John Waters: The best of the worst of his delirious films

Writer, director, and all-around artist John Waters will go down in history for creating some of the best demented, delirious, and trashy films in cinematic history. A queer and underground icon, he has given the world an education in bad taste.

Baltimore, the US city where Waters grew up, would end up becoming a defining feature of his films. He also grew up with Glenn Milstead, later known as the drag queen Divine (pictured), Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole — childhood friends who would remain lifelong collaborators and muses. They began shooting movies together in the 1960s.

In a 2022 interview with the New York Times, Waters said he’s surprised that his once-taboo movies have become more mainstream in the last decade. He said it’s probably because society realized they couldn’t get rid of him. “Everything I’ve ever done is about using humor as a weapon…Always, I was trying to satirize the rules of the world I lived in. At the same time I was trying to make you laugh and to see, what are the limits,” he said of his work.

John Waters has never conformed to society’s standards. And he’s still doing so, defying what is considered proper by both the left and the right, most recently in the written word and one-man shows, which he said could get him the “firing squad” in other countries. “I believe in the extremes of free speech.. People don’t like what I say? So what? I’m allowed to say it and I live in the greatest country. I’m a down-low patriotic person.”

Waters went on to describe what he’s been aiming toward in his career and the feeling he’s been generating through his books, films and other art projects. “You look at it and it stops you in your tracks. That’s what Andy Warhol’s soup can did. That’s what Jackson Pollock’s paintings and Cy Twombly’s scribbling did. That’s the kind of art I like: the ‘oh, my God.’” He said anything that makes the audience say “awww” at the end, is something he runs away from.

John Waters has written and directed 17 short and feature films in his career spanning from 1964 to today. Here are some of his best-ranked masterpieces of trash, from worst-worst to best-worst, although all of his works offer something horrendously magnetic.

This early film traces the journey of a blond bombshell (Mary Viviane Pearce) seduced by a degenerate hippie with a foot fetish. While fantasizing about being Cinderella, she is hit by a car driven by Divine, when trying to pick up an attractive hitchhiker. Divine picks up the blonde and they go on bizarre adventures, finally ending in Divine taking the woman unconscious to a doctor who amputates her feet and replaces them with monster feet that she can tap together like Dorothy to be transported around Baltimore.

Image: Mondo Trasho, The Film-Makers’ Cooperative

Described as John Waters’ first (and pretty much only) stab at making a mainstream movie, this 1998 black comedy looks at what happens when some local Baltimore kid’s photographs of the strange people in his neighborhood become extremely popular in the high-art circles of New York.

Image: Pecker (1998) Official Trailer - Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci/ Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers/ Youtube

A neurotic society woman murders her husband with her maid’s help. After they get caught, they have the option to go to jail or be exiled to a filthy shantytown ruled by an evil queen. They go to the town of social outcasts and eventually plot to overthrow the queen. The triumphant ending includes some truly disturbing social taboos.

A Baltimore suburb keeps getting smaller and smaller, and one delusional yet picture-perfect mom is suspected to be behind a wave of murders. “Chip, the only serial I know anything about is rice crispies,” says the mom, played by Kathleen Turner, in this satire on the societal obsession with true crime.

Image: Serial Mom (1994) - Official Trailer (HD), Youtube

The original version of this film was one of Water’s biggest hits. This movie follows Baltimore teen Tracy Tumblad as she pursues fame as a dancer on a local TV and fights against racial segregation. Divine played her prudish mom, in what would be his last film role before he died. This cult hit inspired a Broadway film, then a much more commercial remake of ‘Hairspray’ in 2007, with John Travolta donning drag to play Divine’s role as the mom.

Image: Hairspray, New Line Cinema

This 1981 satire of ‘women’s pictures’ and suburban life touches on topics like divorce, abortion, addiction, racism, the religious right and foot fetishism. It even featured a gimmick called “Odorama,” where the audience could smell what they were viewing with scratch and sniff cards. It holds a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes with critics saying it’s “as proudly tacky as its titular fabric, Polyester finds writer-director John Waters moving ever so slightly into the mainstream without losing any of his subversive charm.”

Image: John Waters' POLYESTER Trailer · Austin Film Society/ Youtube

This is likely Water’s most disgusting film, as well as his most iconic. It stars Divine trying to prove that she is the “filthiest person alive” and involves some literal gag-inducing stunts that Waters ensures were all real. Despite everything, some queer theories call it “the most important queer film of all time,” it’s been hailed as a key pre-curser to punk and was inducted into the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Image: Pink Flamingos, New Line Cinema

This delightfully camp musical set in 1950s Baltimore centers on the life and struggles of a group of juvenile delinquents as they are tormented by a group of “squares.” Although it was a box office failure at the time, it helped launch Johnny Depp’s career and has become a legendary cult film, also spawning a Broadway musical that won four Tony Awards.

Image: Cry Baby Trailer, Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers, Youtube

Another film starring Divine, this gem follows a delinquent high school student who runs away from home when her parents don’t get her “cha-cha heels,” gets pregnant while hitchhiking, and becomes entangled in a criminal scheme to prove “crime equals beauty.” It has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and is hailed for bringing “texture to societal transgression” and as “a brazenly subversive dive into celebrity and mayhem.”

Image: Female Trouble, New Line Cinema

Let’s leave the #1 spot empty for now, as Waters has returned to directing for the first time since 2004 to bring to life his 2022 novel ‘Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance.’ “‘Liarmouth’ is the craziest thing I’ve written in a while, so maybe it’s fitting that my novel was shocking enough to jumpstart the engine of my film career,” the 77-year-old filmmaker said in a statement. “Thrilled to be back in the movie business, hopefully to spread demented joy to adventuresome moviegoers around the world.”