Desperate Living

I LOVE THIS MOVIE. I have always been a big John Waters fan, and I think that this is definitely his early masterpiece. Polyester is without a doubt his later masterpiece, although Serial Mom contains some of the funniest stuff ever. But back to Desperate Living, I just can't get over this awesome awesome movie, which I saw for the first time last night. Although Pink Flamingos may be Waters most well known work, it seems almost as though Waters was practicing in comparison to this film, which is equally funny and shocking and sick to no end. The plot is better and more structured than Pink Flamingos, and as a whole the color scheme throughout is fantastic, especially Jean Hill in a sea green tutu with bright green makeup and bleach blonde hair. Queen Carlotta definitely has some amazing lines, and her stripping sessions with her henchmen are hysterical, but the best line in the movie has to go to magnificent Mink Stole, who in her sexual encounter with Grizelda moans, "If it was good enough for Gertrude Stein...!" Of special note is Waters homage to his personal childhood hero, the Wicked Queen from Snow White, as Mink Stole becomes the spitting image of the Queen as she prepares her rabies potion. Ahhh, Bliss!

John Waters never apologizes for his movies- and this one is both funny and disgusting. Mink Stole as the hysteric and Miss Edie as the queen are both off the wall good. Waters doesn't shy away from nudity- both male and female-- but it all works to make this a hilarious spoof.

DESPERATE LIVING is something of a transitional film for director Waters. It is a departure from his earlier works because it was the first of his films not to be produced by his Dreamland company, but by a limited partnership called Charm City Productions. It was also the first feature he made without his usual star, Divine, and therefore represents a departure from his usual story lines (which had previously served as vehicles for Divine). In this sense, it is a film that is more Waters' vision. The story and the execution of the film is far too grim, however. Waters' films work because the characters seem to enjoy themselves very much. But DESPERATE LIVING presents us with characters that simply seem miserable, and nothing else. The opening scenes are quite funny, though. Jean Hill's performance is particularly funny. From a moviegoers' standpoint, I prefer FEMALE TROUBLE highly over this film. I am somewhat baffled at the statement that DESPERATE LIVING is Waters' best film. I can see that it is his most technically advanced up to the time it was made, but surely FEMALE TROUBLE contains the funniest dialogue and performances. All in all, DESPERATE LIVING represents a pre-mainstream John Waters which is always an interesting experience. However, I would not reccomend it as highly as I would some of his other works.

It's hard for me to believe that there could be John Waters fans who know only his mainstream films. They're pretty good movies, don't get me wrong; but they walk meekly in the shadow cast by his amazing Trash Trio (this, FEMALE TROUBLE & PINK FLAMINGOS). This one is his all-time best, partly because of Divine's absence. Had he been available, he would not only have nabbed the Queen Carlotta role, but become the focus of every viewer's attention as he usually did. (Well, nobody cites FEMALE TROUBLE for the Donald Dasher character, right?) The way DESPERATE LIVING worked out, you finally get a chance to see how good Waters' other Dreamland divas really were; and they're very, very good. Fact, DESPERATE features some of the most inspired, OTT female acting ever featured in a movie, "trash" or otherwise.

Mink Stole is unbeLIEVABLE as Peggy Gravel; she seethes with constant neurotic dementia throughout. Her portrayal of misery to the power of ten is less overacting than it is finding the perfect pitch for the role, and making camp on the very spot. The movie-opening running tantrum she spews is one of the funniest things I've ever seen - every third or fourth word is shouted for maniacal emphasis ("The CHILDREN are having SEX!! Beth is PREGNANT!! And I NARROWLY escaped an ASSASSINATION attempt!!") Brilliant. But she's matched, step for weaving step, by Susan Lowe's unforgettable diesel-dyke Mole and the nonpareil Edith Massey as the evil Queen of the criminal shanty-kingdom, Mortville. (If you've never experienced Edith Massey, nothing I can say could possibly prepare you for her....unique...greatness. Let's just leave it at that, okay?) And that's not to discount the typically outre work by Mary Vivian Pearce - who plays her character as if she'd gotten lost on her way to the set of a Julie Andrews musical - or the CGI effect that is Miss Jean Hill. This assembly of female firepower results in one incredible movie that STILL has the power to make you squirt liquid out your nose in helpless laughter, Farrelly Brothers or no Farrelly Brothers. As a matter of fact, the more Waters' early assaults on good taste have become absorbed into mainstream entertainment, the better and more shocking his films look for it. When DESPERATE LIVING stood alone, one hardly knew what to make of it. Now that every lesser talent in show-biz is trying to finance a swimming pool by imitating the Waters touch, it's easy to see, and appreciate, who the innovator and true original is. When Waters made this movie, he was a pariah with nothing to lose...he knew better, but still didn't care. Thus, there's an intoxicating power and thrift-shop integrity to DESPERATE LIVING that none of the Johnny-come-latelies can approach, now that "bad taste" is boxoffice, and safe as milk. If you're gonna wallow in slime, then accept no substitutes, folks: demand DESPERATE LIVING.

All of John Waters' early films, beyond being purposefully shocking and repulsive, have this really tangible dirty, raunchy quality to them. They're movies with bad hygiene, like the porno movies whose actors have dirt under their fingernails or pimples in all the wrong places. Waters has a special gift for compiling the most disgusting items and the most disgusting combinations of items (lesbian glory holes, marshmallows and Cheez-its, egg-addicted 250-lb women, bleeding gums and French kissing, 'Surfin' Bird' and anal lip-syncing) for maximum effect, filming everything in grainy, artless 16mm with alternately wooden and over-the-top line-readings not dissimilar to the acting in a porno flick.

If you've seen Waters on television, he has a certain sophisticated charm to his wit, and perhaps a dirtier director wouldn't have the right sensibility to make films as authentically dirty as this one, or the discretion enough to choose performers as dirty-looking as Turkey Joe and Kenny Orye. The fact that Waters does not show any contempt or opinion about his subjects is important. He has this open, accepting non-judgmental affection for everyone in his films that makes the films themselves OF the filth they are depicting rather than simply about that filth, and he embraces those of notoriety and dubious character such as Patty Hearst and Liz Renay. He's subversive not by philosophy or decision, but by nature. Subversiveness for Waters means a good time. What distinguishes his work as "underground" rather than "exploitation" is that he celebrates the depravity and freakishness of his performers rather than exploiting.

Every single character in 'Desperate Living' is a sociopath, as it takes place primarily in a fairy-tale town called Mortville, to which housewife Peggy Gravel (Mike Stole) and her 300-lb black maid Grizelda (Jean Hill) flee after the latter murders Stole's husband by sitting on his face. Everyone in Mortville is trashy and, well, desperate, and there's a vivid pre-punk vibe here amongst psycho-dyke Mole, played by Susan Lowe, and others, and in the garish, tacky colors of the town's decor, which Waters reports was constructed entirely out of garbage with only one exception.

While I find Waters' 'Pink Flamingos' boring once the shocks become familiar, 'Desperate Living' is a fascinating movie to watch. It's probably Waters' most depraved and outrageous movie, and the funniest of his pre-'Polyester' movies. You get to see the hefty Jean Hill naked, rolling around in bed with Mink Stole, and you get to see Waters regular Edith Massey in all her snaggletoothed wonder as the wicked Queen Carlotta, being pleasured by one of her many leather-clad man-servants. You'll see this and, if nothing else, probably want to catalogue these bits to friends or show them the film, just to get a rise out of them.