Reflections on ... Polyester (1981)

From the Facebook event page:

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specializing in the kitsch, the cult and the queer! For the final cinema club of 2018 (on Wednesday 19 December), let’s wind things down with a crowd-pleaser – John Water’s delirious 1981 black comedy Polyester!

A parody of 1950s “women’s pictures”, Polyester sees 300-pound drag monster / leading lady Divine cast against type (and giving one of his definitive performances) in a rare sympathetic role, as long-suffering suburban housewife Francine Fishpaw! It’s an apt choice for last film of 2018 for two reasons: 2018 represented the 100th anniversary of the birth of beloved punk granny Edith Massey (1918 –1984) and Polyester represents her last appearance in a John Waters film. And dreamboat leading man Tab Hunter (1931 – 2018) died earlier this year. 

Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt. Arrive early to grab a seat and order a drink! We can accommodate 30 people maximum. First come, first serve! Note that Fontaine’s Christmas cocktail menu will be available, and the featured cocktail of the night is hot buttered rum!

IMDb’s synopsis: “A suburban housewife's world falls apart when she finds that her pornographer husband is serially unfaithful to her, her daughter is pregnant, and her son is suspected of being the foot-fetishist who's been breaking local women's feet.”

/ Divine as Francine Fishpaw /

A twisted black comedy incorporating divorce, abortion, adultery, alcoholism, foot fetishism, pornography and Christian fundamentalism – Polyester truly has it all! In fact, I’d argue Polyester may be Sultan of Sleaze / The Peoples’ Pervert John Water’s most underrated film. (I won't lie: we had a disappointingly low turn-out for this screening, in fact – which ended the year on a bit of a downer!). I’ve cobbled together below some thoughts, reflections and fun factoids based on my introduction to the film at the December 2018 Lobotomy Room cinema club.

Polyester was filmed over three weeks in October 1979. From the opening shot, the setting is notably posher: the affluent, leafy suburbs of Baltimore this time rather than the gutters, slums and trailer parks featured in Waters’ earlier cinematic atrocities.

In terms of Waters’ filmography, Polyester comes after dystopian lesbian-punk nightmare Desperate Living (1977). There followed a lengthy gap until he made Hairspray in 1988. Polyester can be viewed as a transitional film between Waters’ ultra-raunchy earlier shockers and the relatively more polished and accessible bigger-budgeted films from Hairspray onward. Polyester was the first Waters film to receive an R rating (all his previous ones were slapped with an X).

Obviously, at Fontaine’s we watched Polyester sans the scratch-and-sniff Odorama cards (the original William Castle-inspired gimmick Waters used to promote the film with in 1981). It hardly mattered – Polyester is wildly enjoyable without them. (Trivia: for insurance reasons, Waters was obligated to prove that if anyone ate an Odorama card they wouldn’t die!).

Last time we saw Divine in a Waters film, she was screaming hideously while being electrocuted at the grisly conclusion of Female Trouble (1974). The tone of Polyester is radically different, lovingly referencing and emulating the deluxe 1950s melodramas of Hollywood maestro Douglas Sirk (it plays like a gleefully perverse soap opera) and offers him a rare sympathetic role compared to the monstrous likes of Babs Johnson in Pink Flamingos or Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble. Clad in a wardrobe of garish muumuus and resembling Liz Taylor at her most zaftig, here Divine is long-suffering, much-abused and taken-for-granted 44-year old housewife and mother Francine Fishpaw (“I’m a good Christian woman!”) and he is simply magnificent. Divine never “phoned-in” a performance in his life, but his depiction of Francine’s anguished descent into alcoholism and nervous collapse is an acting tour de force.

Polyester’s heroine Francine is tormented by her dysfunctional family. She is mortified by her sleazy husband Elmer’s hardcore porn cinema. (On the local TV news, a female protester screams, “His theatre caters to sex offenders!” “All the neighborhood women spit at me when I’m at the shopping mall!” Francine wails. “You wouldn’t be at the shopping mall if it wasn’t for my theatre!” Elmer argues). Elmer calls Francine “a fat hunk of cellulite!” and is also brazenly cheating on her with his secretary Sandra (Waters regular Mink Stole, wearing her hair in Bo Derek-inspired cornrow braids, who says things like, “Children would only get in the way of our erotic lifestyle!”). Sexpot teenage daughter Lulu is out of control – and pregnant.  (In the context of Douglas Sirk films, bad girl Lulu in her spray-on Spandex wardrobe and blow-dried Farrah Fawcet hairstyle is in the lineage of Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind (1956) or Susan Kohner in Imitation of Life (1959)). Lulu aspires to be a go-go dancer. “You dance lewdly for the boys at lunch period?!” Francine demands. “For a quarter I will!” Meanwhile, Francine’s cruel harridan mother LaRue heaps abuse on her for her advanced avoirdupois while pilfering money from her purse. And most worryingly, Francine’s profoundly troubled delinquent son Dexter just may be the Baltimore Foot Stomper!

