Polyester (1981) Queer Film (B) High Camp at a Midnight Screening.

Waters finally skirts with the mainstream in this 1981 film which satirizes the melodrama genre and the woman’s picture category, particularly the work of Douglas Sirk which directly influenced this film. The film also satirizes suburban life in the early 1980s, involving topics such as divorce, abortion, adultery, alcoholism, racial stereotypes, and the religious right.

Overweight housewife Francine Fishpaw (Divine) watches her upper-middle-class family’s life crumble in their suburban Baltimore home. Her husband Elmer (David Samson) is a polyester-clad lout who owns an adult movie theatre, causing anti-pornography protesters to picket the Fishpaws’ house. Francine’s Christian beliefs are offended by the behavior of her teenage children—Lu-Lu (Mary Garlington), her spoiled, promiscuous daughter, and Dexter (Ken King), her delinquent, glue-sniffing son who derives sexual pleasure from stomping on women’s feet.

GIVE HER CAB FARE AND A HAM FOR EASTER, BUT FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T SOCIALIZE WITH HER

Francine’s cocaine-snorting mother, La Rue (Joni Ruth White), is a class-conscious snob. She compounds her daughter’s troubles by robbing her blind, constantly deriding her obesity and berating her for befriending her former housecleaner Cuddles Kovinsky (Edith Massey). Cuddles is a simple-minded woman who tries to console Francine with seize-the-day bromides and has inherited a large sum of money from a wealthy former employer.

After Francine discovers Elmer is having an affair with his secretary Sandra Sullivan, she confronts them during a motel tryst and demands a divorce. Francine then descends into alcoholism and depression, exacerbated by her children’s behavior.

MARGUERITE DURAS RETROSPECTIVE

INDIA SONG

Eventually, Francine quits drinking, confronts and rebukes her mother, and finds new romance with Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter) who runs an art-film drive-in theater. Todd proposes marriage to an elated Francine, but she soon discovers that Todd and La Rue are romantically involved and conspiring to embezzle her divorce settlement, drive her insane and sell her children into prostitution.

The Dreamlanders (Waters’ Baltimore-based stock company of actors) serve minor roles in Polyester, compared to Waters’ previous films Female Trouble and Pink Flamingos which starred several Dreamlanders in major roles. Only two, Divine and Edith Massey, receive top billing, together with Tab Hunter. This movie was also Massey’s final collaboration with Waters before her 1984 death.

Polyester was filmed in Waters’ native Baltimore, Maryland, like all of his previous films. It featured a gimmick called Odorama, whereby moviegoers could smell what they were viewing on-screen with special scratch-and-sniff cards (a stylistic tribute to the work of producer/director William Castle whose films typically featured attention-grabbing gimmicks).

THE TEN SMELLS ARE

1. Roses 2. Flatulence 3. Model Airplane Glue 4. Pizza 5. Gasoline 6. Skunk

7. Natural Gas 8. New Car Smell 9. Dirty Shoes 10. Air Freshener.

It’s delirious fun in classic Waters mode, with the incomparable Divine scaling Crawford‑level heights of Sirkian melodrama. A solid (B) when watched alone, it blossoms into full High Camp at a Midnight Screening—especially with Odorama, which adds its own perverse little thrill.

POLYESTER IS AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING AT AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, APPLE TV+ and YouTube.