Opening August 5 at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto!
“Restoration is an amazing thing. Finally, Multiple Maniacs looks like a bad John Cassavetes film! I couldn’t be more thrilled!” – John Waters
John Waters’ gloriously grotesque, unavailable-for-decades second feature comes to Canadian theatres at long last, replete with all manner of depravity, from robbery to murder to one of cinema’s most memorably blasphemous moments.
Made on a shoestring budget in Baltimore, with Waters taking on nearly every technical task, this gleeful mockery of the peace-and-love ethos of its era features the Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling show put on by a troupe of misfits whose shocking proclivities are topped only by those of their leader: the glammer-than-glam, larger-than-life Divine, who’s out for blood after discovering her lover’s affair.
Starring Waters’ beloved regular cast the Dreamlanders (including David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, and Cookie Mueller), Multiple Maniacs is an anarchist masterwork from an artist who has doggedly tested the limits of taste for decades.
Running time: A filthy 96 minutes
Celluloid atrocity restored by the Criterion Collection and Janus Films from the original 16mm elements
Download press notes, hi-res images
About Films We Like
Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential, Altman) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent, and international films in Canada.
About Janus Films
Janus Films was founded in 1956, in the historic Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the first theatrical distribution company dedicated to bringing international art-house films to U.S. audiences, including the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sergei Eistenstein, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut, and Yasujiro Ozu. Janus handles rights in all media, and its library has grown to more than 800 films.