DESPERATE LIVING (1977) is the fifth feature film from John Waters, the one he did before dipping his toe in the mainstream with POLYESTER. Its opening – not counting the credits sequence showing a fancy place setting where a (real) fried rat is served and (fake) eaten – introduces us to Baltimore socialite Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole, NEIGHBOR), returned early from the mental hospital. Her husband Bosley (George Stover, WRESTLEMASSACRE) insists she’ll be fine, but she’s immediately throwing manic fits. When a kid accidentally hits a baseball through her window, for example, she believes it’s an attempt on her life, and is sure to squeeze the maximum amount of drama from it.

As we laugh at Stole’s crazed rantings, we can see the trick of Waters’ distinct brand of outrageousness. In reality (or realism) this would be incredibly sad. This poor mentally ill woman is detached from reality and in constant fear and mania. But the purposely stiff style of most of the acting and dialogue creates a distance for us and an appreciation for the fact that everyone in this world is an absolute mess.

There’s a sort of punk rock prankishness to it, a performative smashing of taboos that to me seems like the opposite of what we now call an edgelord. I suppose it had to be different at the time, but now it plays as more of a put-on, an agreement to be “offensive” but knowing that most of the audience will be in on the joke, even if we’d like to imagine there are piles of freshly fainted viewers out there somewhere. There are usually a few uptight characters in the movies who get to be flabbergasted by all the chaotic perversion. Peggy is a really good one – there’s a scene where she’s terrorized by an aggressive lesbian in a restroom poking her boobs at her through glory holes. Just like she always feared.

The Gravels have a Black maid named Grizelda (Jean Hill), who tries to calm Peggy, but to no avail. Also Bosley catches Grizelda in the kitchen chugging his liquor (understandable) and finds stolen property in her purse (his savings account book, his lottery ticket and two rolls of toilet paper). It’s hard not to be uncomfortable with movies depicting stereotypes like the thieving help, and it always sounds pathetic to excuse something like that by saying it’s an “equal opportunity offender” or whatever. But in this case, actually, yeah – Waters clearly loves Grizelda as much as he loves any of his anti-social freaks, and expects us to enjoy how much she pisses off Bosley, who starts ranting about “you people.” So it’s kind of like heavy metalers playing up the satanism shit for laughs. Promote the myth to make rich people squirm. Better lock up your toilet paper, richies.

But Bosley has bigger problems than getting robbed. When he’s trying to get Peggy to take her pills she cries out that he’s trying to kill her, so Grizelda beats him with a broom and sits on him until he suffocates. So the two ladies go on the lam. They quickly get spotted by a motorcycle cop (Turkey Joe) who instead of arresting them BAD LIEUTENANTs them. It’s another key Waters moment: the cop gets off by showing them that he’s wearing women’s underwear and stealing theirs, which in most movies might play as “ah ha, this cop is a degenerate pervert!,” but in a John Waters movie it’s more like “see, everybody’s a degenerate pervert.”

Since they give in to his demands he points them to Mortville, a messy, bizarre shantytown where fugitives can go to start their lives over. It’s a real hellhole, but in all fairness I should mention that in Mortville you can buy a slice of pie on the street for ten cents. We don’t have that in Seattle.

They rent a room from Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe), a butch lesbian whose girlfriend Muffy St. Jacques (Liz Renay, THE THRILL KILLERS) is “the most beautiful woman in Mortville” (one of a couple things that made me think this must’ve been an influence on Pee-wee’s Playhouse). Mole tells them (via flashback) that she was once a professional wrestler named Wrasslin’ Rita, with not only a more feminine look, but a giant vagina prosthetic on the outside of her leotards. Her career ended after she killed Big Jimmy Dong the Human Blockhead (H.C. Kliemisch) in the ring by poking one of his eyeballs out with a high heel and then squooshing it under her foot. An illegal move, I suppose.

Believing Muffy would rather have a man, she later goes to John Hopkins and demands a sex re-assignment surgery at knife point (“I want a dong and I want it now!” – “Okay, I’ll see what I can do, ma’am”) but her new equipment makes Muffy puke, so she snips it off with scissors and throws it outside, where it’s instantly eaten by a dog. This topic would be handled more delicately now, in my opinion. But it was a different time.

