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Melanie Griffith
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The grandfather of gross-out cinema is back. Veteran filmmaker John Waters still knows how to make loud and lurid movies. He understands what's perverted and sexy. He's still capable of creating funny, campy new characters. While cult movies, including Waters' own films, have become video staples of the couch potato experience, Cecil B. Demented, Waters' newest comedy, returns the cult film to its rightful place: the local cinema screen.
Cecil B. Demented is a cinematic homage to the career of John Waters himself. Its story is set among the rundown Baltimore cinemas of his youth. The film's core joke is an ongoing slap against the Hollywood machinery that's responsible for bad movies. For a society so obsessed with showbiz culture that they read the weekend box-office charts, Cecil B. Demented's inside joke is familiar.
Granted, times have changed, and Waters' films are more mainstream than his earlier work like Mondo Trasho, Multiple Maniacs and the classic Pink Flamingos. Divine, Waters' transvestite muse, is gone. So is Edith Massey, the childlike grandma obsessed with eggs. More importantly, Cecil B. Demented just can't compete with a film like Pink Flamingos when it comes to cinema filth. Basically, nobody in Cecil B. Demented rubs a piece of raw steak between their legs or shovels dog shit into their mouths. Waters and his films are slightly mellower, now.
But Cecil B. Demented wallows in a low-budget production that's appropriately tawdry. Its dialogue is campy, and its jokes about the awful Hollywood films hit the satirical bull's-eye.
Cecil B. Demented is worthy of a midnight screening at any B-movie festival. For a John Waters movie, there's no better compliment.
Young, guerrilla filmmaker Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff) and fellow film terrorists, the Sprocket Holes, kidnap a bitchy Hollywood sexpot, Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith), visiting Baltimore to promote her new movie.
The kidnapping itself is the film's best joke. Guns are pulled from the popcorn. Grenades are thrown into the audience. The result is a movie premiere shot to hell. It's not long before Whitlock is dragged to Demented's soundstage hideout to star in his own guerrilla movie, Raging Beauty. Inevitably, Whitlock will utter the lines: "Mr. Demented, I'm ready for my close-up!" Not that she's impressed by these young film rebels.
"This is America, you know," Whitlock tells Demented. "It's a free country. People can make bad movies if they so desire."
Waters has become fairly established for a cult filmmaker. There are books about his life and films. His artwork, a collection of photographic images from televised movies, is well-received by museums and galleries. For a filmmaker who built his career on spotlighting the bizarre and the outcast, Waters has become one of the people he used to ridicule. On some levels, Cecil B. Demented is a commercial movie, no different from other gross-out comedies like There's Something About Mary or Road Trip. The important difference is that Waters remains a strong voice of teen-age rebellion.
Some familiar members of the Waters family of actors are back. Patricia Hearst brings a shot of credibility to the film's kidnapping plot as the worried mother of one of the Sprocket Holes. Ricki Lake plays Whitlock's browbeaten personal assistant. But Cecil B. Demented thrives on its ensemble of youthful renegades. In their funky hideout of renegade filmmaking, the Sprocket Holes flash the names of various filmmakers tattooed on their forearms: Andy Warhol, Hershel Gordon Lewis, Sam Peckinpah, Spike Lee and David Lynch. Demented himself bears the tattooed name of Otto Preminger. Lots of kids dream of making movies, but Demented and his Sprocket Holes are the only ones willing to die for it. The arrival of Cecil B. Demented is perfectly timed with the revolution of digital cameras. Now, just about anyone can become a guerrilla filmmaker.
Dorff looks demented with his knee-high black boots and white scarf. He's a make-believe version of an old Hollywood filmmaker. His shaggy look of unkempt hair and questionable hygiene is what makes him such a lovable loon.
"You don't have to like this movie," Demented yells to an audience watching the Director's Cut of Patch Adams. "You are a victim of advertising!"
Later, when Demented licks the Panavision label on a camera lovingly, you can't help but laugh out-loud.
Inevitably, the spotlight rests on Griffith. She is the bride of this B-movie. With her sexpot curves, Griffith is a parody of her own Hollywood stardom. Cecil B. Demented just slightly tweaks her trademark features in clownish fashion. The lipstick is smeared across her face in Punk Rock fashion. Her hair is bleached blonde. Suddenly, Griffith looks like some rebel Cleopatra. Ironically, Griffith never looked better, or more believable. She is always over-the-top in her performances. Being shrill is what she does best. Cecil B Demented takes advantage of her excesses. She and Waters are perfectly matched.
What Cecil B. Demented lacks in sheer filth -- and trust me, I miss Waters' trademark filth -- the film compensates with plenty of twisted humor. One Sprocket Hole (Alicia Witt) insists she has recovered memory. Of course, this means her family gang-raped her under the Christmas tree when she was 10. A mob of teamsters is attacked by a porn theater audience of busy masturbators. Drugs are constant. And you'll never see a hornier group of movie misfits than the Sprocket Holes. Yes, Cecil B. Demented follows in the mainstream footsteps of Waters' recent films like Cry-Baby, Pecker, Hairspray and Serial Mom. But that doesn't mean Waters didn't direct this film with one hand down his pants. Cecil B. Demented is gooey in all the right places.
There is no gore or splatter in Cecil B. Demented. Nobody practices Hong Kong-inspired martial arts. It's a midnight movie of a different stripe. Cecil B. Demented is simply a teen-age rebellion movie, intent on having a good time. Its message about the fall of Hollywood is an unexpected bonus. Sometimes the best movies are simply meant to be trashy fun.
CityBeat grade: B.
