Desperately Reaching

I'm a big fan of John Waters; Polyester, Hairspray, Pecker, Serial Mom, etc. His brand of gross out comedy appeals to the sick humor gene that I inherited.

However, the latest John Waters movie I saw, Desperate Living, is all kinds of wrong. Maybe its because its one of his earlier works (1977) or maybe he was just having an off day.

Granted the first couple of minutes are funny and the premise sounds good: Mink Stole is a housewife just released from a mental institution. She thinks everyone is trying to kill her. When a stray softball crashes through her bedroom window she is sure that her children have turned terrorist. Her husband who tries to give her medication is, in her mind, trying to inject her with cyanide. Mink does great hysterical! Its even funny when her very large cleptomanic mental nurse comes to her rescue, believing her husband IS trying to kill her. The mental nurse suffocates the husband by sitting on his head.

After that scene the movie runs off the tracks into freakville. It could have been funny but it was just plain stupid, poorly acted and incoherent.

Serial Mom was a funny cult classic. You have to love Kathleen Turner beating Patty Hearst to death with a public phone because shes wearing white shoes after Labor Day. But watching assorted freaks vomiting and living in squalor, where is the humor in that?

Bad John, Bad!