MULTIPLE MANIACS

Lady Divine (Divine) is the owner and operator of The Cavalcade of Perversion, a free exhibit of various perversions and fetish acts and obscenities, such as the "Puke Eater". The show is free, but the various performers must persuade and even physically drag reluctant passersby to attend.

At the finale to every show, Lady Divine appears and robs the patrons at gunpoint. This arrangement seems successful to Mr. David (David Lochary), Lady Divine's lover, but Lady Divine becomes bored with the routine and decides to murder the patrons rather than merely robbing them. After escaping the murder scene, she comes home to Cookie (Cookie Mueller), her prostitute daughter, and her new boyfriend Steve (Paul Swift), a member of the Weather Underground.

Lady Divine receives a call from Edith (Edith Massey), proprietor of the local bar, who informs her that Mr. David had been at her bar with another woman (Mary Vivian Pearce). Lady Divine heads there to catch them, but is raped on the way by two glue-sniffers. Meanwhile, Mr. David and his new lover Bonnie, a woman who desperately wants to be part of the troupe, engage in sex acts at the home he shares with Lady Divine, during which Bonnie anally penetrates him with a dildo.

While Lady Divine contemplates her rape, the Infant of Prague (Michael Renner Jr.) appears and leads her to a church. Making her way uncertainly into the church, Lady Divine prays, but is then approached and seduced by a strange young woman named Mink (Mink Stole). They have a sexual encounter in the church pew, with Mink inserting a rosary in Divine's rectum while describing the Stations of the Cross.

Now lesbian lovers, Lady Divine and Mink go to Edith's bar with the intent to kill Mr. David and his mistress, but they are too late: David and Bonnie, who have by this time decided that they have to kill Lady Divine to protect themselves, have left.

Mr. David returns to Cookie's house, intent on killing Divine, but instead he finds Cookie and fellow Cavalcade performer Ricky (Rick Morrow) there. An argument ensues, and Bonnie accidentally kills Cookie. They tie up Ricky and hide Cookie's corpse just before Divine and Mink return. When Bonnie tries to shoot Lady Divine, Divine attacks and kills her with a knife. She then turns on Mr. David and eviscerates him as well, cannibalizing his internal organs, and becoming even more frenzied. Ricky suddenly surprises Mink, who shoots him. In a fit of anger, Divine accuses Mink of betrayal and stabs her. Divine becomes even more crazed upon finding her daughter Cookie's body hidden behind the couch.

Exhausted from the ordeal, Lady Divine collapses on a couch and is subsequently raped by a giant lobster. In the aftermath (mumbling "You're a maniac now, Divine"), she destroys a car, then wanders Baltimore trying to kill anyone she can. The National Guard appear, surround Lady Divine on the street, and shoot her, to the tune of "America the Beautiful".

Lady Divine, descending into madness and violence, is ultimately gunned down by the National Guard in the streets of Baltimore after a spree of murder and rampage.

The film’s ending turns Lady Divine’s personal unraveling into a public spectacle, culminating in a fatal confrontation with authority. Waters’ climax is both a parody of tabloid hysteria and a final, anarchic gesture—leaving little doubt about the fate of his anti-heroine while mocking the very idea of redemption or closure.