Polyester

John Waters is truly a great director. I had seen Pink Flamingoes but not to much of his earlier work. I am more familiar with his later works like Serial Mom or Cecil B. Demented, which is all great stuff. Polyester is the bridge, as so many people put it, between his disgusting yet entertaining earlier work to more mainstream films like Hairspray.

Divine plays Francine Fishpaw. A rather large lady who is married to a man who owns a pornographic theater. Her son is a drug attic who loves to smash womens feet and her daughter is a wannabe Go-Go dancer who gets herself pregnant. Francine has only one friend in the world and that is Cuddles who is wonderfully played by Edith Massey. After Francine catches her husband sleeping with another woman (Mink Stole) Francine's life starts going into a downward spiral as she can't control her children and she becomes an alcoholic. Only, when she meets a man named Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter) do things start to change... or do they?

I had a grin on my face throughout the whole movie. The storyline sounds pretty depressing but only John Waters could have pulled this off and turn it into a complete comedy. Divine is right at home in her role as Francine. You truly do feel completely sorry for her. Edith Massey is excellent in the role as Cuddles and is definitely the most likable character in the whole movie. What made this movie so great for me was when this came out in theaters I was to young to see this. I just recently bought it on DVD and it comes with an actual Scratch N' Sniff card for the movie! Great stuff! This movie gets a 9/10 from me.

I remember seeing this the night it came out (God, was it really 22 years ago!). We all went down to a late night showing at the Cedar on the West Bank in Mpls., with about 4 hours worth of "feelgood" in us.

I was familiar with Waters' work, having seen PINK FLAMINGOS, and was ready for the "Odorama" cards handed out when you bought your ticket, but my "associates" were a bit mystified. It all led up to a very different & unique experience, which really hasn't been equaled since.

Basically, there were about 10 (numbered 1-10) scratch-n-sniff scents which were to be activated by you from the card when a flashing number appeared on the screen. They included a rotten egg smell for flatulence (somebody broke wind in the movie), along with a natural gas smell when a character stuck their head in an oven, among others. You get the idea. Anyway, it had the usual John Waters' cast of characters (Mink, Edith, Divine, etc.), along with the late, great Stiv Bators making his big-screen debut as (what else), a delinquent. Stiv pulls it off quite well, and everything else pretty much amounted to a fun show-going experience.

Not nearly as shocking as FLAMINGOS or FEMALE TROUBLE, but surely rent it if your into that sort of thing (a/k/a the pre-HAIRSPRAY Waters). I'm sure those "Odorama" cards are long gone, so you'll have to get creative on your own to replicate the experience that was "Odorama".

This later John Water's flick didn't have the same effect, grossness, punch, and ultimate filth of his earlier work, but it still is funny and suitable entertainment. The story of the Fishpaw family is a funny, polished satire of the corrupted and degenerately hypocritical world of the U.S suburb, but it's a mainstream movie, and a comedy, not a cult. The Fishpaws consist of Francine(christian mother and alcoholic, palyed by Divine), Dexter (shoe fetish and glue sniffer), cheating husband Elmer (runs a porn theater and cheats on Francine with Mink Stole, playing his cheap secretary Sandra) and slut daughter Lulu. Edith Massey is fabulous as Cuddles, she's better than Divine. Divine still is campy here, but not the godess of filth. A funny story of the Fishpaw family, centered around Francine, for whom nothing can go right and whose life is a tragedy. John Waters wrote and directed this mainstream, cleaned-up satire of the filthy suburbs supremely, but it lacks punch. Divine is too Christian and slapsticky, as the film is in general. This film was done with the Odorama process, in which when a number flashed on the screen you scratched your Odorams card on the matching number and a disgusting or beautiful scent would emit from the card. This is an interesting gimmick, and even though it's not reproduced on home video, you can tell what the smell would be because of the numbers still on the film and the imagery on screen at the time. An interesting but mainstream John Waters movie, which he wrote superbly.

After several years of crudely made, crudely funny films such as PINK FLAMINGOS, director John Waters graduated to a somewhat more sophisticated style, and POLYESTER has a comparatively (note the word: comparatively) subtle script, cinematography that doesn't shake, sets and props that don't actually look like they were salvaged from the local junkyard, and even a mainstream star: 1950s matinée idol Tab Hunter.

The story concerns the extremely dysfunctional Fishpaw family. Husband Elmer is in the porno movie business; daughter Lu-Lu is a mindless teenage slut with a nasty boyfriend; son Dexter is wanted by the law for a sexual fixation that leads him to stomp women's feet! And then there is the mother, poor Francine, extra large and utterly at sea, hoping against hope for middle class respectability in the midst of it all.

Tab Hunter (who is even more of a stud here than in his earlier pretty-boy days) romancing female-impersonator Divine is a major draw, and there is enough hilarity--ranging from a nun-enforced hayride for single pregnant women during a rainstorm to a black gospel singer who hijacks a bus to chase down a juvenile delinquent--to keep the show rolling, and the satirical edge is often quite effective.

Even so, POLYESTER lacks the same shock appeal that made Water's earlier work so entertaining--and it is a tremendous pity that we can't experience the film in its original "ODORAMA." Recommended, but primarily for Waters fans interested in seeing him in his transitional phase.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This must be one of the worst efforts in moviemaking I have ever seen, and also one of the funniest.

The story of Francine Fishpaw (played by transvestite Divine), the good Christian "wife" of a porntheater owner and how she became an alcoholic is told in such a bad and tasteless way that it became funny to watch. It really made me think of movies made by Ed Wood: so incredibly bad that they must become cult-classics. The timing in the movie amounts to nothing. There is no dicernable structure to be seen for miles around. The plottwists are too ludicrous for words. But it was all made with a lot of love and that is something that counts.

The sets on the other hand have been crafted in such a perfect obnoxious American suburban way that they made me shiver. The same thing counts for the costume design, absolutely fantastically horrible, all that Polyester.

At least John Waters in consistent in one aspect of the film: everybody is a lousy actor. There is absolutely nobody in this cast that can even remotely put on a decent performance. Edith Massey in particular is absolutely too horrible to watch. If only Joaquin Phoenix were old enough at the time, he would have played the role of Dexter Fishpaw to perfection, but he would have been too good for this cast.

The is the perfect exhibition of obnoxiousness and a great satire of American moral values.

7/10