Polyester (1981)

(On Cable TV, July 2022) As I keep going deeper and older into John Walters’s filmography, I keep waiting for the one film that will make me think, “OK, that’s it—too much.”  After all, I began at the end of his career, with his friendlier, most mainstream films. But so far, so good—and it’s not Polyester that will have me screaming to the exits. A wild parody of 1950s Sirk-style “women’s melodrama” adapted to the early 1980s, this is a film that presents an ideal nuclear family and then does its damnedest to pervert it. The only halfway decent character is the housewife played by Divine—but the more the film goes on, the more the façade of idyllic suburban living shatters and vaporizes. The husband is a philanderer, the son is a serial foot stomper (you read that right), the daughter gets pregnant from her no-good husband and things go downhill from there. A momentary upturn in her fortunes leads to an even wilder conclusion and that’s the film for you. There are a few levels of comedy here—and you can argue that the more absurd moments (such as the dog committing suicide, leaving a note) end up working at odds with the attempted straight-face satire. But really, it means that Polyester plays on several comic registers at once, from the conceptual to the obvious. It’s not that funny, but it’s corrosive enough in its sarcasm to be worth a look—and wonder why such films aren’t being made anymore. There are plenty of oddities here, but Walters’s goal in lampooning middle-class America remains focused. Tab Hunter turns up in a small role that takes advantage of his movie-star good looks. Polyester’s other claim to fame upon release was its use of “odorama” scratch-and-sniff cards. Amazingly enough, thanks to the long-ago benevolence of Paul Riddell, I have one such card in my unlikely possession… and used it for its intended purpose even when it wasn’t a good idea. Having done that, there’s only one more thing to say: bring on more Walters, the loopier the better.