‘LUST’ GETS LOST IN ITS OWN DUST

Isn’t all-stops-out raunchy bad taste enough for a movie these days? Unfortunately, no. It is still nice to have some wit about the enterprise, some bite to the satire and a certain urgency to the story being told, which is the core of what’s the matter with Paul Bartel’s “Lust in the Dust” (citywide).

Good, crisp satire is a joy, and vulgarity in the defense of it can be good, dirty fun. But “Lust’s” problems are double: Westerns frequently sent themselves up (one hardly took the bar-destroying brawl in “Destry Rides Again” seriously), leaving not much else for an outsider to do, and Mel Brooks took care of the rest. “Lust’s” satire is limp, so it falls back on dumb, sniggering sexual innuendo that is vulgar without being particularly funny, or on jokes that just don’t work.

As the picture begins, Divine looms over the proceedings as Rosie, the would-be dance-hall girl, on her way to Chili Verde. Carrying a genteel lace parasol--which, like its owner, has seen far better days--Divine lurches across the desert, corseted and boa-ed and riveted implacably on little stubby heels that threaten to sink into the sand from the strain. Gang rape (by bandits, black men, Chinese, midgets) is only moments ahead. Or behind. I forget.

For director John Waters, in “Pink Flamingos” et al., Divine has been definitive as the slut supreme, the “I Don’t Care Girl” run to middle-age spread and well beyond. And, since Waters’ films were at times genuinely, outrageously funny, she/he (since under the Divine persona is a brilliant female impersonator) was incandescently, indelibly memorable.

There’s nothing whatever the matter with Divine here either; it’s just that none of the material holds together enough for him or for any of this solidly good cast. And a faint nastiness smears the proceedings like a greasy film on your glasses--something far more calculated than the unrestrained excesses of Waters’ comedies. You might find the proceedings ageist. Racist. Sexist. Small person-ist (we may need a new word here).

Philip John Taylor’s script, which is more like an unstructured collection of the rawest gags and sketches, centers around the notion that there’s gold in Chili Verde. In search of it are Marguerita (Lainie Kazan), oversexed singer/madam/owner of Chili Verde’s only saloon/brothel, who is done up to look like a mini-Divine; Abel (Tab Hunter), a grimly taciturn gunman cast in the Eastwood mold; Hard Case Williams (Geoffrey Lewis), a bandit with a nice sense for syntax; Bernardo (Henry Silva), Marguerita’s lover and a cartoon Latino; Father Garcia (Cesar Romero) and the establishment’s two hookers, the stunning Ninfa (Gina Gallego) and Big Ed (Nedra Volz), a tiny, fragile-seeming, aging damsel whose only desire is to get to Abilene.

The story requires that we have these two Divines. It’s something to do with a limerick and a map to the gold. That turns out to be tattooed on the backsides of both Divine and Kazan and, naturally, requires frequent unveiling. Who wanted to know! It also puts Kazan in the no-win position of having to be more foul-mouthed, more rancid, more sluttish than Divine, and gives us not just one but two distorted images to fuel deep-seated fear and loathing of women and of sexuality.

There is also the spectacle of a good cast running amok, apparently being encouraged to believe that, to a man/woman, they are the most hilarious things on the planet. Right there you’ve already got problems.

Actually, the funniest things about the movie are the song under the credits, by Karen Hart, something about a tarnished man with a tarnished hand and a tarnished tumbleweed, and Dona Granata’s splendiferous costumes, which have their own, wild, satiric and comic sensibility.

‘LUST IN THE DUST’ A New World Pictures release of a Fox Run Production. Producers Allan Glaser, Tab Hunter. Executive producer James C. Katz. Director Paul Bartel. Screenplay Philip John Taylor. Camera Paul Lohmann. Editor Alan Toomayan. Music Peter Matz; songs Karen Hart. Production design Walter Pickette, set decoration Margot Kilbey. Sound Frank Meadows. Costumes Dona Granata. Makeup and hairstyles George Masters. With Tab Hunter, Divine, Lainie Kazan, Geoffrey Lewis, Henry Silva, Cesar Romero, Gina Gallego, Nedra Volz, Courtney Gains, Woody Strode, Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, Daniel Frishman, Ernie Shinagawa.

Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (persons under 17 must be accompanied by parent or adult guardian)