The two Russ Meyer films John Waters called the “best movies ever made”
American filmmaker John Waters has made a career out of creating good ‘bad taste’ movies. Whether you’re repulsed by Waters’ boundary-pushing and often stomach-turning movies or enthralled by his use of high-camp aesthetics and quirky characters, you cannot deny that the director is dedicated to his craft.
Waters began his career making transgressive underground movies, starting with short films such as Roman Candles and Eat Your Makeup. By the early 1970s, he consistently released wonderfully trashy movies designed to confront the audience and shock them out of complacency and suburban malaise. The director often worked with the same cast of actors, known as his Dreamlanders, such as Mink Stole, Mary Vivian Pearce and David Lochary. However, none became as famous as Divine, who appeared in almost all of Waters’ films until passing away in 1988.
Divine and Waters were an iconic duo, with the drag queen going to extreme lengths to help the director reach the trashiest and filthiest of heights. In Pink Flamingos, Divine consumes actual dog shit and even gives a real blowjob – one of the first instances of unsimulated sex being shown on screen. The film also contains other bizarre sex scenes and brutal scenes of rape, castration and murder. It remains one of the most controversial films of all time, yet one of Waters’ most celebrated.
By the 1980s and 1990s, Waters began making slightly more commercially viable movies, such as Hairspray, Serial Mom and Cry Baby, using better-known actors and appealing to a broader audience. However, Waters has never compromised his tastes for all things offbeat and strange, making him one of the industry’s most authentic figures. Naturally, Waters’ collection of favourite movies contains some unconventional picks, reflecting his love of the weird and wonderful.
In his book Shock Value, Waters revealed the movie he believes stands above the rest. “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is, beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future”. The 1965 exploitation movie starred Japanese-American actor Tura Satana as one of three go-go dancers who kill and kidnap as they journey through the desert.
Discussing the film’s re-release, Waters explained: “I think it ages like fine wine. It didn’t used to be politically correct, and now it is. I guess it’s politically correct for three gay women to kill men that get on their nerves these days”. Known for its provocative, skimpily-clad female leads, who ruthlessly murder men and race their sports car around the desert, Russ Meyer’s film is one of the most iconic B-movies ever made, complete with gloriously campy dialogue.
However, that isn’t the only film by Meyers that Waters has dubbed “the best movie ever made”. In his Criterion Closet video, Waters picked out Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, written by Roger Ebert, explaining: “This movie’s like a fine wine; it gets better and better as life goes on”.
Recalling the time he saw the movie on the day it opened in 1970, he said, “It was so insane”. He added that it was the “best thing Ebert ever wrote […] it’s much better than his film criticism”.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls began as a sequel to the original, which starred Sharon Tate, although it eventually morphed into a parody of its predecessor. For Waters, “It’s almost impossible to watch it and not love it.”
