MONDO TRASHO

After an introductory sequence during which chickens are beheaded on a chopping block, the main action begins. Platinum blond bombshell Mary Vivian Pearce begins her day by riding the bus and reading Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon.

Bombshell is later seduced by a hippie degenerate "shrimper" (foot fetishist), who starts molesting her feet while she fantasizes about being Cinderella. She is then hit by a car driven by Divine, a portly blonde who was trying to pick up an attractive hitchhiker whom she imagines naked.

Divine places Bombshell in the car and drives to a thrift store where she steals clothes for her and later steals shoes from a dead homeless woman.

The Bombshell is then brought to a coin laundry where Divine cleans her face up with a wipe and changes her into the clothes she stole. Divine is then visited by the Blessed Virgin Mary (Margie Skidmore)—during which Divine exclaims, "Oh Mary ... teach me to be Divine". Divine is then gifted a wheelchair by Mary which she uses to wheel the unconscious Bombshell around.

When Divine returns to her car she is in shock to see that it has been stolen by a man in sunglasses. While trying to take a detour to the doctor's, Divine and the bombshell are then captured in a violent asylum.

At the asylum, Divine is robbed of a cigarette and watches in disgust as a topless tap dancer gets sexually assaulted before the Virgin Mary visits her again, this time giving her a hunting knife. After seeing the miracle, the inmates break out of the asylum and flee happily into Baltimore

Divine finally takes the unconscious Bombshell to Dr. Coathanger and his dangerously ill nurse, who amputate her feet and replace them with bird-like monster feet which she can tap together to transport herself around Baltimore.

Meanwhile, Divine is interrogated by a reporter which she shows disdain to until the camera starts taking photos. She is then beaten by a member of the police, which leads to a gunfight between him and many bystanders. Divine throws a lamp at the police officer and wrestles with the officer until she kills him, accidentally stabbing herself in the stomach in the process. After Dr. Coathanger tries to abduct a high school girl, he drops the Bombshell and Divine in the woods but as she is about to succumb to her wounds, she is taken and "granted divinity," by Virgin Mary.

The Bombshell then travels across Baltimore with her bird feet, which leads to her being mooned by greasers in an alley and being repeatedly insulted by two snobs.

Divine is fatally wounded after a violent confrontation with the police and is granted divinity by the Virgin Mary, while the Bombshell, now equipped with bird feet, wanders Baltimore facing ridicule.

The ending cements Waters’ commitment to irreverent satire and grotesque transformation: Divine’s journey culminates in a bizarre, quasi-religious apotheosis, while the Bombshell’s fate—equipped with monstrous feet—parodies classic fairytale resolutions. Rather than restoring order, the film leaves its characters altered and adrift, lampooning both spiritual salvation and the conventions of cinematic closure.