Polyester

Director: John Waters, John Waters, John Waters, John Waters, John Waters, John Waters

1981 / 86min / 35mm

Having already exploited and exhausted every avenue of flagrant repulsiveness at a rather young age, Waters found a way to be still more objectionable by producing a full-blooded Sirkian melodrama. In her last appearance for Waters, Cookie cameos briefly as the victim of the Baltimore Foot Stomper, while the ever sublime Divine stars as Francine Fishpaw, a big-boned housewife who’s subjected to relentless humiliations by everyone in her family and social circle, believes for a brief moment she’s found redemption by way of a budding romance with arthouse drive-in impresario Tab Hunter, then finds herself facing still-deeper substrata of degradation. All of this, by the way, is very funny.