Opens August 11, 2000.

There are a lot of things you could call Cecil B. Demented, John Waters' latest art-house ornament about a obsessed independent filmmaker who goes by the nom de poseur of Cecil B. Demented - movie joke, get it? With the same level of comedic class, Waters could also have titled it Eric von Strokehead, Otto Derringer, Orson Ills, on and on with similar creativity. Preeningly pompous and so knuckleheaded in its thematic onslaught against mainstream culture, the only thing surprising about this piffle is that the end credits do not list grant money from the NEA.

Even by the ever-plunging standards of the film-festival circuit, this Artisan release is no work of craft, but merely a pretentious piffle and sub-sophomoric rant against mainstream moviemaking. In artsy vernacular you could call it a "cult" film, but "cult" and another four-letter word beginning with "c" are one in the same here.

Cecil B is about a bottle-blonde film fanatic, Cecil (Stephen Dorff) who convinces a gaggle of loser lowlifes to join him in kidnapping a Hollywood star, Honey Whitlock(Melanie Griffith) from a regional movie premiere in Waters' own burg of Baltimore. The crime is Cecil's not-too-brainy way of attacking Hollywood, and, in his ego-crazed mind, he thinks his act will rally the little people who yearn for more edgy moviemaking. Right on, Cec.

His grand design is to force Whitlock to be in his film, which he will be shooting off the cuff, and, naturally, he envisions that this is just the sort of populist art that the nation is yearning for. That a matronly character died in the kidnapping is sloughed off, and even for a dark comedy that poses as social satire, Cecil is even more morally bankrupt than the ultra-violent mainstream garbage it attempts to dis. "We will die for our art," Cecil intones. Obviously, he will kill for it. So goes our passion for this crud.

Cecil is kind of a power-to-the-people sort of nut, an arts fascist who thinks his vision is "the one" and that he is graced by some sort of divine aesthetic. His idea of filmmaking comes from the "turn-the-camera-on" school, having probably never even benefited from one of those two-day film schools you can sign up for in every back alley of New York and east Hollywood.

Staged as a dark satire, Cecil, one might say, is artistically challenged. Waters, who both scripted and directed the feature (on the bright side, you can only blame one person for this inept monstrosity) has sludged up a thick wad that is devoid of any aesthetic or intellectual grace: It's comedy is bone-headed, its philosophy is what one might call neo-blue shirt, or leftover, leftie fascism from the '60s, and it's narrative is mindless minimalism. Quite simply, Waters has neither the finesse, creativity nor comedic skills to execute a dark comedy that requires more than buying kitschy, inexpensive props. The only thing aesthetically apt about this film is that its lead character is named Whitlock - knock off the "h" and you've got the word that perfectly describes its aesthetic.

Dramatically, CDM consists of a herd of characters in, seemingly, Halloween costumes running through empty streets in groups. Visually, it looks like the outtakes from one of Troma's Toxic Avenger movies, albeit without the subversive humor or the panache. In short, Waters' characters are all stereotypes but tramped up in such a cheap way as to appear to be satiric, including: a sex-maniac porn star, a Satanist, a junkie - fill in the usual suspects. As they introduce themselves to the strapped-down starlet, they all thrust out their forearms, which are tattooed with the "greats" of cinema, including, Kenneth Anger, David Lynch, Fassbinder, Peckinpah, and egads, Spike Lee… ad ilkum. There's even an expositional adulatory rant about the genius of Andy Warhol; unfortunately, it's not about Warhol's true gift - self-promotion.

Oh, and, of course, the Hollywood ditz in the person of Miss Whitlock who is a stark symbol of the repressive Hollywood system that foists bimbos on the American public. Invariably, in a film that is so in need of calling attention to itself, Patty Hearst is heaved into a supporting role. Predictably, the captive starlet undergoes some sort of Stockholm Syndrome transformation and begins identifying with her captors; unfortunately, Waters is such a bumbler when it comes to character and storytelling that you have to fill in your own stuff to determine why anything happens below a mere surface level in this mush.

It's an altogether humiliating turn for Griffith and, charitably, we'd have to say if she read the script that the decision to do this tripe was made on a bad brain day. Prancing around in a short negligee in a wig that looks like it came straight off the Dutch Boy cleaning can and uttering lines, that, well, are so bad that they could have been adlibbed by any first-semester screenwriting wannabee, she is a sorry spectacle.

Ironically, in a film totally devoid of irony or wit, this anti-mainstream romp is just the kind of junk that will do more to sink the art house than anything the multi-plexes and corporate Hollywood could do. Art house exhibitors are going to have to serve a lot more in their cookies and teas to entice patrons to come back after enduring this excruciating, cinematic excreta.

Judging from Cecil, this Waters runs dry.