John Waters Walks Back Into Mortville’s Beautifully Filthy Kingdom
John Waters is taking the faithful back to Mortville, the deliciously deranged little kingdom at the center of his 1977 cult eruption Desperate Living.
The new Criterion featurette, Back to Mortville, follows Waters as he revisits the film’s main Baltimore location and lets the memories, the trash-glam chaos, and the beautifully wrong little production stories come crawling back out of the woods.
film
Cult Cinema, Criterion Style
John Waters going back to Mortville is a reminder that the best cult-film moments deserve a proper shelf life: restoration, commentary, essays, and the kind of physical-media extras that keep the filth alive.
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Desperate Living was Waters in full early-career revolt mode: a feverish, outlaw fairytale of suburban breakdown, royal filth, and underground Baltimore imagination. Criterion’s release gives it the deluxe treatment with a new 4K digital restoration, Waters-approved presentation, commentary, interviews, and the Mortville tour that turns a location revisit into its own little holy relic for trash-cinema disciples.
And really, who better to guide the walk than Waters himself? The charm of this clip is not just nostalgia. It is the way he can stand in a real place and immediately make it feel mythic, absurd, rotten, hilarious, and completely alive again.
For longtime fans, it is a small but tasty piece of John Waters archaeology. For newer viewers, it is a reminder that his worlds were not just outrageous on paper. They were built, dragged, painted, costumed, screamed through, and shot with a handmade nerve that still feels dangerous in the best way.
Watch John Waters Return To Mortville
Criterion’s Back to Mortville featurette brings Waters back to the main Baltimore location from Desperate Living.
Source: The Criterion Collection.
