''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 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educ ...

mondo

black comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the olde ...

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

. The film stars

Divine Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine< ...

Mary Vivian Pearce Mary Vivian Pearce (born November 9, 1947) is an American actress. She has worked primarily in the films of John Waters. Life and career Pearce is a childhood best friend of Waters and has appeared as an actress in all of his films. Because o ...

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

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 distinc ...

. 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

begins her day by riding the bus and reading

Kenneth Anger Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author. Working exclusively in short films, he has produced almost 40 works since 1937, nine of which have been grouped ...

's ''

Hollywood Babylon ''Hollywood Babylon'' is a book by avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger which details the purported scandals of famous Hollywood denizens from the 1900s to the 1950s. The book was banned shortly after it was first published in the U.S. in 1965, ...

''. 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, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

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 and related fetishes Foot f ...

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

Cinderella "Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...

. She is then hit by a car driven by

Divine Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine< ...

, 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. Nomads have ...

whom she imagines naked. Divine places her in the car and drives distractedly around Baltimore experiencing bizarre situations, such as repeated visits by the Blessed Virgin Mary (Margie Skidmore)—during which Divine exclaims, "Oh Mary ... teach me to be Divine". Divine finally takes the unconscious Bombshell to Dr. Coathanger, who amputates her feet and replaces them with bird-like monster feet which she can tap together to transport herself around Baltimore.

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 Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

. 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 or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

s that were popular during the 1960s: ''

Mondo Cane ''Mondo Cane'' (literally "Doggish World" or "Dog's World", a mild Italian profanity) 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 S ...

'', ''Mondo Freudo'', ''Mondo Bizarro'', etc. The title also pays tribute to ''

Mondo Topless ''Mondo Topless'' is a 1966 pseudo-documentary directed by Russ Meyer, featuring Babette Bardot and Lorna Maitland among others. It was Meyer's first color film following a string of black and white " roughie nudies", including ''Faster, Pussycat! ...

'', a film by one of Waters' favorite directors,

Russ Meyer Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that fea ...

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

''Mondo Trasho'' currently holds a 43% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American 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, and Stephen Wang ...

, 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 sedentary state of mind and body. It is characterized by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, reduced muscle activity and reduced interactions with surroundings. It is distinguished from wakefulness by a de ...

''.

Home Media

The film was only produced in 1984 on a 95 min rated R VHS, hi-fi mono sound in black and white by Cinema Group Home Video. In an interview with the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA on tour for his book release of ''Mr Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder'' (2019), John 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

* *
Dreamland Studios
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mondo Trasho 1969 films 1960s black comedy 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 1969 comedy films 1969 drama films Drag (clothing)-related films 1960s English-language films 1960s American films