Synopsis

A frustrated housewife, Francine Fishpaw (Divine), tries to maintain her sanity while taking care of her dysfunctional household.

Elmer (David Samson), her husband and the owner of an adult theater, is sleeping with his secretary, and her delinquent teen son, Dexter (Ken King), and pregnant teen daughter, Lulu (Mary Garlington), aren't helping matters any.

But when Francine meets dashing Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter), the owner of a theater specializing in art films, her life appears rosier.



Cast: Divine, Tab Hunter  David Samson, Edith Massey, Mink Stole, Ken King, Mary Garlington, Joni Ruth White, Stiv Bators, Hans Kramm, Rick Breitenfeld, Susan Lowe, Cookie Mueller, George Hulse, Michael Watson, Mary Vivian, Pearce and Sharon Niesp, Jean Hill, Leo Braudy, Dorothy Braudy, George Figgs, Marina Melin, Chuck Yeaton


Polyester satirizes the melodramatic genre of women's pictures, particularly those directed by Douglas Sirk, whose work directly influenced this film.

The film is also a satire of suburban life in the early 1980s, involving topics like divorce, abortion, adultery, alcoholism, racial stereotypes, foot fetishism, and the religious right.

Women's pictures

Polyester was a send-up of women's pictures, an exploitative film genre popular from the 1950–1960s and typically featured bored, unfulfilled, or otherwise troubled women, usually middle-aged suburban housewives, finding release or escape through the arrival of a handsome younger man. Women's pictures were typically hackneyed B-movies, but Waters specifically styled Polyester after the work of the director Douglas Sirk, asking Insley to make use of similar lighting and editing techniques, even using film equipment and movie-making techniques from Sirk's era. By chance, Insley viewed some of Sirk's films at a local screening celebrating the director.