''Mondo Trasho'' is a 1969 American

16mm 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 mm and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, ...

mondo

black comedy film Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...

John Waters John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...

. The film stars

Divine Divinity (from Latin ) refers to the quality, presence, or nature of that which is divine—a term that, before the rise of monotheism, evoked a broad and dynamic field of sacred power. In the ancient world, divinity was not limited to a singl ...

, Mary Vivian Pearce,

David Lochary David Crawford Lochary (August 21, 1944 – July 29, 1977) was an American actor, one of the regular "Dreamlanders, Dreamlander" actors in early films of the controversial "trash" film director John Waters (filmmaker), John Waters. He starred in ...

and

Mink Stole Nancy Paine Stoll (born August 25, 1947), known professionally as Mink Stole, is an American actress from Baltimore, Maryland. She began her career working for director John Waters, and has appeared in all of his feature films to date (a distin ...

. It contains very little dialogue, the story being told mostly through musical cues.

Plot

After an introductory sequence during which chickens are beheaded on a chopping block, the main action begins. Platinum blond bombshell Mary Vivian Pearce begins her day by riding the bus and reading

Kenneth Anger Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927 – May 11, 2023) was an American Underground film, underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and writer. Working exclusively in short films, he produced almost 40 works beginning i ...

's '' Hollywood Babylon''. Bombshell is later seduced by a

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States and spread to dif ...

degenerate "shrimper" (

foot fetish Foot fetishism, also known as foot partialism or podophilia, is a pronounced sexual interest in feet. It is the most common form of sexual fetishism for otherwise non-sexual objects or body parts. Characteristics For a foot fetishist, points ...

ist), who starts molesting her feet while she fantasizes about being

Cinderella "Cinderella", or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a Folklore, folk tale with thousands of variants that are told throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. The protagonist is a you ...

. She is then hit by a car driven by

, a portly blonde who was trying to pick up an attractive

hitchhiker Hitchhiking (also known as thumbing, autostop or hitching) is a means of transportation that is gained by asking individuals, usually strangers, for a ride in their car or other vehicle. The ride is usually, but not always, free. Signaling ...

whom she imagines naked. Divine places Bombshell in the car and drives to a thrift store where she steals clothes for her and later steals shoes from a dead homeless woman. The Bombshell is then brought to a coin laundry where Divine cleans her face up with a wipe and changes her into the clothes she stole. Divine is then visited by the Blessed

Virgin Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, various titles such as Perpetual virginity ...

(Margie Skidmore)—during which Divine exclaims, "Oh Mary ... teach me to be Divine". Divine is then gifted a wheelchair by Mary which she uses to wheel the unconscious Bombshell around. When Divine returns to her car she is in shock to see that it has been stolen by a man in sunglasses. While trying to take a detour to the doctor's, Divine and the bombshell are then captured in a violent asylum. At the asylum, Divine is robbed of a cigarette and watches in disgust as topless tap dancer get sexually assaulted before Virgin Mary visits her again, this time giving her a hunting knife. After seeing the miracle, the inmates break out of the asylum and flee happily into Baltimore Divine finally takes the unconscious Bombshell to Dr. Coathanger and his dangerously ill nurse, who amputates her feet and replace them with bird-like monster feet which she can tap together to transport herself around Baltimore. Meanwhile Divine is interrogated by a reporter which she shows disdain to until the camera starts taking photos. She is then beaten by a member of the police, which leads to a gunfight between him and many bystanders. Divine throws a lamp at the police officer and wrestles with the officer until she kills him, she accidentally stabs herself in the stomach in the process. After Dr. Coathanger tries to abduct a high school girl, he drops the Bombshell and Divine in the woods but as she is about to succumb to her wounds, she is taken and "granted divinity," by Virgin Mary. The Bombshell then travels across Baltimore with her bird feet, which leads to her being mooned by greasers in an alley and being repeatedly insulted by two snobs.

Cast

Production

Depending on versions of the story; either Waters or the whole crew (except Divine) was either arrested or nearly arrested during production for illegally shooting a scene involving a nude

on the campus of

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

. However, according to contemporary newspaper accounts, only one person was immediately arrested, actor Mark P. Isherwood. Charged sometime later were John Waters, Nancy Stoll, David C. Lochary and Mary V. Pearce, all five for indecent exposure, but the charges were eventually dropped.

Title

The film's title refers to a series of semi-related quasi-

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

s that were popular during the 1960s: ''

Mondo Cane ''Mondo Cane'' (a somewhat coarse Italian expletive, literally ) is a 1962 Italian mondo documentary film and directed by the trio of Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, and Franco E. Prosperi, with narration by Stefano Sibaldi. The film ...

'', ''Mondo Freudo'', ''Mondo Bizarro'', etc. The title also pays tribute to '' Mondo Topless'', a film by one of Waters' favorite directors,

Russ Meyer Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American filmmaker. He was primarily known for writing and directing a successful series of sexploitation films featuring campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, wh ...

Music

Waters, in a 2008 interview, stated that the songs used in the film were taken right out of his own record collection. Waters says he did not pay the proper licensing fees to use these songs because he could not afford to. It is because of this, Waters says, that ''Mondo Trasho'' remains out of distribution, as the still-unsecured music rights would be too prohibitively expensive to clear.

Reception

Waters stated that upon ''Mondo Trasho's'' release, it received "some national attention," namely by

The Cockettes The Cockettes were an avant-garde psychedelic hippie theater group founded by Hibiscus (George Edgerly Harris III) in the fall of 1969 when Hibiscus lived in Kaliflower. The troupe was formed out of a group of hippie artists, men and women, who ...

who Divine performed with after the film's release. ''Mondo Trasho'' currently holds a 43% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, based on seven reviews.

Background

Waters himself has stated that he does not care for this movie. In an interview with British Film Institute Waters said it should have been a short film instead of a feature but was a feature-length due to being influenced by films such as Andy Warhol's experimental film ''

Sleep Sleep is a state of reduced mental and physical activity in which consciousness is altered and certain Sensory nervous system, sensory activity is inhibited. During sleep, there is a marked decrease in muscle activity and interactions with th ...

''.

Home media

The film was only produced in 1984 on a 95-minute R-rated VHS with hi-fi mono sound in black and white by Cinema Group Home Video. In an interview with the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on tour for his book release of ''Mr Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder'' (2019), Waters stated that ''Mondo Trasho'' would never get released again due to copyright issues with the music and that it would cost $1 million dollars just to secure rights for the music.

References

External links

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Dreamland Studios
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mondo Trasho 1969 films 1969 black comedy films 1960s satirical films American black comedy films American independent films American satirical films American black-and-white films Films about amputees Films directed by John Waters Films set in Baltimore Films shot in Baltimore 1969 directorial debut films Drag (entertainment)-related films 1960s English-language films 1960s American films Hippie films Marian apparitions in film Films produced by John Waters Films with screenplays by John Waters Cross-dressing in American films English-language black comedy films