Muffy used to be an upper middle class wife, until that time the babysitter put her kid in the refrigerator and threw a party in her house. Muffy didn’t like that so she smothered her in a dog dish and then closed the car window on her husband’s neck and dragged him. The press calls her The Dog Food Killer.

Yeah, everyone’s a fuck up in Mortville, but the person you gotta fear is its ruler, Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey, from John Cougar Mellencamp’s “This Time” video). In a scenario that could never possibly happen today and is not at all comparable to anything we have ever experienced in our lives, she is a repulsive, deranged buffoon who corruptly rules the town only to enrich and glorify herself while abusing and humiliating everyone else. She lives in a palace with portraits of Manson, Hitler and Amin. Her police force is a gang of biker sex slaves who carry her from her throne to wherever else she wants to go. I choose to interpret this not as paralysis but as believing that walking is beneath her.

She has a rebellious daughter named Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce), who runs away to be with her garbage collector boyfriend Herbert (George Figgs), because she’s 38 years old and can love who she wants.

One great example of Carlotta’s leadership: she announces a “Backwards Day” when everyone has to walk backwards and wear their clothes Kriss Kross style all day or they will be executed. The Mortvillians hate it but go along with it. Then Carlotta gets paraded through town saying, “Hey, moron – you got your clothes on backwards!”

On his DVD commentary track Waters says, “This is also a political movie, certainly, about how ludicrous fascism is.” After some time as an outsider Peggy is eager to join up with Carlotta, telling her, “Dealing with poor people is a waste of time. Only the rich should be allowed to live!”

“I like your politics, Mrs. Gravel,” the Queen says. “And to tell the truth, I need a woman like yourself to follow in my footsteps.” So Peggy puts on a SNOW WHITE evil queen outfit and helps her with her plot to give everyone rabies. This backfires poetically when our heroes storm the castle (“Get out of my chambers, lesbians!” is the Queen’s response) and the now-rabid Princess Coo-Coo bites her mom on the leg. Cowardly Peggy tries to switch sides again, saying, “Oh, thank God you’ve rescued me!” but when they explain the horrible death they have planned for her (the most disturbing couple of seconds in the movie) she says, “Go ahead – a single gunshot can never destroy the beauty of fascism!”

The happy ending is that Mole declares Mortville a free city and they bring out the roasted body of Queen Carlotta for a victory feast. Everyone dances around cheering, the end. Pretty much the same ending as RETURN OF THE JEDI (and premiered in Baltimore the same week STAR WARS came out). Also pretty similar to FURY ROAD!

One thing that makes this one special is that it has a real sense of thrift store/school play style to it, a distinct John Waters aesthetic running parallel to the rise of punk rock. When Peggy and Grizelda are arrested the Queen says to “take them to our ugly experts” and they get a makeover where they’re wearing outlandish outfits and makeup that was supposed to look ridiculous but has aged into something different. The credited costume designer and makeup artist is Van Smith, who got his start doing Divine’s makeup for PINK FLAMINGOS.

Art director/set designer Vincent Peranio had to build Mortville out of scraps and garbage on a farm – it’s very ambitious for a low budget outsider movie like this. The set for the inside of Mole and Muffy’s apartment is particularly cool, with some of the kitschy furnishings clearly just painted on.

Living in Baltimore paid off for Peranio – he was later production designer for Homicide: Life On the Street and The Wire. Smith’s entire filmography is with Waters (FEMALE TROUBLE through A DIRTY SHAME) except for ON THE BLOCK and 7 episodes of Homicide.

I hereby certify John Waters an official True Original. In a way this is unrepresentative of his work, because it’s the only feature he made without Divine while Divine was alive. There wasn’t a falling out or anything – he was just busy doing a play called Women Behind Bars at the time. I would’ve assumed Queen Carlotta was the character he would’ve played, but reportedly it was Mole McHenry?

I’m not sure if many consider DESPERATE LIVING to be Waters’ best, but it’s a great one, and the one that seems the most timely right now. A trash fairy tale about lesbians, nudists and weirdos overthrowing the fascists. Somebody’s gotta do it.