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Multiple Maniacs

Multiple Maniacs

1970
Comedy, Crime
1h 31m
The travelling sideshow 'Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversions' is actually a front for a group of psychotic kidnappers, with Lady Divine herself the most vicious and depraved of all - but her life changes after she gets raped by a fifteen-foot lobster... (imdb)
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Multiple Maniacs

1970
Comedy, Crime
1h 31m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 54.76% from 196 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(196)
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Rated 28 May 2013
59
36th
So wrong it almost becomes right again. The dialogue was surprisingly inspired at times, and the fact it's being mangled by some of the worst actors I've ever seen only makes it more amazing. I wasn't too impressed or blown away by the film until the scene where A GIANT, RAPIST LOBSTER comes out of goddamn nowhere and, well, does his thing. I think something broke in my brain at that moment and I knew I had to up my score significantly.
Rated 12 May 2008
78
49th
"I love you so f*** much, that i could shit!"
Rated 07 Jul 2014
67
88th
Sometimes, I almost feel like Divine and maybe Buster Keaton were the only truly great actors in all of cinema, ever.
Rated 24 Feb 2017
70
53rd
I'm always on the lookout for anything in a movie that'll give a lil tease of where it's going in the end and I just got bamboozled. Divine you diabolical
Rated 22 Aug 2017
70
52nd
A sloppy amateur mess, but that's part of its appeal. There's so many scenes that just stick with you, like the rosary beads scene, or the rape lobster, or the freak show, or...well, you get the picture. Divine is a national treasure.
Rated 05 Jun 2012
4
55th
Not as entrancingly filthy as the later works of Waters, but certain scenes are even better. The final 10 minutes & an encounter in some church pews stand out especially.
Rated 25 Oct 2015
70
46th
Okay I'm re-evaluating my thoughts on this film, having recently seen it in a 4K restoration looking so much better than once before. It's like Breathless for people who hated Breathless, a fun, manic, bombastic set of training wheels for Pink Flamingos that had scenes that lasted 5 minutes longer than they should have. Walking into that cinema being the only person who saw the film prior was surprising, honestly.
Rated 02 Jan 2012
87
90th
Divine having a religous/lesbian revelation, getting raped by a lobster and scaring the simple innocent citizens. That's all I need, really.
Rated 27 Dec 2010
75
82nd
Divine having a religous/lesbian revelation, getting raped by a lobster and scaring the simple innocent citizens. That's all I need, really.
Rated 07 Feb 2009
91
89th
https://letterboxd.com/ladyspiggott/film/multiple-maniacs/1/
Rated 07 Apr 2017
58
29th
Gene Simmons from Kiss and Har Mar Superstar play out the end of their love affair in different rooms until Har Mar gets turned into sausages and Gene gets raped by a lobster. I have no idea what the hell was supposed to be going on, apart from terrible acting and dialogue from Aaron Sorkin fuelled by all of the acid that has ever been produced. Weirdly entertaining for all that though.
Rated 04 May 2014
5
42nd
What separates Waters' movies from other exploitation movies is the simple fact that they're very funny. There's little his repertoire of actors and actresses won't do for him, and in Multiple Maniacs he uproots and mocks as many American social norms as he possibly can with a few thousand dollars and 82 minutes. This one isn't as slick or as consistently entertaining as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, but several scenes make it well worth watching. lmao @ Divine's revelation in the church.
Rated 13 Nov 2020
4
51st
Feels a bit long, but it's charming in parts
Rated 17 Feb 2017
75
55th
@Nişantaşı City's, !F Istanbul 2017 &Demet
Rated 09 Oct 2007
100
95th
Priceless. One of the best of John Waters's long series of funny, clever, utterly disgusting movies
Rated 13 Aug 2016
70
19th
Viewed August 11, 2016. There's something so beautiful about the way John Waters goes about this stuff - as a freakshow, it's more celebratory than it is exploitative. What I mean is, it's often shockingly poignant for something that has a scene where Mink Stole puts rosary beads in Divine's asshole. It's amateurish, yeah, but the delivery is so brazen and sure of itself that you hardly mind when most of the film ends up being out-of-focus.
Rated 25 Mar 2015
73
70th
"It was then that I realized that she was using her rosary as a tool of erotic pleasure!" And Edith Massey as the Virgin Mary... what more need one say? Utterly fabulous, satirizing every social convention and taboo Waters could think of.
Rated 07 Jan 2018
50
26th
Waters was independent when that actually meant something, and his early works are pure paracinema, rejecting all notions of propriety and good taste and glorifying alternative lifestyles, especially sexual ones. The problem with films like M.M though is that unless you are 'down with the cause', you are unlikely to strongly respond to them. Waters' sense of rebellion is juvenile, but the Lobstora scene and Divine's wild rampage through the streets of Baltimore save it from the scrapheap.
Rated 16 Feb 2017
78
67th
!f - City's.
Rated 03 Oct 2017
5
93rd
Behold a cavalcade of perversion: the dregs and degenerates on disgusting display, and most sickening of all, the moral superior and bourgeois elite who scoff and sneer. But they'll buy concessions. What a hilarious blast of a film, a bare and shameless exploitation of Americana sacrilege. A number of unbelievable and amazing sequences are contained herein: a circus sideshow, a religious awakening among the church pews, lobster rape, Divine on a Godzilla tear through the city.
Rated 07 Nov 2018
3
38th
On some level, the joy of a film like Multiple Maniacs is in its very existence. That Waters ultimately found the success he did is at least part luck, but one has the feeling that in any set of circumstances, he would've been compelled to realize his sordid, squalid, sickeningly funny visions of the dregs of American society on celluloid. The shagginess of this one is of course part of its charm, even if it's ultimately stretched a little bit thin. Worth watching for the church scene alone.
Rated 24 Jun 2021
75
80th
Waters employs most of his obsessions - flesh eating, murder of cops - in a mayhem of a film. Timeless anger, but also such of its time. No peace & love, as Divine threatens to frame her boyfriend for the Tate murder and gets killed in the end by US Army - not cops. When she is betrayed, it all goes to hell - Godzilla-style. Sequence where Divine is raped by strangers, finds Infant of Prague and gets "rosary job" from a stranger at a church is pure bliss. Teorema poster on the wall says it all.
Rated 11 Jan 2020
50
22nd
Bad, good, weird, normal, offensive, mundane. All these words lose their meaning when talking about Multiple Maniacs. It's no Pink Flamingos, but you can see many of the same ideas. What's impressive about Multiple Maniacs is its audacity. Some moments still shock, some are mundane thanks to smut peddlers like Waters. It's gratuitous, but that's the point.
Rated 03 Dec 2020
68
45th
I'm sure Waters gets better but not worth the hype probably the most insufferable people in the film community give these movies. I prefer a singular maniac don't need multiple
Rated 19 Feb 2024
80
87th
Just... extraordinary.
Rated 29 Oct 2021
83
74th
Big screen viewing, absolutely NO clue about John Waters, and no warning. Waltzed into the theater an innocent babe-in-the-woods and came out no-longer-innocent, what-the-fuck-did-I-just-watch stunned. I still haven't a clue (okay I have some clue) but if Waters' aim was to create an art film out of what mainstream society finds perverse, then by-golly this has to be one of his finest achievements and a masterpiece.
Rated 28 Jul 2023
69
35th
Quite outdated with its presentation of "shock" and "filth" at the beginning (oh my, two men making out, how unorthodox), but the film soon devolves into some more genuine moments of shock, in particular the Church scene and the ending. Divine's unique and hysterical performance certainly raise this otherwise malnourished film up a few notches.

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