Multiple Maniacs (Newly Restored!)
John Waters’ gloriously grotesque, unavailable-for-decades second feature Multiple Maniacs comes to theaters (fully restored!) at long last, replete with all manner of depravity – from robbery to murder to one of cinema’s most memorably blasphemous moments. Made on a shoestring budget in Baltimore, with Waters taking on nearly every technical task, this gleeful mockery of the peace-and-love ethos of its era features the Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling show put on by a troupe of misfits whose shocking proclivities are topped only by those of their leader: the glammer-than-glam, larger-than-life Divine, who’s out for blood after discovering her lover’s affair. Starring Waters’ beloved regular cast the Dreamlanders (including David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, and Cookie Mueller), Multiple Maniacs is an anarchist masterwork from an artist who has doggedly tested the limits of taste for decades.
“So few people have seen Multiple Maniacs (which was only ever issued on VHS) that its theatrical re-release, while inappropriately respectable, is still a welcome sight.” (A.V. Club)
“Multiple Maniacs is a demented comic opera of rage that looks forward, as few films of the time did, to the over-the-top hate culture we have today. It’s an amazing movie, funny and scandalous and terrifying, and it has now been dug up from the underground… Even many John Waters fans, those who know him from Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble or Polyester or Hairspray or Cry-Baby or Serial Mom, have never gotten the chance to experience Multiple Maniacs, and seeing it now is like hearing four very raw tracks that were never released off of “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.” The movie is a thrillingly primitive punk manifesto.” (Variety)
“For all its ostensible unpleasantness, Multiple Maniacs is cheapo, indie, queer American cinema at its most adversarial and thrillingly vicious.” (Globe & Mail)
“Waters’s legendary second feature, made in 1970, is back to show popular culture what punk provocation really looks like.” (NOW Toronto)
Monday, September 19
Doors 9:00 pm | Movie 9:30 pm
Tickets $10 advance HERE| $12 door
*Minors OK in the balcony! (Please note this film is rated 18A) Must be 19+ w/ ID for bar service.
**Groupons and passes OK! Please redeem at the door.
MULTIPLE MANIACS (John Waters, 1970 / The travelling sideshow ‘Lady Divine’s Cavalcade of Perversions’ is actually a front for a group of psychotic kidnappers, with Lady Divine herself the most vicious and depraved of all – but her life changes after she gets raped by a fifteen-foot lobster…
