Arthouse 50: Polyester in Odorama

Celebrating Frameline‘s 50th anniversary alongside the Roxie’s 50 years as an arthouse cinema, as part of our Arthouse 50 series. A fitting occasion to celebrate decades of shared queer film history, with the Roxie serving as one of Frameline’s longtime homes.

One of our favorite John Waters movies of all time, the film that has repeatedly aroused olfactory ecstasy in Roxie audiences, with official Odorama cards!

In POLYESTER, John Waters’ muse Divine plays Francine Fishpaw, a suburban housewife whose life is falling apart. Hated by her neighbors, cheated on by her husband and concerned about her kids, Francine befriends the “world’s oldest debutante” Cuddles Kovinsky (Edith Massey), falls for Todd Tomorrow (Tab Hunter), and…well, chaos ensues. A masterpiece of bad taste and furious camp, POLYESTER was Water’s last full-bore gross-out before 1988’s substantially more tame HAIRSPRAY.

For the release of POLYESTER in 1981, John Waters pioneered an advance in cinema technology so putrid, so repulsive, and so downright stinky it overwhelmed the nation in stench. Francine’s acute sense of smell leaps out and grabs your nostrils with the help of the Odorama card, a scratch and sniff card with ten numbered scratchers that releases Francine’s olfactory experiences out of the movie and straight up your nose.