Multiple Maniacs

Multiple Maniacs is a 1970 American comedy film by American cult filmmaker John Waters; his second feature film. The film features several actors who were part of the Dreamland acting troupe for Waters' films, including Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, David Lochary, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, and Cookie Mueller.

The title pays tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis's 2000 Maniacs, as Waters states in his book Shock Value.

Plot

Lady Divine is the owner and operator of a show called The Cavalcade of Perversion, a free exhibit of various perversions and fetish acts and obscenities such as the "Puke Eater". The show is free, although the various performers must persuade and even physically drag reluctant passers-by to attend.

As a finale to every show, Lady Divine comes in and robs the patrons at gunpoint. This arrangement seems successful to Lady Divine's lover, Mr. David, until Lady Divine becomes bored with the routine, and decides to murder the patrons rather than merely robbing them. After escaping the murder scene, she comes home to her prostitute daughter, Cookie, and her new boyfriend, Steve, a member of the Weather Underground. Lady Divine receives a call from Edith, proprietor of the local bar, who informs Lady Divine that Mr. David had been at her bar with another woman (Mary Vivian Pearce). Divine heads there to catch them, but is raped on the way by two glue-sniffers. While contemplating these events the Infant of Prague appears and leads her to a church. Making her way uncertainly into the church, Lady Divine prays, but is then approached and seduced by a strange young woman. They have a sexual encounter in the church pew, the woman inserting a rosary into Lady Divine's rectum while describing the Stations of the Cross.