Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

John Waters inched toward the mainstream here, making a Douglas Sirk movie, yet also adding in a William Castle gimmick with Odorama. Similar to the cards handed out when Scent of Mystery played theaters in 1960, the smells in this movie are:

1. Roses
2. Flatulence
3. Model airplane glue
4. Pizza
5. Gasoline
6. Skunk
7. Natural gas
8. New car smell
9. Dirty shoes
10. Air freshener

On the DVD commentary track of this movie, Waters said he was so happy that he got audiences to “pay to smell shit.”

Francine Fishpaw’s (Divine) middle class life is going to shit. Her husband Elmer (David Samson) is showing porn at his movie theater, leading protestors to camp out on their lawn. She’s tried to raise her children in a Christian household, but her daughter Lu-Lu (Mary Garlington) is sleeping with everyone and her son Dexter (Ken King) sniffs glue and gets off by stomping on women’s feet, finally being chased by police and given the name the Baltimore Foot-Stomper. And her mother La Rue (Joni Ruth White) hates poor people and lives off cocaine.

Then, everything cracks as her husband shacks up with Sandra Sullivan (Mink Stole) and she starts hitting the bottle. Lu-Lu tries to have an abortion but is attacked by protestors, so Francine sends her to a Catholic girls town. Lu-Lu’s boyfriend Bo-Bo (Stiv Bators) breaks in but is killed by La Rue and the cops finally catch Dexter. Lu-Lu has run away, coming home in time to see her boyfriend’s dead body. She tries to hang herself and fails. Bonkers the dog, however, has better luck and even leaves a suicide note.

Yet things get better. Francine kicks the habit, Dexter gets his life back together, Lu-Lu loses the baby but finds macrame and Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter) comes into her life. Yet the world is dark and he’s really dating her mother, and they want to drive her crazy, take her money and sell the kids into slavery. Then Elmer and Sandra break in, trying to kill her. The villains end up cancelling one another out and Lu-Lu uses her craft supplies to strangle Sandra. Oh yeah — Francine’s best friend Cuddles (Edith Massey) gets rich, marries her chauffeur Heintz (Hans Kramm) and runs over Todd and La Rue.

Dreamlanders show up, just not in the main roles like in the past. Susan Lowe is a mall victim; Cookie Mueller is Betty Lalinski; Mary Vivian Pearce and Sharon Niesp play nuns. But this is still all Waters, including a scene where Todd takes Francine to an intellectual drive-in that’s playing “Dusk To Dawn – 3 Marguerite Duras Hits” that are The Truck, India Song and Destroy, She Said. Meanwhile, her husband is playing My Burning Bush at his dirty movie theater.

Like I said, this flirts with the mainstream, but doesn’t stay overnight.