Mondo Trasho

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Cover to Vhs release, currently out of print.

Mondo Trasho is a 1969 film by Baltimore, Maryland filmmaker John Waters starring Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, David Lochary and Mink Stole. It contains no dialog: the soundtrack is entirely musical (except for Divine's brief monologue). It was one of the first films released through New Line Cinema

1 Plot
2 Legal issues
3 Title
4 External links

[edit] Plot

After an introductory sequence during which chickens are beheaded on a chopping block, the main action begins. Platinum blonde heroine Mary Vivian Pearce begins her day by riding the bus and reading Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon. She is later seduced by a perverted 'shrimper', hit by a car driven by Divine and visited by a vision of the Virgin Mary in a laundromat (during which Divine exclaims, "Oh Mary......teach me to be Divine...") and is forced to hear women gossip about her ("I think she's a Hair Hopper...she looks like a Rimmer") amongst other terribly dramatic and trashy situations.

[edit] Legal issues

Waters was almost arrested during the film's production for illegally shooting a scene involving a nude hitchhiker on the campus of Johns Hopkins University, but the cast and crew managed to escape before the police arrived.

[edit] Title

The film's title refers to a series of semi-related quasi-documentary films that were popular during the 1960s: Mondo Cane, Mondo Freudo, Mondo Bizarro etc. The title also pays tribute to Mondo Topless, a film by one of Water's favorite directors, Russ Meyer.