Mondo Trasho

John Waters is often celebrated as the "Pope of Trash," a title bestowed by none other than William S. Burroughs—a man well-versed in the perplexing intersection of art and garbage. With Mondo Trasho, Waters plunges gleefully into that liminal space, creating a ragged, audacious spectacle set to a scratchy Sixties mixtape of novelty tunes and forgotten audio oddities. Thanks to music licensing issues, the film has yet to see a proper DVD release, preserving its underground mystique and frustrating its fans.

At the film’s chaotic heart is Mary Vivian Pearce, playing a retro blonde bombshell from the sleazier side of town. She boards a city bus while engrossed in Hollywood Babylon 2 (complete with Jayne Mansfield spilling out of her top on the cover), only to find herself in a surreal, unrelenting nightmare. A serene moment on a park bench, feeding raw hamburger to cockroaches, is shattered by a Charles Manson lookalike who gives her a "shrimp job." Yes, you read that right. This bizarre encounter escalates into a Cinderella fantasy, complete with cowgirl stepsisters and a raucous Prince Charming, before snapping back to grim reality. Dazed and traumatized, Pearce stumbles away—only to be hit by Divine, barreling down the street in a colossal convertible with fins as outrageous as her persona.

Divine, Waters’ muse and the embodiment of his camp aesthetic, takes center stage. She embarks on a gleeful shoplifting spree, robbing a corpse (played by Mink Stole) in an alley and eventually dragging Pearce, now a zombified shell of herself, to a laundromat. There, the Blessed Virgin appears in all her glory, sending Divine into a religious ecstasy. The dialogue is deliberately out of sync, a bold, low-budget choice that amplifies the surreal, chaotic energy of the scene. In Waters' world, precision is secondary to provocation.

As events spiral further into chaos, Divine and Pearce encounter "Dr. Coathanger," an abortionist whose blonde nurse is drenched in blood and vomit while wielding a cleaver with grim efficiency. Together, they transform Pearce’s feet into monstrous bird claws—a grotesque yet oddly poetic reflection of the film’s surrealist body horror. This strange act of transformation encapsulates Waters’ ability to meld the absurd with the grotesque, creating a visual language uniquely his own. The Dreamlanders are all here—Mink Stole, David Lochary, and Susan Lowe—bringing their singular energy to Waters’ no-budget fever dream, each performance as delightfully deranged as the next.

Beyond the shock and sleaze, Mondo Trasho serves as a scathing satire of social norms, a middle finger to the buttoned-up mores of polite society in 1969. Waters channels the countercultural zeitgeist, riffing on everything from The Wizard of Oz to Todd Browning’s Freaks, through a distinctly queer lens. Vietnam, Woodstock, Manson—it’s all in the background, a swirling maelstrom of cultural upheaval that adds an unsettling weight to the film’s anarchic glee.

What sets Waters apart, even in this early work, is his ability to turn the grotesque into a mirror for societal hypocrisy. The finale drives this point home with devastating precision. Transported Dorothy-style by clicking her bird heels, Pearce ends up in front of two Baltimore society matrons. They struggle to categorize her, covering their mouths as they whisper slurs, stereotypes, and derogatory labels, unwilling to be caught voicing their prejudice aloud. In Waters’ world, such polite duplicity is far more monstrous than any of the film’s grotesque transformations.

Mondo Trasho is more than trash; it’s a transgressive masterpiece of black comedy, a DIY dagger aimed at the heart of the status quo. Waters finds beauty in the bizarre, glory in the grotesque, and art in the absurd. For him, the line between art and garbage is nonexistent, and in this gloriously chaotic debut, he ensures that both gleam with equal brilliance.

Note: I can't really link the film here because of content restrictions. Below, however, I've embedded a clip of the ending. WARNING: Some Offensive language.

Trailer Mondo Trasho

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