Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

"Multiple Maniacs" follows Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversion, a wayward traveling group of sideshow freaks who have a penchant for the perverse, which includes murdering their audience members. I've always considered John Waters something of a less pretentious Andy Warhol, and this film-his second directorial feature-reiterates the sentiment in my mind. "Multiple Maniacs" is patent garbage, and I mean that in the most loving way possible. While watching it, it is obvious that Waters and his crew were fumbling their way through learning to make a movie. This is especially clear in the cinematography and performances; actors continually flub their lines, look into the camera, and chew the scenes apart-there is better acting in high school plays. At the center of it all is Divine, who has rightly attained a cult following of his own, playing his signature character, and his performance, though by no means stellar, is what will inevitably draw the audience in.For all the rough edges present, there are themes and ideas circulating throughout the film that are by turns bizarre and unique, and it has rightly earned a reputation for containing a particularly blasphemous montage. The last fifteen minutes ostensibly contain the film's most well-orchestrated moments, with Divine alone descending into madness and chasing civilians through the streets. I don't think anyone could classify "Multiple Maniacs" as a masterwork of filmmaking by any stretch of the imagination-but it does stand as a celluloid capsule of Waters quite literally learning how to make a film, and there is enough wackiness, debauchery, and utter madness to please the most jaded of trash cinema fans. Good or bad, there is really nothing else quite like it. 7/10.

Positively revolting!! A tasteless piece of low-budget garbage, with not one redeeming value. It's just too bad John Waters doesn't make them like this anymore. Not that he ever really did. Multiple Maniacs is a bit different from the other Waters trash classics of the 70's. A bit more bizarre, and unpolished, and just a tad more unrealistic. Multiple Maniacs mostly comes off as a rough draft for Waters next and most famous trash epic, Pink Flamingos. Multiple Maniacs is the first real example of what this John Waters guy was all about, rubbing you the wrong way. Meet the cavalcade of perversion. Posing as a traveling freak show, an odd gang of criminals, led by Diving rob and/or murder unsuspecting shock enthusiasts, just looking for a thrill. Divine is an irritable, outlandish hog of a woman just looking for a reason to off someone... anyone. Lately, that boyfriend of hers, Mr. David has been a real pain in the ass, and today, he just might get it, that is, if he doesn't get her first. As the would-be love birds plot on each other, and cheat on one another with their new girlfriends, we, the audience are subjected (treated) to vulgar atrocity after outrageous one-liner after obscene sex act. A delightful little movie indeed. We got all our Dreamland favorites, Cookie, Mink, Mary, David, Divine, and even our pal, Edith pays us a visit. Everyone brings their A games, A, of course standing for amateur, really, unpolished doesn't even begin to describe what's going on here, but out here in Exploitation Country, flaws such as screwed up lines should be expected and embraced, if you didn't know, then now you know. Multiple Maniacs was Waters' first film that wasn't silent, as well as his last black & white. For more colorful trash check out Female Trouble and Desperate Living. As unpolished and inept as it might be, this is one of the most mean-spirited, unflinching, and flat-out rebellious comedies I've seen, and I passionately recommend it every bit as much as Pink Flamingos, unless you're Catholic, in that case, never mind. 9/10

I'm not some nut who will throw himself off a building for Waters or lick shoe polish from the Master's boots. I have rather fixed opinion on the different stages of the director's career. The early Super-8's (the few I've seen) are short, crude and original; the first features, including "Multiple Maniacs", "Mondo Trasho", "Pink Flamingos", "Female Trouble" and "Desperate Living" are all very interesting, though not all classics; the films that followed from "Polyester" are Waters Lite, strange birds documenting Waters' struggle to please the mainstream financiers and broaden his own creative output. Naturally, I like the middle period.When I think of "Multiple Maniacs", I think of David Lochary inviting conservative punters to come and seeing the most disgusting show of their lives. "See Puke Eater!" he screams with pride, and in that solitary invitation, he sums up why we loved the 70's and early 80's John Waters. Waters showed us filth without the sermon, without the hypocrisy. He acknowledge our love of sleaze, our passion for the putrid, and our lust for freaks. He came across as honest, as a misfit himself, an artist determined to rub our noses in the dirt we secretly craved.Well, some of us did.I prefaced this review with my declaration that I'm not a Waters brown-noser. Far from it. Despite its admirable desire to shock and sicken, "Multiple Maniacs" is also very boring at times and in dire need of a ruthless edit. The Lobster scene goes on forever and the trek to Calvary is almost as long as Gibson's "Passion of the Christ".The beauty of "Multiple Maniacs" is its pus-filled heart, not its aesthetics. The aesthetics would come later with "Female Trouble" and "Desperate Living" and seem counterfeit with truly awful trash such as "Cecil B. Demented", a film I want to murder.

A lot of people look at the performances in Waters' early films as crude but I think both Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos (and, to a lesser degree, Mondo Trasho) are a testament to the talent the Waters' troupe really had. Divine has probably been discussed enough though I think she remains sadly underrated as an actress but what stands out for me in Maniacs is David Lochary's performance. He steals the show and improbably manages to provide some genuine soul to a contemptible character, perhaps because he looks positively saintly compared to Divine. Lochary is funny, sincere, scared and ultimately empathetic as the helpless, brainwashed victim of the implacable force which is the Lady Divine. You couldn't just hire regular actors to play the Lochary or Divine roles - you had to have the real deal and the magic of these movies does come from the superior casting.I think Waters' early films are by far his best, the movies he made before he learned "how to make movies." Some of his later work is cute but never as engaging and fresh as Maniacs and Flamingos. How exactly did Waters manage to combine slimy depravity with wide-eyed innocence in equal doses? The rosary job is perhaps the finest scene Waters ever concocted and then there's Lobstora, one of the most inspired moments the cinema has ever brought us.I don't think of Maniacs as mere camp. I think it's genuinely great film making with far more verve and inventiveness than most of the so-called "well-made" Academy fare.