John Waters's films inhabit a strange zone somewhere between pomo kitsch, straight-ahead exploitation cinema, and propaganda championing the cause of fringe-culture misfits. He has a streak of Frank Capra, the moralist and champion of the Little Guy, and a lot of the William Castle '50s-style hustler.
Waters's film Polyester, now released on laserdisc, brings together all the elements of his different sides. In Polyester, the late Divine plays a big and beautiful housewife who is driven to drink and despair by an abusive and adulterous husband, a heavy-metal bad-girl daughter, and a son who is a psycho foot fetishist wanted by the police. Divine, the mom and heroine of the film, is trying desperately to hold her family together, while maintaining something like the Leave It To Beaver image she has of family life. Of course she can't do it. Divine is a 300-pound guy in drag. He/she is the eternal optimist but also the eternal outsider, relentlessly stomped on by straight society (including her own mutant version of the nuclear family). Into all this mess, Waters tosses an avaricious mother-in-law and Tab Hunter, the black-and-white TV-era heart-throb who can still make the ladies purr just by smiling.
One element of Polyester that shows the real drive-in cinema roots of Waters's style isn't just in the film (or in this case, laserdisc). It's something you hold in your hand. Polyester uses a '50s-style B-movie gimmick that Waters invented especially for Polyester: Odorama. Really, Odorama is just a scratch-and-sniff card with scented numbers that correspond to numbers that appear on the screen. For instance, during the introduction (a scene set in a fake research lab where we are introduced to the wonders of Odorama technology), an allegedly German scientist sniffs a rose. As he does this, the number 1 flashes in the corner of the screen. When you scratch the corresponding number on your Odorama card, you smell a pleasant, rosy scent. Throughout the movie, whenever a character pauses to sniff something a new number flashes, and you can scratch away. Some of the smells are pleasant and innocuous. Some smells ... aren't. Voyager has lovingly reproduced copies of the original Odorama cards for this laserdisc package to give you the total Polyester experience. Also included in the package are a special audio track with Waters' commentary on the film and a selection of his briefer works, including his legendary "No Smoking" theatrical short.
So, will Divine survive and find love with hunky Tab? If Number One is roses, can Number Two really be the ghastly body emanation it seemed to be? Only those equipped with Odorama cards know for sure.
Polyester: US$49.95. The Voyager Co.: (800) 446 2001, +1 (212) 431 5199.
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