/ Cuddles (Edith Massey) tries to cheer up Francine (Divine) /

On the plus side, the Fishpaw home is a nouveau riche paradise with powder-blue décor (“French provincial / they do their best to stay neutral …” as the title song puts it). Francine also finds solace in her friendship with Cuddles Kovinsky (Edith Massey), her simple-minded former housekeeper who’s inherited a fortune and reinvented herself as a high-society debutante. (LaRue is horrified by the childlike and cheerful Cuddles. “Your "best friend"? She was your cleaning lady, Francine! Are you that unpopular that you seek out the social company of your maid? She was a scrub woman! Give her carfare, a ham at Easter, but for God's sake, don't hang around with her!” When LaRue encounters Cuddles in Francine’s driveway, she struggles to find conversational common ground. “Scrubbed any interesting toilets lately?”). And just who is the handsome and enigmatic Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter) Francine keeps encountering?

/ "Read my lips: I love you ..." Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter) and Francine Fishpaw (Divine) /

Waters has pointed out that with the comparatively naturalistic make-up Divine wears in Polyester hiding his five o’clock shadow was a genuine dilemma. At one point, Elmer sneers that Francine is “the hairiest woman I have ever seen!”

For any punk fans, note that Bo-Bo Belsinger (the surly boyfriend of wild child Lulu) is played by Stiv Bators (1949 – 1990), feral frontman of Cleveland punk band Dead Boys.

The major coup for Waters here was luring erstwhile 1950s Hollywood dreamboat Tab Hunter to appear as Francine’s duplicitous love interest, Todd Tomorrow.  Long before Johnny Depp in Cry-Baby (1990) or Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom (1994), this was the first time an established mainstream Hollywood super star would deign to appear in a John Waters film. (Although it must be noted Hunter was considered washed-up at this stage). Hunter (then 48-years old, still devastatingly handsome and in full DILF mode – especially in his ruffled pink formal wear) proves a great sport, happily satirizing himself, and even has an onscreen love scene with Divine. (“Let me kiss away your DTs, honey … let’s make love, you sweet little thing!” Todd purrs to Francine).

An aside: Hunter’s participation in such a brazenly queer, campy film was brave considering he was then still firmly closeted. (He wouldn’t divulge his homosexuality until he released his 2005 autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star). He may have been a has-been, but Waters has pointed out Hunter didn’t come cheap - he could only afford Hunter’s services for one week. Hunter and Divine would re-team three years later for the comedy Lust in the Dust (1985) directed by Paul Bartel. (While not in the same league as a Waters film, the Spaghetti Western parody is worth catching). I have one anecdote about the sole occasion I encountered Hunter at The British Film Institute in 2015. He was then 83-years old and his devastatingly rugged good looks were still intact! Read it here.

/ Todd and Francine on their idyllic first date /

I inadvertently misled the audience about something in my introduction: I claimed the opening theme tune was composed by Chris Stein and Deborah Harry of Blondie – and sung by Bill Murray. That’s wrong! It’s Tab Hunter crooning the title song over the introductory credits. (“You know about abundant women / Well, this girl only aims to please / Outside there's a load of noisy neighbours / Upstairs there's a polyester squeeze”). Bill Murray in fact sings the tender ballad “The Best Thing” that soundtracks the romantic first date montage of Francine and Todd frolicking in soft focus. 

Hunter died on 8 July 2018, so this was Lobotomy Room’s end-of-year tribute to him. And 2018 represented the centenary of the birth of Edith Massey (she was born on 28 May 1918), so we celebrated her memory too. I venerate gap-toothed Massey as Waters’ maverick, naive “outsider actress” and punk rock granny. Polyester was Massey’s last appearance in a Waters film (she died aged 66 in 1984) and her performance as house cleaner-turned-socialite Cuddles Kovinsky is simply glorious and a worthy conclusion to her bizarre film career. I especially love Cuddles’ habit of randomly sprinkling high-toned French bon mots into her conversations. She describes Elmer’s mistress Sandra as “straight from the gutter! A regular fille de joie!” “Isn’t it ra sha sha?” she exclaims upon entering a fancy boutique. Later, she screeches at the shop assistant, “You’re a regular little cochon - and that means pig!” The scenes with Divine and Massey together can’t help but feel poignant in retrospect and offer some of Polyester’s highlights. What a lunatic, inspired comedy double-act these two were! The Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz for generations of queers, punks, misfits, drag queens and freaks! 

Further reading: 

Read my epic 2010 interview with John Waters here.

In August 2018 I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - here. 

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Next film club:

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specializing in the kitsch, the cult and the queer!

For the first Lobotomy Room film club of the New Year, let’s revel in some old-school pagan diva worship with Sudden Fear (1952) starring cinema’s bitch goddess extraordinaire (and eternal Lobotomy Room favourite) Joan Crawford! Wednesday 16 January 2019!

In the 1950s the perennially-fierce Crawford made a cycle of melodramas in which she played middle-aged women-in-peril tormented by younger lovers, including Autumn Leaves and Female on the Beach. All these films are genuinely great, but the zenith is lurid film noir thriller Sudden Fear in which Crawford is a wealthy San Francisco socialite menaced by the duplicitous Jack Palance and the pouty and perverse Gloria Grahame. (Bad girl Gloria Grahame and Joan Crawford in the same film?! You DON’T want to miss this!).

Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt! Event page.