This Month's Articles
Unfortunately the film starts in a way that I have grown tired of: because we're shown right off the bat what happens in the final scene. Just tell the story. But the opening credits do roll and we learn that the brothers are back together in the Toronto area because their father has just passed away.
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Destitute and wandering, Shy stumbles across his future partner in crime, Val (Harriet "Harry" Howard,) who is getting beat up by a tall blonde. Val's obsessive-compulsive, borderline schizophrenic nature becomes quite evident as the two get to know each other in a late night diner. And through out the film we see that Val can't pass up a phonebook without trying to call his birth mother.
Jesse Bradford plays Johnny, a young kid from the Mid-West who wants to make it to South Carolina, where he hopes to be big in stock car racing. After arriving in Las Vegas, Johnny gets his money stolen while trying to improve his fortune at the slots. Now destitute, Johnny is forced to start begging at a nearby strip mall, where he is quickly befriended by Eric (Jordan Brower,) and his crew of street kids, drug dealers, car thieves, ravers, and other hustlers.
Via tape, Bobby leads Travis and Rhonda on their journey through his hometown, which looks like it was extracted from The Last Picture Show. The two are of course challenged by their misconceptions about how the other lives -what it's like to be Gay, what it's like to be Straight. And the film does a good job of challenging the idea that men and women in a movie can only interact if it leads to a romantic relationship.
Like Charlie Chaplin and Mel Brookes, John Waters has a group of performers who constantly appear in his films. This group includes Patti Hearst, Mink Stole, and Ricki Lake, but their appearances in Demented do nothing more than provide a little "wow factor." Better examples of the trio's acting talent can be seen in better John Water's films like Hairspray, Serial Mom, and Polyester.
