"Yes, folks, this isn't any cheap X-rated movie or any fifth-rate porno play. This is the show you want - Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversions, the sleaziest show on Earth. Not actors, not paid impostors, but real, actual filth, who have been carefully screened in order to present to you the most flagrant violation of natural law known to man."
— Mr. David
Multiple Maniacs is a 1970 Black Comedy directed by John Waters, starring Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole. It was Waters' second feature film, after Mondo Trasho, the first one with fully voiced dialogue, and the last one shot in black and white.
Lady Divine (Divine) and her boyfriend, Mr. David (Lochary), are a couple of criminals running The Cavalcade of Perversions - an outrageous travelling freakshow, drawing in the passersby with promises of ludicrous, shocking performances of sex and violence. While those promises are most definitely fulfilled, there's a catch - during the "final act", Divine robs everyone at gunpoint, killing anyone who dares oppose her, and terrorizes the survivors into silence.
This business model allows the carnies to live in relative comfort, but not everything is as rosy as it seems, as the relationship between Lady Divine and Mr. David is in the process of falling apart. When the latter brings in a new prospective performer, "an autoerotic, a coprophagiac and a gerontophiliac" named Bonnie (Pearce), Divine dismisses her without a second thought. Little does she suspect that this event marks the beginning of her tragic downfall...
Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Tropes:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Mr. David. It doesn't work.
- Alliterative Title: Multiple Maniacs.
- Anachronism Stew: Played for Laughs. The bread and fish Jesus multiplies in Lady Divine's recounting of the Gospels are represented by foil-packaged toast bread and canned tuna, despite everything else in the Biblical segments being more or less period-approppriate (at least as much as the movie's meager budget allows).
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Cavalcade of Perversions includes such exhibits as a person eating their own puke right after vomiting, people licking a topless woman's armpits, a heroin addict going through a violent withdrawal on-stage, and... "two actual queers kissing each other".
- Asshole Victim: The suburbanite crowd in the opening sequence is portrayed as prudish and judgemental (not to mention hypocritical, as they still attend the show, only to be performatively outraged by it). This is so the audience doesn't feel too bad when they all get terrorized and robbed (and, in one case, murdered) by Divine and her crew.
- Arguably, Mr. David, Bonnie and Lady Divine are all this.
- Ax-Crazy: Most characters to an extent, but especially Lady Divine.
- Black Comedy Rape: Lady Divine, twice. In the latter case, the perpetrator is a giant lobster and may or may not have been real.
- Comedic Sociopathy: The entire movie runs on this trope.
- Cop Killer: Steve is this for ideological reasons, Lady Divine is this seemingly just For the Evulz (though she respects Steve's work and wishes she could be "that political"). Mr. David considers it a stupid thing to do and a sure way to get busted.
- Dissonant Serenity: Mink and Bonnie are both (relatively) normal women who've had nothing to do with the Cavalcade and its crimes before the events of the movie, and both claim to never have murdered anybody. They're both disturbingly fine, if not outright excited, with the prospect of doing so for the first time.
- Dramatic Irony: Cookie's death is immediately followed up with a scene where Lady Divine brags to Mink about what a great daughter she has.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: For all her murderous antics, Divine is shown to be quite an affectionate mother to Cookie. And she's absolutely devastated when she finds her corpse.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: By the end of the movie, almost every named character is dead, including Mr. David, Lady Divine, Bonnie, Mink, and even Cookie.
- Everybody Must Get Stoned: A variety of illegal substances is indulged in by various characters throughout the movie.
- Everyone Has Standards: Played for Laughs. Mink is about to seduce Divine in a Catholic church and have kinky lesbian sex with her right in the nave (desecrating a rosary in the process, no less), but she still dutifully kneels before the Holy Sacrament every time she passes the tabernacle.
- Fangirl: Bonnie wants to join the Cavalcade. Subverted in that her admiration of Divine is part of her plot to get closer to Mr. David.
- Fanservice/Fan Disservice: Loads of both, with a rather blurry line dividing the two.
- Fat Bitch: Lady Divine, in her usual Ax-Crazy persona.
- The Freakshow: The Cavalcade of Perversions, which includes the two guys kissing described below, the puke-eater, and a photographer snapping the crotch of a nude woman.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: According to Mr. David, just a couple years ago, Lady Divine used to be "just an ordinary shoplifter with lots of fun inside".
- Guy on Guy Is Hot: Subverted. One of the exhibitions is "two actual queers kissing each other like lovers on the lips," which the audience finds repulsive.
- The Host: Mr. David, the Cavalcade's "master of ceremonies".
- Horror Hippies: The Cavalcade of Perversions has shades of this.
- Hot-Blooded Sideburns: Steve is sporting quite impressive ones, and he's the one character in the movie who's even more eager than Divine to solve all of life's problems with murder.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- Mr. David keeps complaining about how Divine is "out of control". This is coming from the man who's been her partner in crime for years.
