It’s Scentsational!
1981-05-29
$0.3M
86 min
Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine Fishpaw turns to the bottle as her life falls apart -- until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow.
Remember the sensation that was "Smellyvision"? Well armed with a card which had ten different smells concealed under some silver foil spots, we set off to watch the escapades of the "Fishpaw" family. Divine is on good form as "Francine", the much put upon wife of serial womaniser "Elmer" (David Sampson) and mother to "Lulu" (Mary Garlington) and her wayward brother "Dexter" (Ken King). Her well-to-do suburban life all starts to come crashing down when her husband's soft-porn cinema attracts some local attention - of the wrong sort; the daughter manages to become pregnant with the help of a local thug and the son, well he has a rather weird foot-fetish that involves stamping heavily on any feet that take his fancy. It's all going pear shaped marvellously well for her until the hunky and charming "Todd" (Tab Hunter) offers her a dreamboat opportunity to escape the tortures of her family life. It's great fun, this - the characterisations are no deeper than a puddle but the pace at which John Waters keeps the mayhem and mischief coming thick and fast with plenty of humour that is entertaining, though admittedly a bit puerile and basic at times, manages to parody effectively quite a few more serious American comedy films made in the late 1970s. It's short, sweet and well worth a gander if you have 90 minutes and you even get on-screen instructions as when to scratch and sniff!!
