just as much in this film as they must have been missed by John and his friends.

Other things were on the change too. Although the budget had increased the market for such cult films had changed. As the 70's drew to a close the 'Midnight Movie Circuit', that had been the rock-bed for the success of earlier Waters films, was drying up and the business was changing.
So it was that "Desperate Living", the most ambitious of his films to date, did not have impact that something like "Pink Flamingos" had. But don't let this, or the fact that Lochary or Divine (who was doing a play at the time) are not in it, give you the idea that the warped and wonderful Lesbian soap-opera/Fairy Tale that is "Desperate Living" is not another John Waters gem…Because it most certainly is.

In this film, perhaps more than any other, Waters let his trademark dialogue of the outrageous carry the movie along. The above quotes are but a tiny sampling of the aural joy to be had.
Some of the best dialogue is given to the unique being that was Edith Massey.
No one on God's green Earth could deliver lines like Edith. And her wonderfully amateurish (in the purest most fantastic way) performance is the highlight of the film. And with Queen Carlotta she is given a meaty and substantial role to play with. Some of her best scenes are with her leather clad 'soldiers' who she picks to strip for her and pleasure her. Trash gems just pour from her mouth as they perform for her!
"Look at those balls"! "Oh, that love muscle! Whip it out! Show it to me hard"!
One of the men, tackle out, is made to bend over her lap so she can spank him…"Over my knee with that ass! This'll teach you to arouse Royalty"!!
"Oh yes! Strip! Let's see some private areas"!
And her screaming out of "Go Daddy go" as (in a jaw-dropping scene) she is 'serviced' in her huge bed is just heaven!
A great character performed by a truly great character.

And Mink Stole deserved an Oscar just for learning and delivering, in such a magnificent way, the pages and pages of dialogue (in one long, almost continuous take!) that opens the film. It's class. Simple as that.

My review of "Pink Flamingos" describes the overall acting in an early Water's film. And it will always apply. So here it is again…
A wonderful cast of friends and off the wall acquaintances deliver such bizarre and ragged performances that they go beyond any kind of negative criticism.
In no sense at all, in any traditional notion of what acting should be, are these performances 'good'.
But they are most certainly perfect! Perfect in every warped way. It's high camp done without any hint of self-conscious posing.
Throw every single negative remark you can about the performances and it does not matter. Most of them will be right, but in "Desperate Living", as in all his early work, this criticism means nothing! These actors and their performances swallow up such criticisms and make them pointless.

Renay is the Water's 'newbie' here. But she fits in as well as the regulars. Proof that Waters can sniff out those with a talent for trash. She's an ever happy extrovert, wicked self publicist and exhibitionist and uses all these charms to turn in a top class performance and gives it her all.

As always it's a team effort where great Waters cinema is concerned. And the set design by Vincent Peranio is a cut-price work of genius!
Literally using rubbish he created a visual treat with the crazy town of 'Mortville'. True trash art. But it does not stop there. The castle (again obviously wood and cardboard) is trash magic. Wildly out of scale with the inside sets (it's only about as high as 2 men) it's like a giant sized play set come to life complete with drawbridge and painted bricks. The aforementioned interior sets are also a joy. Be it the gaudy, garish over the top rooms of the Castle or the comical knocked-up garbage chic of Mole and Muffy's home.

And again, Van Smiths outrageous costumes are a ball!!

As we are swimming around in those early Waters (ha!) we are of course given a multitude of extreme and trashy delights.
And although "Desperate Living" contains nothing to compare with the most extreme content of "Pink Flamingos" it does give it its best go. And the aftermath of a sex change operation (and the hysterical penis appliance itself!) is a classic example of Waters's uncompromising attitude to trashy imagery.

And check out Water's hilarious Lesbian take on the Male toilet/Homosexual 'glory holes' in cubical partitions.

The aforementioned full frontal male strips and Queen Carlotta sex scenes are a sexual highlight but we are also given many other treats. Not least of which is the delightfully open sex sequence between an amorous Grizelda and Peggy!
As the huge Jean Hill paws at the slight (downright skinny even) Mink Stole and pushes her down between her legs ("Eat it" Eat it!") Waters show what most other Directors wouldn't. A big, big Woman sexing it up and given the same coverage as the slimmest of actresses. 'Trash' is not only a place where anything goes but where everyone is worshipped. No matter what the age, sex, size or sexual orientation…all are wonderful parts of the Waters Universe.

But it's actually a subtler scene that is the most unbelievable.
During the flashback to why Muffy is a wanted criminal, we are shown how she killed (by stuffing her face in dog food!) their drugged up partying baby for putting Muffy's child in the refrigerator!
And when I say in the refrigerator, I mean IN the refrigerator!
Renay opens the fridge door to reveal a startled baby.! Really shut in the fridge!
All was well, and the baby's Mother was on set, but just the image of a real child shoved on a shelf in a closed fridge is perhaps the pinnacle of Waters's bad taste….

Although not quite as 'fun' as some other Water's films (he has said himself it was his 'least joyous') "Desperate Living" is still a highly entertaining, clever, psychedelic, kitsch, perfectly acted, wonderfully scripted, deranged Trash treasure.
But perhaps it is best to end this review in the 'words' of Waters himself…So here are some more golden nuggets of dialogue……
"I'm so hungry I could eat cancer"!
"I've been working my ass off all day and you're in there fucking midgets"!
"Get away from me with that deformed worm"!
"You are the proud owner of Rabies"!
"Cut the sermons and give me my wang"!
"Seize her and fuck her"!
"I'm going to blow your bowels out"!
And the final word of course goes to dear Edith Massey: "Get out of my chambers Lesbians"!