Mr. David: There's hardly a law I haven't violated at some time or another.- Also Divine, talking to God about how pure her conscience is while she's planning Mr. David's murder.
Divine: My conscience is so immaculately clean that I fear I nitpick when trying to search my soul for any immoral acts that I may have committed. - I'm a Humanitarian: Lady Divine devours Mr. David's raw heart immediately after killing him.
- Imagine Spot: Divine's bizarre reimagining of the stories from the Gospels while she's praying in St. Cecilia's Church.
- The Ingenue: Parodied and subverted with Bonnie. She's a naive, wide-eyed, young performer who's desperate to join Lady Divine's troupe... With an act in which she performs sexual acts of coprophilia with her elderly uncle. She doesn't actually have an elderly uncle, though according to Mr. David, "they could've fixed it up", had Divine agreed to hire her.
- Large Ham: Half the cast, but especially Lady Divine.
- Murder by Mistake: Bonnie shoots the first person who opens an apartment door, thinking it would be Lady Divine, and winds up killing Cookie instead.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Steve's proposed resolution to Lady Divine's relationship troubles. She reluctantly disagrees. For now.
- Naked on Arrival: Divine is introduced laying around naked in her tent, before she "slips into her costume".
- Nightmare Fetishist: Mink is remarkably excited about the prospect of being accessory to murder.
- Old Shame: Apparently, the murder of Sharon Tate is this for Mr. David. Until it turns out that Divine gaslit him into thinking he did it, presumably while he was high.
- On the Rebound: Lady Divine gets together with Mink almost immediately after finding out that Mr. David is cheating on her.
- Outlaw Couple: Mr. David and Lady Divine, although neither of them is happy with the state of their relationship. The movie tells the story of their explosive and violent breakup.
- Overly Long Gag: Mr. David describing the first time Lady Divine killed a cop.
- Pity Sex: Bonnie claims to have done it with a random old lady on a bus.Bonnie: It was just that she was so old, I felt bad for her. I only let her... Well, you know. It was no big production or anything. It was on the bus and all.
- Police Are Useless: Despite Mr. David's worries, Lady Divine has apparently been routinely killing cops for years with complete impunity, and somehow remains completely anonymous to the police. Even though from what we see in the movie, the only weapons the Cavalcade has access to are rather tiny handguns, and the extent of their criminal enterprise (other than the cop-murdering part) is small-scale drug dealing and muggings. Also, apparently, the first time she killed a cop, it was via Car Fu, and the one time we see her murdering one on-screen, she does it with her bare hands. Even when she's finally stopped, it's by the National Guard and not the police.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Why Mr. David gets upset with Lady Divine when she impulsively murders one of the women they're robbing. Also why he doesn't like her habit of murdering cops.
- Private Eye Monologue: Parodied with Lady Divine's bizarre and surreal voiceover monologue, narrating the sequence of events starting with the appearance of the Infant Jesus of Prague and culminating in the sex scene in St. Cecilia's Church.
- Psycho Knife Nut: Lady Divine murders Mr. David, Bonnie and Mink in a single, continuous killing spree, using nothing but a kitchen knife.
- Refuge in Audacity: It's a John Waters movie, this comes with the territory.
- Repulsive Ringmaster: Lady Divine herself.
- Sanity Slippage: Lady Divine, especially during the last third of the movie, although according to Mr. David, she's been going through a much slower one for the last couple years.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When it becomes clear that Divine and Mink are about to have sex in the church, the other parishioners get up and leave in a hurry.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Basically every woman in the Cavalcade of Perversions, including Divine herself.
- Smoking Hot Sex: Mr. David and Bonnie, and their idea of pillowtalk is plotting a murder.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The jazzy dance tune playing while Lady Divine is on her way to murder Mr. David already falls under this trope, even more so when she suddenly gets dragged into a dark alley and brutally raped by some random couple, with no changes in the background music.
- Take That, Audience!: The cartoonishly unsympathetic, outraged audience at the start appears to be a preemptive one, directed at anyone who ends up feeling offended by this very movie.
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Tied up Ricky accidentally falls out from behind a couch. Mink panicks and shoots him on the spot. This sends an already riled up Lady Divine into a rage, causing her to murder Mink.
- Unreliable Narrator: One possible interpretation of the segment narrated by Lady Divine's voiceover, as this is one of two parts of the movie when it gets considerably more bizarre and fantastical than usual, and the other time (when the giant lobster assaults her out of nowhere) is also ambigously real and seen entirely from her perspective.
- Unstoppable Rage: Lady Divine falls into one when Bonnie points a gun at her, and she doesn't really come out of it.
- Unusual Euphemism: Bonnie keeps referring to sex as "performing acts". Of course, considering the kind of acts the Cavalcade, which she's attempted to join, tends to perform...
- Mink refers to murder as "performing extreme unction".
- War Hero: Lady Divine sees her daughter's new boyfriend, Steve, who's a Weatherman
, this way. - Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Lady Divine thanks Steve profusely for "protecting her and her kind of people".