LUST IN THE DUST

US, 1985, 84 minutes, Colour.
Tab Hunter, Divine, Geoffrey Lewis, Lainie Kazan, Cesar Romero, Woody Strode, Courtney Gaines.
Directed by Paul Bartel.

Lust in the Dust is a parody of westerns, especially spaghetti westerns, which are parodies in themselves. The film is a star vehicle for Divine, the female impersonator who featured in many of the films of John Waters. The film is also a star vehicle for Lainie Kazan. She goes step by step with Divine in scene stealing. The film was co produced byTab Hunter who appears as the equivalent of Clint Eastwood’s ‘man with no name’.

The story is straightforward: an adventurer has buried gold and outside a New Mexico town, and it has been there for 33 years. The townspeople go nowhere to search for it but there has been a limerick about a man from Scotland and two butes which has been mapped on the buttocks of his two daughters. Hunter’s character is in search of the gold. So is Divine.

The film features a lot of lust and dust, especially with Divine and Lainie Kazan with Hunter. There is also a gross comic sequence where Divine his held up by a gang, led by Geoffrey Lewis, which she reluctantly resists in word but not in action.

Divine also has a song, Those Lips, and Lainie Kazan sings South of the Border, both with innuendo lyrics.

There is some raucous behaviour in an inn. When the characters work at the clues, there is a showdown at the grave of the old man, a kind of the good, the bad and the ugly confrontation, which Divine survives.

However, there is a complication with the Franciscan friar (Cesar Romero). Of all the characters, he seems the most normal. He hears Hunter’s confession, giving absolution and advice. In his few scenes he seems to be doing what a friar should do in the town. However, when he appears at the grave, wanting the gold, his character joins the parody types, and we discover that he had been a rabbi, knew the two girls when they were babies, has being waiting for 33 years for the gold and to spend it. He is quite mad - and is shot by them all.

The film was directed by Paul Bartel who directed such films as Death Race 2000 and Eating Raoul. The film is very much in the vein of John Waters’ campy films.