Reflections on ... A Dirty Shame (2004)

“Her name is Caprice and she has shingles!”

“I’m sorry I spoke so harshly about your vagina this morning”

“I’m just a horny woman with a head injury.”

“What’s good about a morning with dildos in it?”

Recently watched: A Dirty Shame (2004) by John Waters. I hadn’t seen it in many years and my boyfriend Pal had never seen it, so I decided to re-visit A Dirty Shame, Prince of Puke John Waters’ last film to date (it bombed so comprehensively no one will finance another film. The budget was $15 million and it earned just $1.9 million at the box office).

I actually first saw A Dirty Shame in its brief UK theatrical release with my friends (and fellow Waters obsessives) Petra and Rob 14 years ago. I’d love to say it’s improved over time! The first thirty or forty minutes feel like a delirious, wildly enjoyable return to Waters’ gleefully trashy and perverse bad-taste prime. Tracey Ullman stars as Sylvia Stickles, a prim and frumpy middle-aged housewife in Baltimore’s suburban Harford Road. Chris Isaak is Vaughn, her sexually-frustrated husband (which stretches the imagination. Can you imagine being married to Chris Isaak and not regularly jumping his bones?). Selma Blair co-stars as their freakishly buxom bad girl go-go dancer daughter Caprice (stripper name: Ursula Udders), currently being held under house arrest after being charged with public indecency for the third time. (Her crimes include nude loitering and nude drunk driving. “I wasn’t drunk!” Caprice protests. “I was on pills!” Had A Dirty Shame been made in the seventies, Caprice would have been portrayed by Cookie Mueller). En route to work at the convenience store, the prudish Sylvia is concussed in a freak accident – and is transformed into a raving, insatiable nymphomaniac. (“My pussy is on fire!”). She joins forces with tow truck driver Ray-Ray (Johnny Knoxville), leader of the local sex addicts, to bring about a sexual revolution on Harford Road.

The pluses: some of the kinky dialogue is glorious. The sublime cast re-unites many of the familiar veteran faces from Waters’ movies, including Mink Stole, Alan J Wendl, Jean Hill, Mary Vivian Pearce and Ricki Lake.  Brilliant character actress Jackie Hoffman (aka Mamacita from Feud: Bette and Joan) crops-up as a masturbation addict and almost steals the whole film. The exquisite soundtrack – perhaps Waters’ best - encompasses rockabilly, rhythm and blues, surf instrumentals and obscure dirty novelty songs. Best of all, rubber-faced Ullman’s wildly game, fearless and juicy performance as perennially horny, hot-pool-of-woman need Sylvia makes you wish she and Waters got the chance to collaborate again.

The minuses: Waters had apparently read an article about how victims of head injuries often lose sexual inhibitions afterwards and he built a film around that single premise. So it’s a comedy about brain damage? It’s a one-joke film that rapidly runs out of steam and becomes a chore as it progresses.  The writing and direction fatally slackens, with characters being repeatedly hit on the head and chasing each other back and forth for no particular reason. By the end, it feels frantically, wearyingly and almost offensively unfunny. A Dirty Shame isn’t Waters’ worst film (that’s Cecil B Demented), but let’s hope he gets another chance to direct so that it isn’t his cinematic epitaph.

Further reading: read my epic 2010 interview with John Waters here